MALGORZATA NOWACKA
Choreographer/performer, Blood (opens April 2, see listing), a visceral new work about urban myths
Born: Warsaw, Poland • Came to Toronto: 1980s (“when yellow fluorescent socks were a coveted item”) • Buzz: Nowacka’s been revitalizing the dance scene with her gravity-defying works. Expect her to draw lots of metaphoric – and maybe some literal – Blood.
SUSIE BURPEE
Choreographer/performer, A Mass Becomes You (opens April 2 as part of In Tune, see listing), a new solo inspired by two radically different figures – art star Cindy Sherman and Mozart
Born: Winnipeg • Came to Toronto: 2001 • Buzz: Burpee has created a gallery of quirky dance personae, and she’s bound to do it again decked out in a wig and using retro boom boxes.
Beginnings
First dance memory?
Malgorzata Nowacka: Improvising to classical music.
Susie Burpee: In the living room.
What made you get onstage?
Nowacka: Desire to experience
fully something outside “regular” reality.
Burpee: The living room was too small.
First bit of choreography?
Nowacka: A solo about being stuck in one place, created at Bengt Jorgen’s school of dance.
Burpee: I was eight, and the music was These Boots Were Made For Walking by Nancy Sinatra.
Major influences or mentors?
Nowacka: Influences: Quentin Tarantino, Hieronymus Bosch mentor: Elizabeth Langley.
Burpee: I am influenced by many people, particularly underdogs and outcasts.
You’re the love child of two artists – who are they?
Nowacka: Wait – I am the real love child of two artists. Both my parents are amazing visual artists.
Burpee: Cindy Sherman and Carol Burnett.
The Work
What’s your current show about – in one sentence?
Nowacka: Colliding the harshness of some of what is in our nature (in our blood) with beauty to reveal a heightened state that somehow makes everything worthwhile.
Burpee: Ritual, reinvention and requiem.
What inspired it?
Nowacka: The idea of crisis, a word we often hear in the media. That led to being intrigued by survival instinct, which led to thinking about what’s in our blood, which led to venom, which led to kissing… which invariably led me back to crisis.
Burpee: A photo and a boom box.
What’s your biggest challenge in the piece?
Nowacka: It’s very athletic, so the biggest challenge is to have the cast survive the show injury-free, or just survive.
Burpee: The fact that I can’t really see when I’m in costume.
Last show you saw and loved?
Nowacka: William Forsythe’s the second detail by the National Ballet of Canada.
Burpee: Antonija Livingstone’s The Part.
Biggest misconception people have about contemporary dance?
Nowacka: That it’s all the same. That’s like thinking Margaret Atwood and Stephen King are the same because they both write in English.
Burpee: Angst.
The Career
What keeps you motivated?
Nowacka: Everything around me, but especially heavily caffeinated drinks and chocolate.
Burpee: Opportunities to think differently.
Percentage of friends in dance?
Nowacka: 100 per cent
Burpee: Everybody I know can bust a radical dance move if the occasion calls for it.
Coolest thing you can write off on your tax form?
Nowacka: Red Bull.
Burpee: Audio cassette tapes.
Second Thoughts
If you weren’t in dance, what would you be doing?
Nowacka: Never think about it.
Burpee: Producing shows in my living room.
Biggest regret?
Nowacka: That I can’t perform and create all the time.
Burpee: Not enough opportunities to perform.
Worst stage experience?
Nowacka: Seeing a fellow dancer’s costume disintegrate during a live performance and not being able to do anything about it.
Burpee: Improvising to Footloose in front of my junior high assembly wearing red spandex. I used all my good moves in the first 45 seconds so had to resort to cartwheels, running and clapping.
Pleasures and piss-offs about the Canadian dance scene?
Nowacka: Pleasures: there is so much good stuff! Piss-offs: there is so much good stuff!
Burpee: Are we making a scene? Then let’s get to it!
glenns@nowtoronto.com
