June 2026 in Vienna @ Bluebox Hub

June took me to Vienna, where I spent time in the studio at Blue Box Hub developing a new ensemble work from my instant dance archive.

This residency didn’t begin in June, though. In many ways, it began earlier in the year, during my research and creation period in Winnipeg. Throughout March and April, I was exploring how my archive of instant dances might transform into choreographic material for multiple dancers. That research—supported by the Manitoba Arts Council—became the foundation for everything I carried with me to Vienna.

In Winnipeg, I created a trio called Under the Sun. At first, I imagined it would become the basis for a larger ensemble work. But the more I lived with it, the more it insisted on remaining exactly what it was: a trio. It felt complete, unwilling to become something else.

So, in Vienna, I turned to another branch of the archive.

The questions remained the same—how can an improvised dance become choreography without losing its original life?—but I found myself following a different path through the material. Much of the mirror work and layered relationships I had explored with dancers in Winnipeg continued to shape my thinking, even as the source dance changed. Rather than expanding Under the Sun, I found another conversation waiting for me.

It was one of those EUROPEAN HEAT WAVE weeks where the heat seemed to roast everything. The studio became a kind of greenhouse, and there was no point pretending otherwise. Most days I worked in little more than dancer’s underwear, stripping away everything except the body itself. In hindsight, that feels important. The piece slowly revealed itself to be about flesh, bodies, and trees.

Its working title is Forest for the Trees.

The choreography grows out of a solo I created in 2022. Looking back at that dance, I realised the trees surrounding me had quietly entered the movement. Not through intention, but through proximity. The dance had absorbed a certain treeness—a way of standing, reaching, swaying, waiting.

Now that solo is becoming eight bodies.

During this research period, I relied heavily on my archive and my technology. I recorded myself dancing, overlaid the videos, mirrored and multiplied them until I could imagine eight dancers inhabiting the same vocabulary. Watching these layered versions helped me shape the choreography while staying faithful to the spontaneity of the original instant dance.

The structure is deceptively simple: a series of mirrored duets unfolding in canon over around twenty-five minutes. Dense, but also minimal. Patterns accumulate, branches multiply, time stretches, and then everything gradually opens into something quieter—a shared act of simply standing, observing, existing.

I’m increasingly interested in the possibility that bodies are not unlike trees. Rooted yet responsive. Still, but always changing. Communicating through presence, weathering the climate around them, holding memory in ways we don’t fully understand. A forest is never empty; it is full of unseen relationships and quiet intelligences. I think this dance is beginning to discover its own forest.

I’m looking forward to returning to Vienna in February, March and April to work with the eight dancers in the studio and set the piece before its festival premiere.

I’m deeply grateful to the Manitoba Arts Council for supporting this research over its many stages. Their support made the Winnipeg creation period possible, and, as a wonderful piece of timing, I learned at the end of my Vienna residency that I had also received a Manitoba Arts Council travel grant to support this next phase of the project. It’s a reminder that research like this doesn’t happen in isolated moments—it unfolds over time, across places, conversations, and studios.

For now, the forest exists as overlays, echoes, sketches, and a very hot studio in June.

More to come!