One of our current works in development in the Dracula’s Garden series of short contemporary ballet poems. This dance poem is a duet on grief. We work with ideas of creaturely movement, enmeshment of two creatures into one, loss of other, loss of self, death, and reconnection. Choreographed by Alina Sotskova in collaboration with Rachel Helten. Performed by Rachel Helten and Alina Sotskova. Learn more about this series in the Repertoire section of our website.

 

 

At Voirelia’s first creative jam we had two streams of improvisation: musicians improvising music and dancers improvising movement. Music improvisation by: Andrew Short, Scott Aitken, Dave Leith. Video by: Jason Kirkness. See the Events and Projects section of our site for more details about this event, photos, and other videos.

Dancers in this video: Michael Demski, Alejandra Miranda.

 

Dancers in this video: Michael Demski, Alejandra Miranda, Sarah Louadi, Alina Sotskova.

“Persistence of Identity” is an original solo dance work that I presented at Flux Contemporary Dance Festival in 2015. I was interested in exploring surrealism and evoking surrealist images and themes through dance, as well as exploring the influence of Freud and psychoanalysis on Dali’s representations of human psychology. In this work, which you can read more about on my website, I focused on interpreting Dali’s famous paintings, The Persistence of Memory and The Disintegration of Persistence of Memory, through contemporary dance.

Choreographed and performed by: Alina Sotskova
Go to fluxdance.ca to find out more about Flux festival.
Music: “Til Enda,” Olafur Arnalds.

 

A little bit of fun and play at Canada National Ballet School with lifts during the Ontario Regional Contact Jam. (Camille Schmiedel, Alina Sotskova). Everything is improvised, imperfect, raw: it mirrors the way a dance is created, even if you are watching the perfectly polished Swan Lake, staged a hundred times over. The spontaneity and flexibility of movement in this type of dance is what interests me so much about it. Although integrating it with a classical, ballet syllabus would make for fascinating dance experimentation. Check out http://contactimprov.ca to learn more about contact improvisation.

 

Check out the Events & Projects section to see other dance performance videos.