“I have been balancing fruit and sticks in research and performance since the late 80’s. It is a practice that has helped me to look at functional movement, assess aesthetics and look at non-performative activities over the last 30 years. There is nothing special about it and therein lies the beauty. This workshop is planned to be a three hour exploratory look at balancing as a practice, balancing as a creative tool and balancing as a pleasure. The practice not only concerns trusting creative impulses but practicing performance as well. Exploring creativity, from my standpoint, is exploring the complete unknown. It is acknowledging and accessing an open space of unknown identity. We have to find our way to “not knowing” individually through trial and error. We enter into the realm of “knowing” once we are there and learn to trust any decision that is made beyond the yammering of thinking about it. It is like balancing a stick on your head, the movement of thought can cause it to fall. Please bring a grapefruit or a stick of traveling size with you.”
Tedd Robinson is a Canadian choreographer, performer and educator, best known for his idiosyncratic solo works, including the Chalmers’ award-winning Rokudo: six destinies in three steps. After graduating with a BFA from York University and studying at the School of Toronto Dance Theatre and with eminent British visual theatre artist Lindsay Kemp, his career trajectory first took him to Winnipeg, where he created highly theatrical ensemble works as artistic director of Contemporary Dancers from 1984-1990. In 1990 he returned to Ottawa to study with Peter Boneham and pursue a solo career, and his critically acclaimed works soon won him a multitude of commissions and an international schedule of teaching and touring.
In 1998, he formed 10 Gates Dancing Inc. to promote the development and performance of contemporary dance creations. As artistic director, he has created repertoire for some of the most renowned dance artists in Canada alongside establishing choreographic consulting services for the milieu that have benefitted over 40 choreographers. From 2005-2012, Robinson created La B.A.R.N., a rural venue for creation, residencies and performance. And, in 2013, he established Centre Q: A Centre for Questioning, a research space for dance and music.
His collaborators have included Louise Lecavalier, Margie Gillis, Ame Henderson, and composer/performer Charles Quevillon. Robinson is a founding member of Projet bk and an NAC Associate Dance. His work is influenced by his six years of study as a monk in the Hakukaze soto zen monastery in Ottawa.
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