Sweet Ephemera, presented by DanceWorks, is a queer double bill of dance designed to spark thought and curiosity, featuring works by choreographers Calder White and Tavia Christina (of Near & Far Projects).
The two new dance works explore ideas revolving around fantasy and community, but in very different ways. White and Christina will also be holding a workshop in the middle of the run.
Calder White: only child / Sometimes the Sex is So Good: Tavia Christina
only child by Calder White plays with fantasy vs reality with a series of vignettes that speak to moment of queer intimacy and kink. The work begins as a solo that becomes a duet, and at times, a trio, and places romance and courtship, and those moments when danger and care exist in the same marginalized spaces.
Freelance dance artist Calder White is based between Vancouver and Ottawa. Dancing since the age of six, Calder holds a BFA in Dance for Ohio State University, and was a member of Toronto-based Canadian Contemporary Dance Theatre from 2011 to 2014.
He’s performed on stages throughout North America, Europe, and Mexico as a company member with Shay Kuebler/Radical System Art, Joshua Beamish/ MOVETHECOMPANY, and Santa Barbara Dance Theatre, and has choreographed and danced his own works across Canada. Calder is a passionate educator as well as a performer, and has taught floor work in institutions across Canada and the US.
Sometimes the Sex is so Good by Tavia Christina, Artistic Director of Near & Far Projects, looks at our ongoing state of destruction and societal devolution, and asks the question, How can we work through disaster together? When the world is in a state of upheaval, Christina challenges the idea of autonomy.
Dancer, choreographer and movement artist Tavia Christina is the Artistic Director of Toronto based Near & Far Projects. Tavia’s background blends Western contemporary dance with classical ballet and street dance. Their dance works have been performed at The Museum (Hamilton, ON), Toronto Fringe Festival, The Citadel, Long Winter, and Dance Makers, among others.
Along with dance, Christina has also worked in other art forms such as film. Their film works have screened at the Dance Ontario Festival 2024, Guelph Dance Festival, Mile Zero Dance Festival, and New Blue Dance Festival.
After residencies at Toronto Dance Theatre, the Toronto Heliconian Club, and Naked State, Tavia is mentoring as an Artistic Producer with The Chimera Project.
The Interview: Calder White & Tavia Christina
The double bill project came together as the result of DanceWorks’ Artistic Introductions + Ideas Form.
“DanceWorks put out this call,” explains Calder. The call came as a simple form where dance artists could exchange artistic ideas, pitched as a casual, relationship building form. Artists could introduce themselves, and they could choose to introduce a specific work — or not. It created a different environment than the usual call for submissions.
“There was no obligation to pitch them a project,” White says. “It kind of took the pressure out a bit,” he adds. “It felt like just telling a friend about the thing you ware making.”
“I feel like the two of them were more interested in what was going on,” she says of DanceWorks’ current Co-Executive Artistic Producers, Dedra McDermott and David Norsworthy. “[It was] a more curatorial approach, which I found really, really refreshing, especially as an up and coming choreographer in the city.”
Queer Dance
“I think, for me, when I’m making, inevitably, things are going to be touched upon my lived experience,” Tavia says. “When I’m making, it’s coming from my essence. I think inevitably my work will be queer because I am,” they add.
“Queer as in transcending things. Being political, being malleable.”
“You don’t need to make the work queer, it’s going to be queer if it’s made by a queer person,” Calder adds.
But, it doesn’t necessarily follow that it can only be enjoyed as such.
“A lot of my work lives within a questioning place,” White continues. “This work in particular has made me realize how much I enjoy creating the conditions for multiple interpretations.”
The character he portrays in the work could be interpreted in a variety of different roles. Likewise, the puppets in the piece could be a proxy for a lover or a child, a parent, or simply a doll.
“I really like creating these scenarios,” he says, “offering the audience multiple different doorways.”
Tavia’s work is also built on the idea of character.
“I feel like, also, in this work, the two performers play characters.” Christina sees them as acting as a sort of mirror or lens for the audience to project their own interpretations “Dance is abstract in that sense. You have to allow that mirage to blend.”
“There’s only so much that you can premediate,” White adds. “At the end of the day, you don’t know who’s seeing it.” It’s a spontaneous element. “We’re spontaneously composing the thing together.”
About The Dance
“It just feels like a language, like any other,” White says. It’s raw material for the choreographer to shape.
Calder says his 30-minute work employs a variety of different props, costumes, and set elements to explore the themes of loneliness, isolation, and how we project ourselves onto others, especially during those vulnerable moments of firs coming together.
“The experience of being lonely can intersect with other things,” he adds. White is a horror movie fan, and often uses the aesthetics of the genre in his work. “In the end, I think that horror a lot of times is just sad. Being completely cut off from everyone else that can be the scariest.”
He describes setting up a voyeuristic dynamic with the audience. “It established a kind of relationship that is kind of familiar and common in gay male communities,” he says. “There’s this dynamic of knowing that someone’s over there, but not knowing what their intentions are. Living between possibility and real danger. I love the tension.”
Tavia’s piece came from exploring her own reactions to the state of the world.
“My piece, Sometimes the Sex is So Good, follows two characters, Beast and Being, who live in an apocalyptic version of our world,” Christina says. “It’s something that I’m constantly thinking.”
But, out of the apocalypse comes… togetherness?
“I’m interested in whether decay can create intimacy,” they say. “I’m more so interested in what can emerge from it. When cycles or systems fall apart […] there’s this tension or strange closeness. I think the work plays with that tension.”
When everything’s falling apart, we tend to cling to each other a little more tightly.
“We hold each other through this mess.”
Tavia, too, is a horror movie fan. “I’m also very deeply inspired by horror.”
Christina is excited about working with a costume designer.
“The costumes are a new element of including world building for me,” they say. “I worked with Angela Cabrera who’s an incredible maker and designer. They’ve created these suits, almost. It really just only amplifies the two characters.”
Tavia points out that dance itself often feels like a costume.
“With this, I was really interested in creating the characters.”
Details
Performances take place June 24 to 26 at Young People’s Theatre. The workshops take place June 25 between 10:15am-1:15pm at The Fifth Dance.
- Find more information [HERE].
- Find tickets to the performance [HERE].
- Register for the workshop [HERE].
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