Performer
February 2025
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
VINES is a site-adaptive performance work by Melanie Kloetzel (kloetzel&co.) with dramaturgical support by Brandy Leary (Anandam Dancetheatre). It is an extended performance installation that takes place in a site chosen by the presenter in dialogue with the choreographer, VINES reimagines cityscapes via a dystopian fantasy of vegetal reclamation. As masses of leafily-clad bodies take over an urban landscape with a rigorous physical rendering of vining plants, viewers witness what it might mean for the contemporary city to be repossessed by our plant brethren.
Inspired by time-lapse depictions of plant growth, more-than-human time scales, and concepts of ‘making kin’ (explored via dialogues with Indigenous knowledge keepers supporting the work), VINES offers a beautifully unsettling portrait as well as meditative engagement for viewers. Audience members can come and go, making decisions about how to watch the development of the work.
This iteration was performed at St. Stephen’s Anglican to live music by the UltraViolet Ensemble with 20 local dance artists.
GALLERY
CREDITS AND SUPPORTERS
Direction — Melanie Kloetzel
Dramaturgy — Brandy Leary
Performers — every event features an invited cohort of locally-embedded artists.
Presented by Springboard Performance’s Fluid Fest, 2024 as part of Contemporary Calgary’s Free First Thursdays and as part of the New Works Calgary season in collaboration with a live presentation of Emilie Lebel’s ‘field studies’ performed by the UltraViolet Ensemble.