Brendan Fernandes

The Working Move

2012

The Working Move is a two-part project consisting of a live performance and photographic installation. The work is inspired by Ballet movement vocabularies that relate to labor and endurance. The Working Move is informed by the histories of avant-garde dance and its relationship to visual art. In the work, movements are constructed to depict dancers interacting directly with a collection of plinths - these minimalist structures serve alternately as set, a supportive prop or an unwieldy burden. The live performance is set within the context of a rehearsal where dancers perform while taking instruction from a director regarding how to make the movements. The fourth wall is broken and the dance will stop and restart as the director leads and creates the dance. Through this project I am making further reference to my past research on museum display technique as it relates to the "othered culture." The dancers will dance and move with the apparatuses that display museum "artifacts" (plinths, hooks, stands). The body becomes a stand-in for the "artifact." Through this project I explore the body's status as a commodity via the theory of value, specifically looking at the dancer's body as a place of creation that is also taxed when in the process of performing.

The Working Move is a live performance conceived and choreographed by Brendan Fernandes, co-choreographed by Justine Chambers, and originally danced by Cody Cox, Carolynn Fisher, Zoe Nichele, Diego Romero and Sophia Wolfe, with music performed by Zabelita Fraser. Produced by the Western Front Society, Vancouver, BC with the support of EDAM Dance, The Deux Mille Foundation and the Hamber Foundation.