"Vicki
Tansey
is one of the most
audacious and important
artists I have
encountered. Her
performances, seemingly
suspended in time,
containing elements of the
present and the distant
past, can transport us to
inner worlds through
moments of sublime beauty.
Do not miss her work."
Anne-Marie
Lavigne,
Founder and
director,
The Sutton
School of Art,
Sutton, Quebec
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"I am still deeply moved
by Syncopation, Vicki
Tansey's recent
performance at the Lac Brome
theatre in Knowlton. When a star shines in
full luminescence, who dare
extinguish it? Such is the dancing
soul that travels with this woman.
Her art is not about steps, text,
music, wave, stream, wind. Rather
it's the assembly through deep
understanding of all these elements to
create a symbiosis that becomes
one on stage. It takes us to the
heart of an extraordinary truth,
that of being entirely oneself
while making us believe that
everything is planned. This is an art mastered
by only a few improvisational
dancers. In her interpretations
and gestures, Vicki Tansey allows
her vulnerability to be her guide.
Sensitivity and generosity shine
through. This is an artist whose path I
crossed eight years ago and who
remains for me a burning fire."
Jean-Jacques
Pillet
former
artistic director &
choreographer
Cirque
du Soleil
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"A work by Vicki Tansey
permits our vulnerability to
surface, bringing us back to
ourselves, with our fears, our
insecurities and our struggles. In
an individualistic society such as
ours, this artist imposes on us a
reflection, a healthy questioning
about the present moment."
Éliane
Michèle Crématy
Responsable
à l'accueil
Théâtre de Lac-Brome
Knowlton,
Québec
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Tansey trained for many
years, first in classical dance and
then in modern dance technique. At age
twenty-four, she took a long leap into
improvisation – an art form that
demands both technical preparedness
and open-mindedness.
"It was a leap I’ll never regret,
though I remain grateful for that
earlier discipline and experience, and
I retain the greatest respect for the
traditions that laid the foundation of
my creative adventuring."
In
the
years since that leap, the dancer's
work evolved to become highly
personal and expressive as she used
every opportunity to deepen her
practice through the teaching and
performing of dance, both solo and in
collaboration with musicians and
actors. During those years, she was to
become a dancer who also
makes visual art, these forms of
expression, so seemingly unalike, each
feeding the other and providing the
inspiration, energy and creative
challenge that every artist aspires
to. Through
it all, improvisation remains at the
heart of what she does.
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Carpe
Diem was a dance and sound
collaboration improvised by Tansey and
musicians Michael Hynes (piano), Andre
Lafleur (double bass). and Jean René
(viola de gamba) and staged as a once-only
evening event.
In August 2020, during a brief lull
in the COVID-19 pandemic, she staged Carpe Diem
inside the yawning interior of a former
dairy facility, now the home of La
Crémèrie performance and exhibition centre
in Sutton, Quebec. She lit this rough,
emphatically industrial space with a
scattered collection of table lamps that
created a contrasting air of quiet and
comfort. The headlamps of an antique car
shone eerily from the far end of a dim
corridor while the socially-distanced
audience entered and the crew greeted each
while wearing masks based on the chilling
paraphernalia of seventeenth-century
plague doctors.
A wide circle of on-lookers formed in the
dark as night fell. The musicians and
dancer emerged from the gloomy recesses of
the building and improvised the
first act.
Tansey had decided in advance to migrate
the event at a half-way point to a large
adjoining space, but as she approached the
closed double doors, keyboardist
Michael Hines,
stationed for technical reasons on the far
side, improvised a firm resistance. They
continued their struggle until Tansey
broke through at last into a high,
white-painted expanse hung with industrial
chains supported from overhead trolleys
that rumbled like thunder as the
performers dragged them along their
tracks.
The
audience followed and from moment to
moment, all was spontaneity, the
atmosphere palpable, as though
performers and audience were breathing
together. Tansey hung from the thick
black chains and danced over the grey
cement floor below.
The musicians supported her with their
instruments and Jean René with his viola
de gamba joined in a duet of shadows as
the dancer seized on a mop and pail of
water to paint sweeping shapes on the
concrete floor.
"For improvisational artists, things
sometimes simply come together — and when
they do they can create heartfelt smiles
and tears. We had used the night — and
seized the day."
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Le Tour des Arts
is an annual showcase of works by
artists in their own studios in and
around Sutton, Quebec. In July of
2023, Tansey participated in the Tour
by presenting Impulsi,
an evening of improvised music and
movement featuring herself and two
favourite collaborators, violist Jean
Rene and cellist Emilie Girard-Charet.
During the
discussion that followed the
performance, someone expressed his
wish that the "stage" had been
surrounded by the audience members
rather than separated from them. Jean,
Emilie and the dancer responded by
staging a second improvision arranged
in just this way.
Both pieces were
recorded by a person attending. Click
on the still below for a link to the
YouTube video.
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"The
audience was spellbound
from the moment of entry
to the hall where the
dancer sat motionless on a
stark wooden chair on
stage with a backdrop of
one of her huge abstract
paintings. The effect was
breathtaking as were the
following 60 minutes which
passed without a single
hesitation – silence,
virtuosity, tonality,
discord, frenzy, laughter,
beauty, intimacy,
reciprocity – You sensed
that when it ended the
audience, so moved by the
extraordinary event they
had witnessed, were loathe
to leave the building and
step out into the ordinary
world."
~
Susan Scott,
Graphic
Design
Stanbridge
East, Quebec
In November 2023, as she
entered her 80th year, Tansey
and a group of professional
musicians presented
Syncopation, an
evening of entirely improvised
sound and movement.
Accompanying the dancer were
Michael Hynes on piano, Andre
Lafleur on double bass,
Adrianne Munden-Dixon on
violin, and Tevet Sela on
saxophone.
The venue was the Théâtre de
Lac-Brome in
Lac-Brome/Knowlton, Quebec.
If you love the unique art of
improvisational dance, click on
the image below to watch Maurice
Singfield's single-camera
archival video of the entire
unrehearsed performance.
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below to watch Maurice
Singfield's video
documentary, which
includes multi-camera excerpts of the
performance and his interview
with the dancer.
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If you were in the
audience for Tansey &
Company's 2023 Syncopation,
do please reserve your
ticket for the November
performance of
VAPORI.
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