MAXINE HEPPNER : CREATIONS
Gold Wall :::
“Visually arresting, the work gently tweaks the senses, sometimes inspiring a dream state. Meaning is never concrete. This is dance that wants experiencing.”
Dierdre Kelly, Globe and Mail, Canada, June 1999
Gold Wall ::: Description of work
Contrasting doctrines of aestheticism and asceticism, there is a purity in their apparent separatenesses. Both require strictness and discipline. When they are juxtaposed, a fierce dynamic tension is often created. What is beautiful? the adorned, the unadorned? the refined, the raw? the real, the imagined?”
Regardless of personal opinions of how beauty is manifest and attained, the search for it is age-old and infinite. The ideas and juxtapositions presented this evening have been circling for quite some time.
Gold Wall ::: Reviews
“Always looking for a way to break down the fourth wall, the choreographer/performer cruises among the audience in a gold brocaded suit during a break between dances. Then she sheds suit and high heels and, in utilitarian undergarments, joins clarinetist Robert Stevenson on stage…. The self-denying approach to divinity is represented in her simple maneuvers on stage. While in the aesthetic camp…there’s an atmosphere of Versailles as the dancers per form in concentric circles…attention falls on Runge, who brings to the floor such graceful expression of the sentiments at hand that beauty needs no further definition.”
Susan Walker, Toronto Star, Canada, June 1999
“Heppner is an intelligent dance-smith who layers her pieces with subtle details. The world she inhabits on stage is made up of elements borrowed from different media. Visually arresting, the work gently tweaks the senses, sometimes inspiring a dream state. Meaning is never concrete. This is dance that wants experiencing.”
Dierdre Kelly, Globe and Mail, Canada, June 1999
Gold Wall ::: Credits
Choreographer / Artistic Director
Maxine Heppner
Interpreters
Corrin Adams, Fiona Drinnan, Jessica Runge, Dahlia Steinberg, Robert W. Stevenson, Maxine Heppner
Music
Robert W. Stevenson
Photography
Maxine Heppner, Jason Topp
Lighting designer/technical coordinator
Christopher Dennis
Technical crew
David Hein Davia Joicus, Ian Bailie
Publicity
Open Arts Productions
Producer
Across Oceans / Maxine Heppner,
Dancemakers Studio Theatre, Toronto, Canada, June 1999
Thanks to
Dear friend and Jakartan visual artist Hanafi has been the inspiration for these embarkations.
Thanks also to...
... David Irons, Peter Chin, Cylla von Tiedemann,Tim Whiten, Michael Montanaro, The National Ballet of Canada, Jack Frost Lighting, The Laidlaw Foundation, the Toronto Arts Council, and the Canadian Alliance of Dance Artists, Also to students who ask me questions, friends who challenge my ideas, volunteers who help run the house and: Wayne for getting me out of the elevator, Judith for morning phone calls, Martin for his craft skills, Erik for his camera, Dancemakers for their hospitality, Dodo and Lyone Heppner for insisting on the infinite beauty of life, and my collaborators and the technical crew for their devotion and commitment throughout research and especially in the last week of production.
With the support of
The Laidlaw Foundation and the City of Toronto through the Toronto Arts Council.
Gold Wall ::: media gallery
