whereverever
Artist: MARDON + MITSUHASHI WITH ALYSHA SERIANI AND SASHA J. LANGFORD (Vancouver)
Mainstage Presentation
January 24 @ 7pm, January 26 @ 2:30pm
Duration: 60 minutes
whereverever – Mardon + Mitsuhashi
Photo by Rachel Topham
Image description: Two people on a white dance floor, facing each other on a diagonal. The closest person has their back to the camera, a blue track suit with a red stripe on the pants. They’re standing on one leg and their arms are thrown up above their heads. The farthest person is facing the camera and is wearing a red track suit with a blue stripe. Their left hand is on their chest and their right arm extends downward.
whereverever is a new work by Mardon + Mitsuhashi — the collaborative entity of Alexa Mardon and Erika Mitsuhashi — made with media artist Alysha Seriani and composer Sasha J. Langford. Across a sixteen-minute video and forty-minute dance performance without intermission, whereverever playfully traces possible beginnings and belonging by following the question “how did we get here?”
Recorded on location in Mardon + Mitsuhashi’s respective ancestral homelands, Finland and Japan, the video intertwines visits with relatives, folk and contemporary dancing, and images of built and natural environments with a focus on gesture, movement, and impulse. As the video cuts rhythmically between each place, it oscillates between a sense of distance and presence, past and present, as Mardon + Mitsuhashi orientate themselves as visitors to their hereditary homes and construct a postcard for their future kin. A sampled glitch in the soundtrack, anaglyph effect on images, and a doubling in framing across the two places, disrupts a sense of linear time to unfold a vastness of relations.
In the dance performance that follows, Mardon + Mitsuhashi present a movement practice of “blurring” to a musical score performed live by Langford. Through a score of improvisational tasks, they arrive in a duet of imperfect unison in which dance becomes a devotional technology to understand their bodies differently, both in relation to each other and the histories they hold.
Created and Performed by: Mardon + Mitsuhashi (Alexa Mardon + Erika Mitsuhashi)
Videography and Editing by: Alysha Seriani
Composer: Sasha J. Langford
Costume Design by: Jaewoo Kang
Additional Props and Costumes by: Natalie Purschwitz
Lighting Design by: Nien-Tzu Weng
Technical Manager: Jack Chipman
Artistic Mentors: Justine A. Chambers, Xwechtaal Dennis Joseph, Mala Kline
Dramaturgy Support: Joanna Garfinkel
Accessibility Consultation: Cara Eastcott, Amy Amantea, Shannon Gagnon
Audio Description: Andrea Cownden
Commissioned by Western Front as part of its artist-in-residence program, with support from the Government of Canada, Canada Council for the Arts, British Columbia Arts Council, Leña Residency, MascallDance, Whatlab, Company 605 and Out Innerspace Dance Theatre.
MARDON + MITSUHASHI comprises interdisciplinary artists and performers Alexa Mardon and Erika Mitsuhashi, who have been collaborating since 2015. Their work takes many forms including performance, installation, set design, and publication, and is rooted in friendship and relational transformation through their dedication to leading creative processes that foster physical, emotional, cognitive, and spiritual autonomy with collaborators. Their work has been presented in collaboration with The Dance Centre, Made In BC, Surrey Art Gallery, OFFTA, Summerworks, VIVO Media Arts Centre and Western Front.
ALYSHA SERIANI is an interdisciplinary artist working with production, pedagogy, film, media art, and community projects. Her practice revolves around horizontal styles of collaboration and learning and is informed by embodying intersectional feminism, intergenerational learning, and queer joy.
SASHA J. LANGFORD makes sounds, writings, and interdisciplinary performance works that investigate intersections between bodies, power, and psychic life. In her sound scoring for choreographers, media artists, and filmmakers, Sasha draws together her classical training in music and her fascination with dance theory to create rhythmically-oriented and spatially-sensitive experimental electronic compositions.
Information for Presenters: Available for touring. Next presentation is at Spring Roll Festival (Turku, Finland) April 2024.
CONTACT
Erika Mitsuhashi
erika.mitsuhashi@gmail.com
erikamitsuhashi.com / alexasolveigmardon.com /
alyshaseriani.com / sashalangford.com
Instagram: @emitsuhashi / @movementstudy
Facebook: /erika.mitsuhashi / /alexa.mardon