PuSh Play

Gabrielle Martin chats with Dana Gingras of Animals of Distinction.

Show Notes

Gabrielle and Dana discuss:

• How did the relationship with PuSh start and develop?

• The personal meaning of Dana Gingras’s work for Gabrielle

• How was “Monumental” a culmination of previous work?

• What does it mean to have a performing band’s live energy in rehearsals?

• How did these collaborations evolve with artists in different media?

• How do you make dance like going to see a concert?

• How do we deal with and manage progress in our artistic practice?

• How is the process of research changing?

• How do you perceive the cultural context of PuSh and what has that meant for your work?

• What is the power of being a creator on the outside of things?

• What is liminality and why is it a powerful feature of your work?

• Why is messiness an important part of developing work and the creative process?

• Why was Monumental such a big step for PuSh?

About Dana Gingras and Animals of Distinction

Animals of Distinction (AOD) is the multimedia dance company of renowned choreographer and dancer Dana Gingras. Through AOD, Gingras has fostered the creation of numerous cutting-edge works that have involved innovative collaborations across diverse mediums and artistic practices, all shaped by the possibilities of new technologies and cultural shifts.

At the centre of the work is a belief that we can obtain critical knowledge from engagingwith the physical and emotional risks inherent to dance andmovement. It is through thebody and choreography that this element of risk can be employed to explore a vision ofthe world that is larger than our individual isolated experiences. The goal is to stimulateaudiences to become more aware of the elements ofcomplexity, connectivity, andcomplicity within our physical, social, and emotional lives.

AOD’s work has been presented nationally and internationally across diverse platformsincluding live performance, film, design, visual art, and new media. In 2016,under thedirection of Gingras, AOD produced The Holy Body Tattoo’s last work, monumental(2005), with Godspeed You! BlackEmperor playing live. This expanded version of thepiece premiered at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Vancouver as part of the PuShFestival in January 2016. Since then, monumental has been performed at the AdelaideFestival in Australia, Montreal’s Place des Arts, Grand Théâtre du Québec, as part ofLuminato at The Hearn Generating Station in Toronto, the Edinburgh InternationalFestival in Scotland, BAM’s NEXT WAVE Festival in New York, theROMAEUROPAFestival in Italy, MONA FOMA in Tasmania, Australia and, mostrecently, at London’s Barbican Centre.

In 2018 Gingras joined forces with group A, a Berlin-based Japanese avant-gradesynthwave duo, and Sonya Stefan, a Montreal-based media artist. Together, theycreated anOther—a hybrid production, with performance, installation, and a liveconcert. anOther premiered at Agora de la Danse and made its international debut atMONA FOMA in 2019.

Free Fall/Chute Libre, her new immersive dance film, was created through a residency at the Société des Arts Technologiques (SAT). Using the Satosphère’s full-dome theatre, the work focuses on stimulating viewers’ senses in unexpected ways. 


In 2017 Dana Gingras/Animals of Distinction was granted a long-term residency at the Centre de Création O Vertigo (CCOV) in Montreal’s Place des Arts. Through this residency, Gingras/AOD produced a new large-scale work entitled FRONTERA with scenography by London based United Visual Artists and a live score by newly reformed Fly Pan Am. Recipient of support from the National Arts Centre’s National Creation Fund, FRONTERA premiered in Quebec City in November 2019 and has since been performed as a part of the Danse Danse season at Place des Arts in Montreal, at the Sydney Festival, Berlin’s CTM Festival, the PuSh Festival in Vancouver and at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa.

Dana Gingras has collaborated with cultural icons like William Gibson and Jenny Holzer . Musical collaborators include underground legends like Godspeed You! Black Emperor, The Tindersticks , Warren Ellis of the Dirty Three , The Tiger Lillies , Roger Tellier-Craig (Fly Pan Am) , Le Révélateur , and Steven Severin of Siouxsie and the Banshees. Multimedia works have been co-created with 3D animator Josh Sherrett, with animators and programmers James Paterson and Amit Pitaru , and, for her work on Arcade Fire’s award-winning Sprawl II video , with directors William Morrison and Vincent Morriset.

A registered non-profit society, The Animals of Distinction Arts Society is directed (in its activities and mandate) by artistic director Dana Gingras. AOD is produced and represented by international agent Sarah Rogers.

