Barbara Bourget & Emma Metcalfe Hurst
Interview for Coming Out of Chaos: A Vancouver Dance Story

July 17, 2019

Barbara Bourget, Dancer, Choreographer, Artistic Director for Kokoro Dance, Co-producer of the Vancouver International Dance Festival, founding member of EDAM, dancer in Coming Out of Chaos (1982) rehearsals

Emma Metcalfe Hurst, Karen Jamieson Dance Archivist/Creative Director of Coming Out of Chaos

This oral history interview has been edited for length, clarity, and accuracy

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: So, Barbara, thanks for kicking this off. You are the first interview that I'm doing for this project so I'm excited to see how it goes. My understanding about how you came to Coming Out of Chaos (1982) is that you were involved more in the early stages of production, is that right?

Barbara Bourget: Correct.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Okay, cool. Before we go there, let's start with your background entering into contemporary dance.

Barbara Bourget: I started dancing when I was four. I've been dancing all my life. I was trained in Vancouver, but went East to Winnipeg and Montréal to perform in ballet companies. I moved back to Vancouver in the early ‘70s and began working–abandoning the pointe shoe, and going for contemporary dance. I had a good friend here named Mauryne Allan who started Burnaby Mountain Dance Theater, as it was first called, and then it was called Mountain Dance Theater, and I joined that company when I came back, so I never stopped being involved in the community. I mean, I was away for maybe about six years, but when I came back I was really amazed at the amount of energy. Paula Ross Dancers was the oldest contemporary dance company in the city, and then there was Anna Wyman Dance Theatre, and then all the companies that came out of Simon Fraser [University].

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Right. So your involvement in the Vancouver dance scene precedes the ‘70s and ‘80s then.

Barbara Bourget: Well, yeah, because I was training here in the ‘60s.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, yeah. And you had a background in ballet, so how did you move into contemporary dance?

Barbara Bourget: It just was a natural progression for me in that I convinced myself I had poor pointe shoe feet– which now I realized wasn't true, but it was difficult to be a ballet dancer, very difficult, but I was succeeding at it. I just got overwhelmed with it and wanted to find something else: went to New York, experimented, did some training there, started to train in the contemporary arts, modern dance–specifically Graham, Cunningham, all those things.

It was great because I have a photographic memory. It's not so good anymore, but when I was young, I could remember anything. That was a great skill to have, especially in a ballet company where you're doing four new works in a six week period.

I love dancing barefoot, and I still love it. I just love the freedom of that and the articulation of the foot. So I found for myself that ballet–while it was beautiful and I was pretty good at it, it wasn't [what I wanted to do] and then, of course, I wanted to choreograph.

I did my first choreography in 1977 or was it '78? Anyway, it doesn't matter. I haven't stopped choreographing since. Being a ballet choreographer would have been a lot harder, ‘cause there's such a male-focus.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: So then once you moved into contemporary dance, you found a lot more freedom in what you could choreograph?

Barbara Bourget: Well, it just wasn't so. It was stressful in its own way because it wasn't well supported at the time and it was really hard to make a living. I just got excited about the possibilities of being a choreographer, which I hadn't thought about before. I'd never thought I'd be a choreographer when I was doing ballet. I just took to it and I'm still choreographing and it's been really a long time.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: [Laughs] We'll leave that number out!

Barbara Bourget: Yeah, the city was pretty vibrant when I came here.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Back to Mauryne Allan and Freddie Long, they were the original directors of...?

Barbara Bourget: Well, Iris Garland was involved in the actual Burnaby Mountain Dance Theater, but when it became Mountain Dance Theater, it was Freddie Long and Mauryne Allan. Mauryne Allan came out of Simon Fraser, she had trained there. Simon Fraser had [a dance program there], I think it started in 1975? So that opened up possibilities for people in this area of the world. Out of Simon Fraser University came Prism Dance Theatre, operating in Downtown Vancouver. I already mentioned Anna Wyman, and there was Lee Eisler and Nelson Gray, who started their own dance company, [Jumpstart Performance]. There was Terminal City Dance also. I first met Terry [Hunter] and Savannah [Walling] at a Gladys Bailin workshop at Simon Fraser in 1974 so we go back a long way. They [Terminal City Dance] were quite a mover-and-shaker kind of company.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: It's amazing how many companies seem to have sprung up around that time.

Barbara Bourget: Yeah, it was a pretty energetic time. When EDAM got together, we called ourselves the over-thirty dance company because we were all over thirty, but there was a lot of energy in the city. Part of the reason EDAM got together was because we were all rehearsing at the Western Front for $2 an hour or something, which you know by today's standards, you think, oh my god, that's so cheap!

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Definitely! So you're touching on this in terms of the energy of the city at that time: choreographers and dancers working, and a lot of collaborations as well. Was there a strong sense of community?

