This call for a musician/composer is open to musicians of Japanese descent who produce/compose original music using electronic/electro-acoustics processes, or are eager to experiment with, and incorporate electronic music instruments and processes into their work.
We encourage and prioritize applications from folks of all ages who are LGBTQIA2S+, disabled, neurodiverse, women, trans or non-binary.
Background:
Recognizing that dance artists do not often receive media/digital support to shift their work from live to digital, Made in BC‘s PIVOT_Digital project seeks to help artists in their efforts to discover and engage digitally to connect with more BC residents in remote communities. This online media/digital support will offer dance artists of colour access to resources to help support greater equity in the performing and digital arts.
Collaborating organizations, Leña Artist Research and Residency Centre & Active / Passive Performance Society, both on Galiano Island, are supporting PIVOT_Digital in working with a dance artist of Japanese descent to collaborate with a musician/composer selected by Active / Passive’s co-curators, in consultation with the artists. Together the dance artist and musician will create a digital exploration of Galiano Island’s Japanese history including historic charcoal kilns. These moss-covered earth and rock kilns are silent evidence of a once-thriving early 20th-century charcoal-making industry by early Japanese settlers.
The Project:
BC dance artist Shion Skye Carter, filmmaker Bee Kent, together with the selected musician/composer, will create a 10-15 minute dance film with visual ideas focused around the body in relationship with the historic Japanese charcoal kilns located on the shared and unceded traditional territories of Penelakut, Lamalcha, Hwitslum and other Hul’qumi’num speaking peoples as well as the ceded territories of Tsawwassen First Nation, on what is now known as Galiano Island. The project will involve a week of residency including experimentation and improvisation time, exploration, and filming on-site. The project will explore choreography that connects the body and the kilns through movement motifs of circularity, roundness, and spirals. These motifs are filtered through movement impulses while dancing in and around a charcoal kiln, echoing the cylindrical shape of the kiln itself. The kilns’ presence on Galiano is a part of the island’s past, bringing to mind images of departure, emptiness, and leaving for the film.
The artists’ residency will happen September 13-17th on Galiano Island and will include the dance artist, filmmaker and musician/composer.
The musician/composer will be compensated with a production fee, per diem for the five days of the residency, as well as ferry travel costs. They will be responsible for producing the composition and high quality audio recording to score the film. This will include in-person experimentation and improvisation during the first two days of the residency to produce temporary composition/tracks for the dancer to use while filming the piece, happening in the last three days of the residency.
LEÑA will provide accommodations for an on-site creation/filming week. Active / Passive Performance Society will act as a point of contact for Galiano including for the kiln site, with local families of Japanese descendants, and relevant local archives.
The final work will premiere as a hybrid in-person and digital event presented and promoted by Active / Passive in the Fall of 2021 as part of their 2021/22 performance series.
How to Submit
Email activepassiveconcerts@gmail.com with a little information about yourself and your music, (think 250 words) and why you are interested in the project (think about 150 words). We’ll get in touch with you to talk more, so please don’t worry too much about putting together a submission that is too comprehensive. Please send in your submission by August 21st.
