Graduate students Shannon Roberts, Nancy听Latoszewski Greyeyes and Ilse Gudi帽o, candidates in 91亚色鈥檚 Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program in choreography and dance dramaturgy, premiere new choreographies for ensembles in Temenos. The show, performed by professional and pre-professional dancers, runs Feb.听15 to 17 in the Sandra Faire & Ivan Fecan Theatre at听the Keele campus.

Shannon Roberts. Photo by听David Hou

The Greek word temenos refers to a piece of land cut off from common use, often dedicated as a place for worship. Historically, the proscenium stage has been regarded as a space reserved for particular users and dedicated to expressing the meanings that infuse our bodies and relationships.

As well as addressing the concept of the stage as a special site, the three emerging choreographers build on the idea of the dancing body itself as temenos 鈥� simultaneously separated from society鈥檚 imposed meanings, and infused with individual sources of meaning for each artist.

鈥淭heir dances focus on navigating the proscenium stage as a site for researching the body鈥檚 memories and cultural constructions,鈥� said Professor Darcey Callison, the production鈥檚 artistic director. 鈥淔rom delving into the historical roots of flamenco, to exploring a family narrative of coal miners in Pennsylvania, to challenging the complexity of the male gaze, these choreographers investigate the proscenium theatre as temenos: a theatrical space that frames these works in order to make visible the body as a conduit for memories and social conditions that permeate their choreography.鈥澨�

Fusing modern dance with her athletic background, Shannon Roberts incorporates Bollywood, ballet, jazz, modern, hip hop, figure skating and flying trapeze into her work. Her choreography is inspired by social issues and the people, artwork and cultures she has experienced in her travels around the world.听听听听听听听听听听听听听

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Roberts鈥� work, A Way of Seeing, is a discourse between Edvard Munch鈥檚 painting Woman in Three Stages and writer John Berger鈥檚 influential book Ways of Seeing. Investigating how a woman鈥檚 experience is informed through youth, sexuality and aging, this trio explores a sensual physical language that frames the private experience as public display.

听Ilse Gudi帽o Barthold. Photo by David Hou

In her piece, In the Marrow: A听Crucial Journey, Ilse Gudi帽o Barthold explores the history of flamenco as cultural memory and personal expression. Four dancers and four live musicians bring to the stage this complex journey, from a dance form infused with cultural significance to a movement vocabulary that is both personal and contemporary.

Trained in flamenco dance in Madrid and Seville, Gudi帽o Barthold has been a member of the Esmeralda Enrique Spanish Dance Company since 1997 and has performed as a soloist and with other flamenco dancers across Canada and internationally.

In Valley of Coal, Nancy Latoszewski (Greyeyes) tells the story of her grandparents. Both her grandfathers were Pennsylvania coal miners, and her choreography charts memories of the challenges they faced and the personal sacrifices they made. This narrative choreography is Latoszewski鈥檚 way of exploring oral history through her work as a dance artist.

Nancy Latoszewski (Greyeyes). Photo by听David Hou

A former soloist with Feld Ballets NY, Latoszewski has also been a principal dancer with the Cleveland San Jose Ballet and Alberta Ballet. Her work has been performed at Nuit Blanche and by Ballet J枚rgen, and she has also choreographed for film.

The Temenos program concludes with a structured improvisation created by the 91亚色 Dance Ensemble鈥檚 (YDE) artistic director Holly Small in collaboration with the ensemble, and听performed by the 16 dancers and five musicians of the YDE.

For tickets, contact the Box Office at 416-736-5888.

Republished courtesy of YFile鈥� 91亚色鈥檚 daily e-bulletin.

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For 91亚色听architectural historian, Professor听Shelley Hornstein (right), the relationship between memory and place has been a source of fascination for much of her academic career. Hornstein, who teaches architectural history and visual culture in 91亚色鈥檚 Faculty of Fine Arts, has authored a new book on the subject.听 Losing Site: Architecture, Memory and Place (Ashgate 2011) examines the relationship between memory and place and asks how architecture听acts as a springboard to听our memories.

Hornstein will launch Losing Site: Architecture, Memory and Place at a special event听at the Gladstone Gallery located on the upper floor of Toronto's Gladstone Hotel on Sunday, Dec. 18. The launch will take place from 6 to 8pm and all are welcome.

In Losing Site, Hornstein听explores how architecture exists as a material object and how it registers as a place that we come to remember beyond the physical site itself.听She questions what architecture is in the broadest sense, assuming that it is not just buildings.听The book听connects architecture with geography, visual culture and urban studies.听It explores the infinite variations of how architecture maps our physical, mental or emotional space.

The book's title reflects Hornstein's understanding of culture, place and memory. "We've lost sight of what it means to be in a place, to experience, to know听the physicality of a place," she says. "Losing Site plays with the ideas that bring together site and sight. How does architecture trigger memory?"

Each chapter explores this concept by providing听a different example of the many ways that the physical place of architecture is curated by the architecture in our mental space, or听what Hornstein calls our "imaginary toolbox" that we use when we remember or think of a place, look at a photograph,听visit a site and describe it later to someone else or write about it on a postcard.

Right: From Losing Site, Dani Karavan, Passages - Homage to Walter Benjamin, 1994, Portbou, Spain.听Photograph听by Shelley Hornstein

"Architecture is much broader than we imagine. It is not too much of an exaggeration to say that architecture is not only about buildings, but also about the construction of our physical landscape and how we relate to it鈥hat our bodies do and mean in those spaces, as well as the mental maps and architectural constructions we build everyday in our minds听and the worlds we build visually as we read fiction, for example,"听says Hornstein.

She notes that even a hedge dividing a garden from a road traces a line that not only divides a space into two places, but creates two new places that did not exist before. "We builds, demolish and shape space into architectural places that are meaningful to us," says Hornstein. "When those places disappear, do we remember them?"

Hornstein describes the听project as the result of 10 years of writing and teaching that she never realized was a book all along. Writing the text was made possible after she was awarded the Walter L. Gordon Fellowship.

There were two challenges she encountered when writing the book. The first was how to knit together a series of seemingly unrelated case studies into a cohesive manuscript. The second was trying to convince herself that introducing听what she thought was a wild and crazy idea about architecture to both the specialized architecture communities as well as the general public was indeed possible.

"What fascinated me while researching this book was that no matter who I would describe it to, each person responded with a personal story about the way they remembered a certain place," she says. "A wonderful book would be to record each of those responses!"

Following the launch, Hornstein will turn her attention to an international听workshop she is organizing to orchestrate a course to be taught by 10 different colleagues in 10 different cities and countries on the theme "Starlets and Starchitecture: Women, Celebrity and Architecture Across Borders". She is also starting a book on the topic of demolition, which she describes as "an assemblage of case studies that riff on what it means to intentionally demolish architecture."

Losing Site: Architecture, Memory and Place is part of the Ashgate Studies in Architecture. The 182-page book includes 17 black-and-white illustrations.

By Jenny Pitt-Clark, YFile editor

Republished courtesy of YFile鈥� 91亚色鈥檚 daily e-bulletin.

The post Professor Shelley Hornstein's new book explores how architecture triggers memory appeared first on Research & Innovation.