POUR IS A PERIOD PIECE
Choreographer Daina Ashbee draws a parallel between seal hunt and menstruation to dramatize the cycle of pain and blood
Contemporary dance has taken on many taboo subjects — rape, sadism, cross-dressing, self-mutilation — but Daina Ashbee is the first choreographer in memory to tackle that periodic phase of the female body known as menstruation. You would think that such a regular occurrence among half the world’s population might inspire some choreographic thought at least occasionally. Such an intensely physical occurrence, encompassing cramps, bloating, muscular pain and wild mood swings, would seem an intriguing subject for dance.
Perhaps this theme has been waiting for a choreographer from the young generation, a generation that seems unabashed and uninhibited when discussing anything to do with the body and its functions. Ashbee, who was born in Nanaimo, B.C., is 26. During a recent interview at Théâtre La Chapelle, where her hour-long solo about menstruation called Pour begins next week, Ashbee let drop that she was anorexic for a time as a teen.
“I was doing ballet in Vancouver at the peak of my anorexia and the teacher threatened to kick me out unless I underwent a program for anorexia.”
Today, Ashbee looks well fed and healthy. Her openness about her one-time affliction might well have been a factor in her recovery. Anorexia was not the only adolescent experience that set her mind to thinking about her body.
“I was taking jazz dance and the teacher recommended ballet to strengthen my technique, so I came to ballet late. I was put in a class with a younger group. My body had changed whereas theirs hadn’t and I began denying my body.”
Ashbee found good soil to grow at Modus Operandi, a professional dance school in Vancouver that will mark its 10th anniversary next year. Ashbee is listed among the school’s successful alumni. Operated by David Raymond and Tiffany Tregarthen, the program offered improvisation classes, where, said Ashbee, “I found a lot of my movement.”
Ashbee also deepened her First Nations roots — her father is a Cree sculptor — by dancing for First Nations companies in Vancouver.
After a couple of years performing others’ contemporary works, Ashbee decided she preferred to work as a choreographer. Propelled by nothing more than curiosity, she came to Montreal in 2013 and “fell in love with the city and began learning French.”
She also began at every opportunity to pitch five-minute excerpts of a proposed hour-length duet called Unrelated. A year after landing in Montreal, she got a break.
“Michael Toppings (artistic director) at MAI took a risk and trusted me enough to program Unrelated.”
The subject of Unrelated was aboriginal women seen as victims of violent abuse, a position that leads them to question their self-worth and provokes selfdestruction.
Performing nude to better underline their vulnerability, Unrelated’s two dancers, Paige Culley and Areli Moran, hurled themselves against a back wall and otherwise suffered violent action. A year later, Unrelated was restaged at Théâtre La Chapelle and toured to a few cities in Mexico.
An invitation came from the Global Alliance Against Female Genital Mutilation to perform Unrelated in Geneva, Switzerland. For technical reasons, Ashbee said, the work was not performed, but organizers asked if she had something else to show. As a result, Ashbee showed 45 minutes of a choreographic “installation” at Geneva’s Ethnography Museum. Portions of that work dealing with menstruation formed the basis of Pour.
The hour-long solo, Pour, which Ashbee was still polishing at the time of the interview, again features Culley, a British Columbia dancer who trained at Toronto Dance Theatre and who for the past five years has performed with Compagnie Marie Chouinard. Dressed either in black briefs or nude, Culley performs Pour on an empty stage covered by sheets of glistening white Styrofoam. To Ashbee’s mind, the expanse of white represents the ice fields where hunters armed with clubs conduct the annual seal hunt.
Some might find the connection between the spilling of seal blood on ice and a woman’s menstrual discharge to be far fetched. Ashbee maintained that her choreographic approach is dramatic and abstract rather than literal. The seal hunt, which works on a regular cycle, is simply a visually striking metaphor to dramatize the menstrual cycle of pain and blood.
Jean-François Blouin provided the soundscape for Pour, whose finale at rehearsal sent sounds thundering throughout the small La Chapelle theatre. It is one thing to portray pain on stage as a way of fostering understanding, another thing to compel audiences to feel pain by popping their eardrums. Next month, Ashbee will present Unrelated in Bergen, Norway, and soon after that, in London, England. At 26, her star is clearly rising.