Land Acknowledgement

This conversation was recorded on ton the traditional territory of the Kanien’kehà:ka, a place which has long served as a site of meeting and exchange amongst many First Nations including the Kanien’kehá:ka of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, Huron/Wendat, Abenaki, and Anishinaabeg.

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Show Transcript

Gabrielle Martin 00:02
Hello and welcome to Push Play, a Push Festival podcast featuring conversations with artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form. I'm Gabrielle Martin, Push's Director of Programming, and in this special series of Push Play, we're revisiting the legacy of Push and talking to creators who have helped shape 20 years of innovative, dynamic, and audacious festival programming.

Gabrielle Martin 00:22
Today's episode features Dana Jenkra and is anchored around the 2016 Push Festival. Dana Jenkra is a choreographer, filmmaker, performer, and teacher. Her 30 -year career has moved across mediums and artistic practices and has established her as a game -changing, boundary -pushing artist.

Gabrielle Martin 00:39
As the co -founder of the Holy Body Tattoo in 1993, Jenkra and company changed the landscape of Canadian dance and earned numerous awards and honors for their stage and film work. In 2006, Jenkra established Animals of Distinction in Montreal, a cutting -edge company working at the intersection of dance, film, music, installation, and technology.

Gabrielle Martin 01:01
Through the direction of Jenkra, Animals of Distinction has premiered innovative collaborations with artists and performers such as Group A, Godspeed You Black Emperor, Fly Pan Am, and United Visual Artists.

Gabrielle Martin 01:13
Here's my conversation with Dana.

Gabrielle Martin 01:18
Hi, I'm Gabrielle. I'm the director of programming at the Push Festival, and I am here with Dana Gengras today. Thank you for joining me in conversation. No, of course.

Dana Gingras 01:26
such a pleasure so good

Gabrielle Martin 01:27
see you again. Yeah, and we are in Montreal, Giorgé, and this has long been a meeting place of First Nations, including the Kanyan Kahaka, the Anishinaabe, the Wendat, and the Abenaki. And this is also your patio.

Gabrielle Martin 01:46
It is, yes. And here today we're gonna talk about your work with Push Festival, and its place within your wider practice, and so I just want to start by understanding your, your, how the relationship with Push started and how it developed.

Gabrielle Martin 02:02
Yeah.

Dana Gingras 02:02
The agent that I've worked with for many many years and is the managing producer of Animals of Distinction, Sarah Rogers, has a very long relationship with push and Norman. Norman presented, I believe it was Marie Broussard's peep show in the first festival and Sarah was working on that.

Dana Gingras 02:28
So she's had this long relationship with push that way and I guess we premiered this expanded version of Monumental in 2016 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre with push and that came into being many conversations with Norman.

Dana Gingras 02:56
It was actually David Sefton from UCLA at the time when we presented the original Monumental choreography with Noam Ganyon and myself for Holy Buddy Tattoo. David's dream was to see Monumental with live music and at the time Godspeed You Black Emperor were not together so it was just not going to be possible.

Dana Gingras 03:21
And so they got back together I forget what year maybe 2011 and David Sefton showed up again and by now I think he had moved on to the Adelaide Festival and was like okay the band's together what about this version of Monumental with the band?

Gabrielle Martin 03:39
Yeah, can you just take us back a little bit when was monumental first premiere the original version?

Dana Gingras 03:44
2005. Yeah, yeah. Stayed here.

Gabrielle Martin 03:46
Her push officially started.

Dana Gingras 03:48
Oh yeah, it toured Canada and then the final show of it was in 2006 at UCLA.

Gabrielle Martin 03:54
and Godspeed You Black Emperor was a Vancouver -based.

Dana Gingras 03:57
No, they're Montreal -based band. Very, very Montreal, yes. So there was like years of conversation, and Norman was part of those conversations about getting this show up and running again with Godspeed You Black Emperors.

Dana Gingras 04:18
So eventually there was an agreement. The band was like, okay, we're in, and everything started to move very quickly. So Adelaide was on board, and then Norman came along and said, how about we do a residency at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre?

