Alysa Pires Dance Project performs Sunday January 27th at 1:30pm.

INSTAGRAM – @alysapiresdanceprojects or @alysapires

TWITTER – @alysapiresdance or @alysapires

FACEBOOK – www.facebook.com/alysapiresdance 

WEBSITE: www.alysapires.com

 

  1. Can you tell us little bit about your company/collective/school?

Alysa Pires Dance Projects is a Toronto based contemporary dance company. Founded in 2015 as a home for choreographer Alysa Pires, APDP creates contemporary dance works that aim to transcend their abstraction and connect to all audiences, regardless of their prior experience with dance. Through highly dynamic physicality and quiet tenderness, APDP explores humanity at its most intimate and its most extreme. APDP made its critically acclaimed full-length debut at Toronto Fringe 2016 with Exterminating Angel. For more information, visit www.alysapires.com or follow us on Instagram @alysapiresdanceprojects. 

  1. What are showing at DanceWeekend’19?

both/and explores the duality of public and private life. In the wake of our current mental health epidemic, this work investigates the difference between the face we show the world and what is happening behind that mask.

  1. Who are the performers/collaborators in this piece(s)? 

both/and was created by choreographer Alysa Pires in collaboration with performers Sydney McManus and Tori Mehaffey. 

  1. Can you talk about your creative process? What inspires you?

With each piece, my goal is to create a heightened but relatable movement language. I want the audience to be able to reference their own experiences with their bodies and their understanding of physical communication to connect to the abstract movement in a visceral way. Through a combination of athletic physicality and tender intimacy, I aim to make work that speaks to the human experience in a way that is accessible to all audiences. 

I often start by creating the gestural motif for the work. These gestures become the compositional foundation, often appearing both in a manipulated or abstracted way as well as in their most basic form. 

Much of my work deals with high stakes situations where human beings are pushed to their limits. Dance is the perfect medium to tell stories on this scale; these matters of life or death allow for the extreme physicality and heightened theatricality to feel warranted.

  1. Please share your experience performing in a previous DanceWeekend and/or tell us what you are looking forward to at DanceWeekend’19?

I always look forward to attending DanceWeekend and seeing so many Toronto artists come together under one roof. Toronto has such a rich and diverse dance community and DanceWeekend is a rare opportunity for us all to share the same space. This will be the first time my work is performed as part of DanceWeekend and I could not be more thrilled to be included on such a fantastic list of artists!