i’d rather be at home has an odd history that i continue to recover in tandem with further creation. imma hop around. stay with me.
i’d rather be at home was first created AND NAMED during the spring of 2019 (aka NOT covid related, although it is totally understandable if this title infuriates you). the piece was originally made for a show titled Terpsichordia produced by City of Lakes Music Society at the Sheridan Auditorium in Sudbury, Ontario. living in Toronto at the time, i contracted Hannah Pilon, Will Hamilton (both dancers originally from Sudbury), and Rachel Facchini (a Sudbury enthusiast) to dance with me in the original work.
Will, Hannah, and Rachel (L>R) cooperatively trialing all of the ideas i think are brilliant <3
personally funded, the piece came together in handful of rehearsals. at this time the work was really about the elements of our world that can be demanding and exhausting. the dance was accompanied by live music, which as we all know, is awesome. however, choreographer’s of Terpsichordia needed to pick classical music for the musicians to learn. as someone who does not listen to classical music, at all, this was tough and occupied a huge portion of my energy in the creative process. at that time i’d rather be at home was not concise or clear on its intent. and although i knew there were elements within the work i was still curious about, i did not have any idea that i would be revisiting this work so quickly.
flash forward to the fall of 2020 when an opportunity to show a work comes up. earlier that fall, i had submitted an application to a socially distanced site-specific festival (that i didn’t get, you know how it is), where i reworked the concepts and ideas of i’d rather be at home into a new structure. point is, i had already thought a lot about how i would approach this work if i was to remount it, and so i was ready with ideas when the opportunity did come.
so now, i’m working on it. the process started in December 2020 and continues today.
this past week, as i continue to work on i’d rather be at home (more on this shortly), i realized, i have made it before. in my fourth year of university, i created a work titled Knowledge that explored insecurities and fears.
A HUGE THANK YOU to the cast of Knowledge: Margaret Bailey, Adela Bezemer-Cleverley, Katie Kovach, and Nagisa Nakabayashi <3
