“First Steps” implies a sequence of events that follow one after the other, leading to something.  

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Co-creators Maxine Heppner (dance) and Miguel Frasconi (music) creation process researches pure sound & movement until shared root motifs are identified, then builds the work from those common motifs. Much music and dance uses foundation motifs as building blocks and references points within the structure of the work. For “First Steps” Maxine and MIguel go one step further to challenge themselves to explore a continuous transformation of one music-dance event to the next without direct reference to what came before, a responsive unfolding that moves through time and space without looking backward.

Historically, this is first steps for Maxine and Miguel after a long hiatus since last working together. Miguel composed for many of Maxine’s works such as: “Give us this day our daily” (aka the newspaper piece) and “My past follows like a dragons tail” (Dora nomination for commissioning artist Yvonne Ng) and both were artists in the Shadowlight Theatre’s collaborative 5-year project “In Xanadu”. This is also first steps for Maxine and Takako Segawa, a principle interpreter of Maxine’s work for a decade, where they step into reversed roles, Maxine into performer and Takako into director and outside eye.