Anne Davison had no idea what was in store when she ventured into what she calls "ArModa" (short for “Art Music Meets Modern Dance”). She jumped in with both feet, creating works Making Cello, Interstice and Six Moving Concepts with Vancouver based dancer/choreographer Jill Henis, and came out with a love of interdisciplinarity. This collaborative duo shared the fruit of their creative labours at Vancouver’s The Dance Centre Theatre, the contemporary music series Parallela Tuesdays and the B.C. Buds festival at Vancouver’s Firehall Theatre. Relocating to Ottawa in 2004, Anne continued her mandate to create deeply integrated music-dance works. In Ottawa she found new collaborative possibilities and brought her ArModa approach to living breathing with Natasha Royka (2005), Life Force with Claire Elizabeth Barratt (2006, 2007), and Ko-Tha (2006, 2007) choreographed by Saveeta Sharma. Ko-Tha was also invited to contemporary dance festival Dans/ce Kapital in August 2007. Expanding into the realm of theatre, Anne worked as a dancing electric cellist/actor/singer on a mounting of Euripides’ Medea by Ottawa theatre company Deluxe Hot Sauce in 2007. Medea, nominated for five Rideau Awards including “Best New Creation,” was performed in both the Ottawa Fringe and the Magnetic North theatre festivals. In the summer of 2007, Anne compiled four interdisciplinary creations, including two world-premieres: So Often Drawn, a piece Anne created for dancing acoustic cellist and soundtrack, and Merging, a piece she commissioned composer Evan Ware and choreographer Kate Hilliard for solo dancing electric cellist, to form a one-woman show entitled Outside the Music Box. Following the Ottawa premiere of Merging, Anne was invited to perform in New York, NY as a guest of the Stella Adler School’s MAD AIR program. She performed Merging as part of two sold-out showcases of Kate Hilliard’s work. Her latest piece for solo dancing electric cellist, Remembering the Voice of the Sea, was premiered in the Kinetic Studio Series in Halifax in October 2008 and for the first time incorporated her voice as well. Anne continues to be as enchanted by this artistic medium as ever and is currently working on two new ArModa collaborations to be premiered in the coming months. ### |