Dennis Bass, an Ottawa-based musician; in collaboration with Jordan Samonas, a dance teacher and choreographer in Ottawa; and Don Ross, a fingerstyle guitarist and Carleton’s artist-in-residence, have come together to create a live music and dance performance to explore creativity and spontaneity called North of Mind.
According to Bass, it is a performance based on the idea of Canada, and how creativity changes.
“We [Bass and Samonas] thought about how creativity can change—how the act of creation changes,” Bass said.
The performance uses improvisation to explore freedom and creativity. It involves three dance pieces which progress from structured to completely improvised.
“It is based on the idea of structured improvisation. That means that there are basic ideas that are given by the choreographer and the dancers react to that. So, every time the performance is done, it looks a little bit different because everyone is in the moment performing,” Bass said.
The first dance piece is based on a soundscape created by Bass himself. It combines different sounds such as cosmic white noise, ominous sounding strings, snippets of sounds from everyday life and it ends with a lively beat—all to mimic a sense of chaos found of life.
The second piece is a tap dance involving two people, but it does not use music. The last piece is a complete improvisation by both the guitarist and the dancer.
According to Bass, the goal of the performance is to explore the creative process, how humans create, and how the environment influences human creativity.
The performance includes 10 local Ottawa dancers from Carleton, who appear across the three different segments of the show.
“I think it is important to show what kind of talent Ottawa has that are not maybe as well-known and how we can collaborate together to create a really interesting project,” Bass said.
As well, the show aims to provide a unique experience for viewers, one they might not often be able to see.
“What’s really important for myself and the choreographer is that we are creating local live art for people to come and see and experience and have a really unique performance experience that you might not always get to see in Ottawa,” he added.
At the end of the day, Bass said that the goal of the performance is to leave the audience inspired.
“They should definitely come away inspired to create themselves, to create different things, to use new approaches when they are creating art or trying to come up with new ideas.”
Photo provided
