Please reserve your seat for each show separately. The SHED experience includes three 1-hour shows. We highly recommend attending all three shows and enjoying the family-owned businesses, boutiques, cafes and street art of historic Chinatown inbetween.
SHED is brightly lit by yellow monochromatic sodium light fixtures. Sunglasses and earplugs will be available for those who are sensitive in sight and hearing. Left of Main is an inclusive, scent-reduced space, regretfully only accessible by stairs. Please email us if you need assistance.
Featuring a collection of time-based moving portraits, SHED | knowing each other as different and the same holds space for the multiplicity and humanity of bodies of culture[1]. The immersive performance installation invites pause. A slowing down and an enlivening into presence for an otherworldly experience.
SHED is an invitation to notice the subtle ways our bodies perceive, receive and relate to an “other”. To witness the assumptions and imaginings that consciously and/or unconsciously colour our experience of difference. To remember that every body inhabits an internal life as vivid and complex as our own.
The collection of choreographies by Tzeng includes a duet created and performed with experimental musician FOONYAP, and five solo portraits created for, with and danced by Cindy Ansah, Cory Beaver, Kara Bullock, Alèn Martel and Mpoe Mogale.
Sound, costumes and light manifest as energetic extensions of the body, spirit and land. The design elements of each work emerged from tender and nurturing exchanges with sound designers FOONYAP, Jiajia Li, Num and Darren Young, costume collaborator Alison Yanota, sodium light designer Nicolas Brunet-Beaulieu and lighting designer Jonathan Kim.
[1] From Pam: I replace the language and idea of “People of colour” with “Bodies of Culture” as reclamation of the inherent wisdom of the body and the pieces of the experiences of racialized people that have been stolen, stripped away, and invisibilized by white body supremacy. Bodies of Culture comes from my practice in Somatic Abolition guided by the work of author, therapist and racialized trauma specialist Resmaa Menakem.
ideation, choreography Pam Tzeng
portraits created for and with performers Cindy Ansah, Cory Beaver, Kara Bullock, Alèn Martel, Mpoe Mogale, Pam Tzeng, FOONYAP
sodium light design Nicolas Brunet-Beaulieu
lighting design, technical direction Jonathan Kim
costume design collaboration Pam Tzeng, Alison Yanota
sound design FOONYAP, Jiajia Li, NUM (Milad Bagheri Torbehbar and Maryam Sirvan), Darren Young
music mastering Krzysztof Sujata
poetic invocations Jordan Baylon
photography Michael Vincent Tan, Gui Morilha
SHED is made possible with the support of Dancers’ Studio West Artist in Residence Program, The New Gallery 2022 Main Space Program, Mile Zero Dance 2022 Dance Crush Series, plastic orchid factory 2022 adaptives series, Canada Council for the Arts, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Calgary Arts Development, Calgary Animated Objects Society.
Special thanks to: Melissa Avila, Loretta D’Antuono, Sylvie Moquin and Jamie Tognazzini for their contributions to the initial research stages of this project. Bianca Guimarães de Manuel, Kris Vanessa Teo Xin-En / 张欣恩, Aldona Barutowicz and Tauran Wood for their contributions to the premiere of SHED. Thomas Geddes, Katie Green, Sasha Ivanochko, Ashley King, Ping Tzeng, Michael Vincent Tan, Xstine Cook and AZMA Digital for their invaluable support. The Old Trout Puppet Workshop, Theatre Encounter, Inside Out Theatre, and The Grand YYC for offering affordable spaces over the development of SHED.
We acknowledge that we live, work and play on the unceded territories of the xwmǝθkwǝy̓ǝm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and səlil̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) nations. We strive to learn from, and be allies with, Indigenous Peoples.