Dana Gingras 04:36
Wow, okay. So he offered us, I think it was three or four days at the Queenie to get the piece up and running, and then Animals of Distinction produced this expanded version of the piece with live music.

Dana Gingras 04:51
So the band composed more music for the show, visuals were expanded, we had a whole new cast of dancers. And it was really that piece, being able to have that residency at the Queenie, thanks to Norman, that made it all possible.

Gabrielle Martin 05:10
I didn't know that piece of history, that's really nice, because I didn't actually share my relationship with your work, and your work has been very profound for me as an artist. And also, just speaking about your work in the context of Push, both Monumental and Frontera, which we'll talk about in a moment, were Queenie projects, which are like feature Push projects.

Gabrielle Martin 05:33
Push usually would only do one of that a year in the Queenie, so it's really exciting the scale of those projects and what that meant for Push. And I know that that different or newly imagined version of Monumental was really anticipated for many people like myself, it was an original version, and it was just incredible to see that piece, that profound piece, come back with these additional elements.

Gabrielle Martin 05:59
And I will add one more personal anecdote, which is that taking your contemporary dance workshop at the Cult as a youth is really what started my lifelong passion. Oh, that's so great, that's so great, you're probably rolling.

Dana Gingras 06:18
around on the floor a lot and falling

Gabrielle Martin 06:20
a lot. It was great. And I remember you also shared the video of our brief eternity with the students or you know the youth participants at that point and it just blew my mind as I know it did for many people.

Gabrielle Martin 06:31
Super exciting for me to be talking about that and I figured I should definitely mention that. But just yeah getting back to your work and it's so nice to know that Push was also able to support that realization and then went on to tour.

Dana Gingras 06:45
Yes, yes. I think it was the first time there was a push show at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, so that was kind of the launching of that, which I think continued for the next five years. And then we were back in 2020 with Frontera, so Norman had been part of those conversations, and then by 2020 he wasn't part of the festival anymore, but Joyce saw it through and we presented Frontera then at the Queen Elizabeth.

Dana Gingras 07:16
Yeah, 2020, yeah.

Gabrielle Martin 07:18
And so you've spoken a bit about monumental and the process of realizing for the festival which involved this technical residency and getting the band on board and waiting for the perfect timing to do that.

Gabrielle Martin 07:31
And then with Frontera, can you talk a little bit about that project and then maybe also how your practice evolved in that period? Well, if you want to start with monumental version 1 or 2, it's up to you.

Dana Gingras 07:51
Well, Monday Mental, when we premiered that in 2005, for Noam and I, that was really a culmination of, I think, a decade, you know, decade's worth of work. And it was really a culmination of our partnership and, you know, all of these intense pieces we made together, like our Brief Eternity, Poetry and Apocalypse, Circa, Running Wild.

Dana Gingras 08:15
So it was really the first time that we had both stepped out of work, we weren't in Monumental, and worked as choreographers, directors on the outside. The expanded version of Monumental, the choreography wasn't really altered at all, there was like some little details maybe that were, you know, fleshed out, but really it was more about making it a Godspeed, You Black Emperor project so that the music beginning to end was all Godspeed because the original version had some sequences in it that was using found sound as well,

Dana Gingras 08:55
so it was like a real collage. So I felt like the expanded version really became, I don't know, it really became something else with this fully realized, fully performed score by the band and having the band's energy there.

Dana Gingras 09:14
I remember the first rehearsals at Taplaste Czar here with the band and the dancers and when the band started to play, the dancers who were all on these pedestals for three quarters of the work, the live music almost knocked them off the blocks.

Dana Gingras 09:30
Like they had such a jolt of energy, I was like, like I was so worried because you could just see how it kind of like it, it just ignited this energy that is so different than having a kind of pre -recorded soundtrack.

Dana Gingras 09:45
So and I think for the audience receiving it at the Queenie and other places that we perform just having that, you know.

Gabrielle Martin 09:54
I experienced it at Place des Arts and like I remember I remember the show very vividly. It was very powerful Yeah, incredible experience. Yeah

Dana Gingras 10:04
So that, I think that viscerality is something that's kind of continued through into my work. And with Frontera, that was created through a long -term residency. It was the first one at CCOB from 2017, yeah, 2019 Central Vertigo.

