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The Disaster Show explores the vulnerability of the human body in the face of climate change. Using dance, augmented reality and live music, the audience is encouraged to flow through different spaces, as dancers Tia Kushniruk, erψn temp3st, and Deviani Andrea battle the elements.
erψn temp3st
The Disaster Show features a dancer on a giant block of ice, a dancer in a field of charcoal, and one in a refuge of household garbage. The dancers work simultaneously while the musicians play in the centre of the room. The audience is encouraged to flow through the different spaces, more like a gallery. Video augments the whole event, adding to the immersiveness and nuance.
“I want people to think about the wonders we still take for granted and how those things will be explained to future generations if they no longer exist.”
“The type of dance that I do really draws from natural elements as movement sources. So, it seemed like an easy evolution to start to think about what happens when these natural elements get out of balance,”
“We’re really inviting the audience to travel around and check out different perspectives in the space, kind of like how you would look at visual art.”
Tia Kushniruk
Gerry Morita is from the rolling hills of Rex, Saskatchewan, and has lived and worked in Vancouver, Montréal, and Tokyo as a dancer, choreographer, performance artist and teacher before arriving in Edmonton in 2001. Her performances have toured Poland, Turkey, Estonia, Canada, and Japan.
Morita’s body of work involves continuous inquiry into new ways of seeing movement, the body, and the spaces between us. She studies and teaches contact improvisation, Noguchi Taiso and other somatic-based and improving techniques, working with artists from all disciplines in a vast array of both conventional and site-specific venues.
She has received the Mayor’s Award for Innovation in Artistic Direction, the Edmonton Salute for Excellence, Edmonton Artists’ Trust Fund and was recognized by the AFA as one of Alberta’s 25 Influential Artists.
