Zoë Vos | June 2021

Caregiving is a dance. Zoë Vos is a dancer and choreographer and one of three generations of women in her household, a daughter and a granddaughter. She is exploring the scores of the durational generational duet as she and her mother care for her Oma who has been living with Alzheimer's and Dementia for the past ten years. Vos has been calling this research "Scores for the end (of a life)--- Scores for the Living." There will be many dances and many songs, and a true-blue view into the labour of love this work entails.

Dancing with a Ghost

October 23rd 3pm EDT/ 12pm PDT

Held on ZOOM

>> Register here!

dancing with a ghost~

is a movement practice, open to all bodies, no dance training needed. We will float through a score of

~reaching out, inviting in, embracing, holding, swaying, and sensing the contact-- of our ghosts. Come as you are, go where you're drawn, there is no right or wrong, we will play with the presence of absence, filling up and emptying as a way to give care to ourselves, grieve what is no longer here by dancing with it.

ASL translation will be provided for this workshop. There are limited spots for this workshop, though if sold out or you have any questions please connect with us hello@artsassembly.ca

"June 15, 2021

Bubbles- to hold absence, to hold air, to enclose in a rainbow luminous sphere- the invisible mass of a ghost. 

Joy, lightness, floating, not heavy. Defying gravity. Defying logic. 

When I feel heavy I imagine a bubble. 

whenever I had a bad feeling , oma / mom would tell me to put whatever ‘it’ was into a bubble and send it out to the cosmos. This imagery gets me through troublesome feelings to this day. 

---- What if a ghost looked like a bubble. What if it was something light and buoyant, and shimmering in the light, something to run towards, and not away from? -----

a buoyant force .

July 2, 2021

Time passes without warning. I’ve been swaying at a different tempo. I’ve been situated somewhere between real life and elsewhere. A softer timeline. I’m focused on the subtle presence of absence.

I am touching these sensations, embracing these spaces, I am out of touch with a certain type of reality that is out of touch with this one. 

Maybe this is what it feels like to be a ghost, floating between here and there. Maybe to dance with a ghost, one has to become one. For a time. 

This month has offered new ways of looking at these scores I dance with oma. These gestures of support remind me of other gestures, of other beings, of other ways of ‘contacting’. 

I’m continuing this month’s residency with mostly questions to ask instead of answering. 

What is it to contact, another realm, another body, another form. ?

How does one dance with a ghost?

The truth is , there is no answer. I feel all I can do is ask this as I attempt to do it. As I'm in the doing of it. After I've done it…. Does it ever end?

All I know for certain at the end of this month is that I have found an approach to processing grief, loss, absence, in a physical way that feels tender and touching and accessible to anyone who knows what it is to feel an absence. This practice is for anyone who is searching for contact, for an embrace, with a memory of a feeling, of a sensation, of a presence. If we are open to them, they are open to us, if we offer a vessel of care, a supportive embrace, a space for an absence to exist, we can contact a lightness, and sway with it. There’s no final destination with this practice, and there's no dance too long or too short. Time is not important when dancing with your ghost. It’s a place we can return to when we need a hug. 

I’m happy to share this practice with others. I look forward to embracing all the outstretched arms, hearts, hands, fingertips. We will experience new ways to touch, and be touched. A new way to dance with ourselves. With our ghosts. "

RRR ~June 9, 2021 

“How does one dance with a ghost ?

if you stare long enough — things come to life... the teddy bear, the flicker of light out of the corner of your eye. The shadow out of the other . If I close my eyes long enough and wrap my arms around the air or the light I feel it. you. them. standing there . swaying with me . what is a ghost ? a memory coming to visit ... a feeling like a hug from the sky... ? I’m not very good at meditating... but if I close my eyes long enough and hug a memory I feel its realness, tangible. present. right there in my arms. on my fingertips.”

~~~~~~

RRR ~ June 10, 2021

Ghosts, spirits, angels, past selves, past lives.

I’m thinking about wrapping my arms around ~things--

These arms carry so much weight. I forget how to shoot light out of them sometimes.

Thinking about : two bodies in an embrace :

1. I rewatch footage of oma and me ‘dancing’ our ritualistic scores, lifting her out of a seated or lying position. Wrap my arms around her and carry her weight up from the pull of gravity. 

   We dance this duet in many different sites. 

2. Duet silvia sanchez and i began creating in  2019/2020 ‘tender punk. Slow spine. 2020’. A slow dance, two bodies slowly rotating on one axis, arms wrapped around one another. 

3. Hugging. Holding. Embracing. Consoling. Comforting. 

~If i hold my arms out around the space, one day, without her (their) body held safely in my grasp, will i still feel her (them) ?~

Who is dancing with me when i do this? Loved ones lost? I hope so. They’re who i feel when i do. They are who I imagine are coming into my arms. 

WATERCOLOURS-

When i’m not dancing, i’m painting with watercolours. Particularly one image has been repeated in different variations for the past 6 months. ~ an alien flower, vaginesque form, womblike, branchlike,  outreached petals,  (arms)?

I paint out the petals with water first, invisible.  An invisible vessel preceding the pigments. 

Kind of makes me think of the arms holding the air. Offering the shape for the energy to flow within. To suspend inside, floating, flowing. swirling. I don’t know when i’ll stop with this motif and move on to a new one, every time my brush touches the paper i go to this place. A flower home.

~~~~~~

How does one dance w/a  ghost?

Let go of all expectation.  Imagine where the skin of your arms end/meet the surface of the ghost. --the ghost can be anyone -- any memory

~~~~~~

Recurring motif, physical gesture:

Hugging, supporting, embracing, wrapping (arms) around, the arms, the hands, the chest, the heart.

ABSENCE ---- PRESENCE

 Memories. Remembering through physical posture. 

~~~~~~

1:11AM june 11, 2021

ABSENCE & PRESENCE

absence of presence. 

A Ghost- if i redefine it without the fear aspect… is a presence of an absence. The presence of absence.  -something no longer living, but here. 

~Dementia and Alzheimer’s ~ Oma -- I am witnessing someone i love, alive, present, here , but also absent in her presence. Floating between two realms, here and there. Elsewhere. 

Touch soothes the sensation of being lost within one’s shell. One’s vessel. One’s body. Bringing back the senses. Presence. Pre-sense.   (?)

Touch reminds me that in the moment we are here, existing. It’s tangible. 

>>>>>  

Attempting to dance with ghost invites me to try & touch/feel the absence of presence.  -wrapping arms around a space to offer some sort of supportive vessel, to hold the absence. 

-to hold absence-