Dana Gingras 10:22
So that was created at that residency. And that was my first partnership with United Visual Artists. And so they did a sonography with lighting. And I've gone on to make two more projects with them, Creation Destruction and Ensemble, which is an installation that was part of their 20th anniversary show last year in London.

Dana Gingras 10:46
So that started a whole new kind of, I think, phase of work.

Gabrielle Martin 10:52
Yeah. I mean, I know your work with the Holy Body of Tattoo was very visual and you use things like projections. And but I was reading about how you describe your work with Animals of Distinction and this, you know, commitment to the possibility of new technology and cultural shifts.

Gabrielle Martin 11:11
It's really makes sense for the work of Animals of Distinction that I've seen. And is that, did that kind of evolve also from this different, the second version of monumental and that collaboration, closer collaboration with artists of a different medium?

Gabrielle Martin 11:30
Is that, or had you already been working in a really cross -disciplinary way?

Dana Gingras 11:37
I think since the beginning of my career, I've been working in a cross -disciplinary way because I was always interested in being able to bring dance to audiences maybe outside of the dance milieu because to me the dance milieu is very small and I didn't want to just make work for For people that already loved dance.

Dana Gingras 11:58
I wanted to try and draw people in from You know like say people that were more interested in music or film you know digital cultures, so And that was the interesting thing with with monumental and with many of the works Is that we had people coming to see dance for the first time at the Queenie?

Dana Gingras 12:21
Because they were coming to see Godspeed and then we had dance audiences that discovered Godspeed for the first time because they came to see a dance show. So I like that kind of the electricity the the kind of energy that kind of happens when audiences come together that are you know, just more there's more cross kind of pollination and Yeah that's all this excited me and Like going to see music shows has always been my passion So I'm like,

Dana Gingras 12:55
I want to make dance like going to see a concert from from day one That was like my my interest so I think with animals, I've just put a little bit more emphasis because now we're more in a technological age and Everything's advancing so quickly that these questions about progress Which were always there since our brief eternity with Noam and I like where are we going?

Dana Gingras 13:21
How how are we changing? What is the speed of progress? How do we keep up with this? Where is it taking us which is really? kind of post capitalistic You know Inquiries like it's like really like what are what are we doing?

Dana Gingras 13:36
Like, you know, we're all running so fast You know and here we are come out of the pandemic. We all had time and boom It's like faster than ever and it's just exponentials. So it's a theme. I think that Continues to to inspire me and even with new work.

Dana Gingras 13:54
I'm researching it's all around AI and just going through The process of research in the last eight months. It's like changing all the time. It's crazy how fast it's happening I'm just like, okay Lots of material for research Translate yeah.

Dana Gingras 14:12
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah

Gabrielle Martin 14:15
I'm interested also in how you perceive the cultural context of PUSH and how that context, you know, how that was meaningful for the presentation of your work. I know you were based in Vancouver for a long time.

Gabrielle Martin 14:27
So I think you have more insight than a lot of artists who came to PUSH to present their work. Just, I'm just curious about, yeah, maybe your relationship with Vancouver, your relationship with PUSH in that sense.

Gabrielle Martin 14:39
Did you know Norman when you lived in Vancouver?

Dana Gingras 14:44
Oh yeah, I've known Norman, I mean, you know, from the time, yeah, he was in, just started Rumble. I remember the taxi piece he did with Harvey Mellor. Oh wow, okay. Because Noam and I were in Vancouver in the late 80s, we were dancing with Edam, that's where we met.

Dana Gingras 15:06
So, you know, I had some history already, late 80s with Vancouver, and yeah, I knew Norman, like then I knew of him. He was quite, you know, the figure in the community. And then I moved to Montreal for a while, then I moved back to Vancouver, and Noam and I started Holy Body Tattoo there in 93.

Dana Gingras 15:28
And thing, what Push did is like Vancouver, we always felt isolated in Vancouver. Like we always felt cut off by the mountains. And so we'd come out to Montreal and we'd perform, you know, at the time it was called the FIND Festival, the Festival Internationale de Nouvelle Dance.

Dana Gingras 15:45
And that.

Gabrielle Martin 15:47
Actually, is that the root of Festival Transamerique? No, Transamerique.

