It is a particular kind of creature that inhabits the stage. Performing artists yearn for it like a dragon’s tail and are terrified by its need. Being a performer means doing an enormous amount of unseen work, only to arrive at a moment onstage where all that effort cracks us open and reveals who we are to everyone watching.
PERFORMANCE IS A COMMUNAL ACT
As Werklund Centre’s TD Incubator fellow this season, I have mentored more than 40 of Calgary’s brightest performing artists. The AMPLIFY series has been the public offering, but it’s the behind-the-scenes that I’ve immersed myself in. AMPLIFY 3, back in March, featured an unforgettable collaboration between queer post-rock band Jed Arbour, classical Hindustani singer Aditya Chaudhuri, and dancer Darya Ivanova. Bandleader Jed Stein crafts a very specific experience for audiences that is both confronting and cathartic.
“To perform is to inhabit a space that can’t exist without community,” says Stein. “Simultaneously make believe and the most real you can feel. It feels like sharing something true, exposing something we all know to be inside but feel too scared to look at or share. There is inherent power, and you yield it, and it opens a window of opportunity for collective change.”
Aditya Chaudhuri shares the sentiment that performance is a communal experience of sharing a deep part of ourselves that captures everyone in a moment together.
“It’s a means to take something from inside and make it real for others,” says Chaudhuri. “It’s about how you translate emotion, culture, and experience into a form that people witnessing it can feel, even if they don’t understand it.”
Pianist Timothonius Alai of AMPLIFY 4 is fully aware of the opportunity to process things that aren’t so easily conveyed.
“Performing is where I get to do something with emotion that normally doesn’t have anywhere to go,” says Alai. “We humans are always carrying things, unfinished things, things we haven’t had the words for and the music can find that. Do not explain it. Just find it and sit with it. When that happens, the performance stops being about me and becomes something the room is making together.”
PERFORMANCE AS CONNECTION
Performing artists contend with the fourth wall, an imaginary division between the stage and audience. I encouraged artists to toss the concept out, as we are onstage to connect with those witnessing us.
“To me, performance means weaving connection and presence between myself, the crowd, and the environment around us,” says Jed Arbour bassist Kat Handley. “When I’m on stage, I feel nervous and thrilled at the same time, and I feel like I am honouring parts of myself that struggle with being seen.”
Miarlequin agrees. As a core member of the band SHY FRiEND and a solo musician herself, she shared her full self with collaborator Timothonius Alai and singer, producer and DJ Ashley Velvet.
“Performance is a connection to the music, to my heart and emotions, to my bandmates and to the audience,” says Miarlequin. “It is a space of freedom and celebration where some of the most beautiful moments of my life occur.”
PERFORMANCE AS COMMUNICATION
Onstage, we get to share parts of ourselves that we may not be comfortable sharing in our daily lives.
“Performing means expressing a part of myself that is less fed in my day-to-day life,” says Drew Miller, Jed Arbour’s drummer. “Namely, a part of me that desires recognition. To demand attention and to impose on others are not values I generally want to foster within myself, but performance calls on a need to be seen and acknowledged, and scratches that itch in an ethical way.”
Ashley Velvet also dug deep in her collaboration and saw the process as a window she both looked out of and through to the audience.
“The performance experience reveals a lot of the deeper parts of me that aren’t always visible on the surface,” says Velvet. “Being on stage feels like stepping into a really deep trust within myself.”
Dancer Darya Ivanova of AMPLIFY 3 is a performer and educator who uses performance to speak out loud what is inside of her.
“Performing for me is a certain form of expression,” says Ivanova. “An open way to share my thoughts in a non-verbal, unconventional language. It’s a unique way of being present with people in the same space, where an exchange of energy happens.”