Dana Gingras 15:51
was a whole other festival, but fine finished and then the FDA ended up kind of programming dance. And so I think that what Norman did with Push was he started to bring Vancouver into a relationship with international artists coming in, but then international presenters coming in and I felt like he put Vancouver on the map that way and that was really exciting.

Dana Gingras 16:21
Because it felt like there was just this possibility, like things were becoming more porous, you know people were coming to the city to see work, to present work and you know that's it's great like Push continues and now there's other sources of that happening in Vancouver like Dancehouse, but at the time there was there was nothing so yeah it was exciting.

Gabrielle Martin 16:47
And you maintain you've maintained a relationship with Vancouver I know at least for many years you're working with some of the artists or Vancouver based dance artists. Yeah in your projects Yeah, so I guess I just interpret your work as being very your collaborations being you know working at a national or international level and Why has that been important to you and continue to work with artists that aren't just where you're based?

Dana Gingras 17:16
Yeah, I don't like borders and I don't like being contained or I don't like identities that are fixed. I like fluidity and so for me, it was always important to kind of, you know, keep my connection with Vancouver and have this fluidity between Vancouver and Montreal and yeah, I like being a little bit more on the outside of things.

Dana Gingras 17:44
So, that kind of keeps me in movement, keeps things harder to define. Same thing with what I do as a creator or collaborations, you know, they're harder to define sometimes than just this is a dance show and again, I like that just kind of, liminality is really interesting to me because it's kind of like where you can be the most creative where you can kind of, you know, break rules and, you know,

Dana Gingras 18:16
have a little bit of what I call an unruly attitude towards, I don't know, the forces that want to create, you know, status quo. So, I like to push against that a little bit and, you know, I was born in Canada but I never grew up in Canada so I came back after high school so for me also, Canada, I'm not kind of bogged down with the history of Canada in the same way.

Dana Gingras 18:48
I mean, my grandparents, great grandparents were Quebecois and they moved out west and so I just like this kind of messiness that allows for a kind of communication to flow back and forth and get across those mountains.

Dana Gingras 19:12
Yeah, so, yeah, really nice relationships with Vancouver dancers over the years, specifically 605 Collective and yeah, I just worked with Josh recently on a new piece. Last year, he was a duo and yeah, so that was, it was great to have that connection again.

Gabrielle Martin 19:32
nice to have that piece of history to understand just how significant monumental was and Frontera, you know, but monumental being that first like Queenie piece. Yeah. That's a big step for the festival.

Dana Gingras 19:44
Yeah, it was a big step. But really, you know, these conversations go on for years. And so the conversation to get it to that place was, you know, a lot of toil and staying in contact with how things were developing.

Dana Gingras 20:01
And so I know Sarah Rogers and Norman really, you know, kind of kept at it. I think they would keep finding each other in different parts of the world. And it was like, hey, so what's happening with Monumental?

Dana Gingras 20:13
But really, Norman, the piece that he brought to it, this residency at the Queenie is what clinched it and actually really pushed it over the edge in order to make it happen. Because otherwise, we couldn't have remounted that piece without having time in a theater and bringing all the visual elements, the video that William Morrison created for the work, the live sounds, the staging, because it was a new staging as well with the band.

Dana Gingras 20:41
It was just so many details, new cast and, you know, the lighting, as you've seen, like the lights are coming through these podiums, the dancers are standing on it so they're blind half the time, turning.

Dana Gingras 20:54
You know, the risk is there. Yeah, the risk is there. You know, we had some, you know, few dancers. It was like their first real professional show. And this was like their debut. And I was like, okay, please, please, we'll all be good.

Dana Gingras 21:09
We'll all be good. It was amazing. It was like a night to remember.

Ben Charland 21:17
That was a special episode of Push Play in honor of our 20th Push International Performing Arts Festival, which will run from January 23rd to February 9th, 2025. Push Play is produced by myself, Ben Charland, and Tricia Knowles.

Ben Charland 21:34
A new episode of our 20th Festival series with Gabriel Martin will be released every Tuesday, wherever you get your podcasts. To stay up to date on Push 20 and the 2025 Festival, visit pushfestival .ca and follow us on social media at Push Festival.

Ben Charland 21:53
And if you've enjoyed this episode, please spread the word and take a moment to leave a review.