Barbara Bourget: I think that the Vancouver dance scene has always been a little bit "pocketed," meaning that I had to drive out to Burnaby every day, so I didn't spend a lot of time in the downtown area. I knew the teachers at Harbour Dance and I knew the choreographers at Prism Dance Theater. I knew the people. I knew what was going on in the city, but it was a lot of work and I had a young child at the time because he was born in '77, so I had a baby. That was hard and then Simon Fraser, being so far away even though it had a kind of hubbub in terms of dance when Santa Aloi came and Grant Strate, it was up on the mountain way out of town, so it was really a distance. That's part of the thing about Canada, is the distance between the major cities and the distance between the dance communities in those major cities is exacerbated because it's so far to travel from Toronto to Vancouver and Montréal. In Europe, it's not the same. There's all these pockets and it's a two hour train ride to get somewhere else and see a dance piece so it's a different kind of thing. I didn't feel like we were isolated. It's just that the distance to travel was so much greater. There was a lot of activity though. I remember doing workshops at Prism Dance Theatre in their space. There was cultivation and there was cross-pollination, in a certain kind of way, but based around this idea of modern dance; this kind of doing, learning Graham, and learning Cunningham, and stuff like that, and then moving on to postmodern stuff. There was an improvisation company here with Peter Bingham and Helen [Clarke] and Lola Ryan, who was then Peter Ryan. I think it was called Fulcrum. So in the early ‘80s, there was also this contact improvisational aspect to the city that was happening.

And then there was Linda [Rubin]. She taught for a long time. There used to be a studio before it burnt down on Main Street. It was a hall and on the top floor was a beautiful studio. She did a lot of teaching. She taught improvisation and she ended up going to Saskatchewan to teach at the university there. So there were pockets.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, it’s interesting to hear you speak about isolation within the greater context of the country, but also isolation in Vancouver and having to commute out to Burnaby to SFU.

Barbara Bourget: For me, it was all about distance and time. Not that I wasn't interested in everybody, [the community was] quite a bit smaller than it is now and you needed to make an effort to get to know people. Because I like to train-I like to dance every day-I would search out teachers and workshops and try to get involved in learning. [That was] how to meet people.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. Isolation might have an influence on this, but what kind of themes or interests did you see arising around that time?

Barbara Bourget: With Mountain Dance Theatre, we did a lot of children's shows because there was a lot of work at that time–I mean it's still true today, but especially true then, trying to survive. There was not a lot of funding so you had to get money somehow. Doing shows for children was a really good [way to do so:] first of all, it's a really good training ground for choreographic craft, and also, you could travel to the schools and do these shows and you would get paid. We did more than one tour into the North of BC with Mountain Dance [and performed] a children's show and we did a big children's show at Christmas time. I think we did the Wizard of Oz too. We just did what was necessary in order to survive, but we also worked on our own choreography and on our more serious work. I was there [Mountain Dance Theatre] for five years, then I had my son in '77 and then I stopped dancing for a while. Dancers always quit dancing at least four times in their career, and then they go back.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Mm hmm. A calling.

Barbara Bourget: Well, what do you do? Work in London drugs or something? Yeah, it didn't make sense. I got a job with Paula Ross, because one of her dancers was pregnant, and that's where I met Jay [Hirabayashi], and that turned my life completely around. Emma Metcalfe Hurst: There you go. That goes right into my next question which is where do you draw your personal influences from?

Barbara Bourget: Initially it was just trying to get out all of this movement I had inside of me. I have less now [laughs]. It is 45 years later, I've gotten a lot of it out. Initially it was that, but then I started to really get very interested in the modern dance form, which I didn't know anything about really, and went to New York to study a little bit. When I met Jay, together we discovered Butoh which has been our focus for Kokoro dances. We started the company, and that's really been a pleasant and significant expression to both of us. Not that we don't use what we already know, right? Like contemporary dance, modern jazz, and for Jay it was a certain kind of athleticism, which you can see if you saw him on the floor at the showing on Saturday. You can see, 35 years ago or whenever it was, he did a lot of jumping, and falling in Sisyphus, but he's 72 now so that's not quite as possible. It's a different kind of movement now.

So we discovered that and we have spent the thirty-three years of Kokoro [Dance] exploring that. I think it's quite a unique Canadian aesthetic actually, and we've been influential in Butoh. I see it as just an evolution of dance, I don't really see it as a particular thing. I think dance will evolve as long as human beings are around, and Butoh has influenced many, many things in the dance world. You can see it. It's not that people are doing Butoh, but it kind of comes in. It's like in modern dance when all of a sudden, in [George] Balanchine's work, he was doing parallel on pointe–Oh, shocking! Right? So there's all these things. I think the evolution of dance is really strong as long as the participants are always moving towards new experiences and discovering other things about what their process is. Everybody is different, but unique. Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Mm hmm. I'm curious about what some of the other influences that were happening that led to this dancing movement in the ‘70s, early ‘80s. I'm thinking more specifically about funding opportunities, social movements, or anti-institutional sentiments as well. What were some of the external things that were informing dance?

Barbara Bourget: The ‘70s was Trudeau, right? Trudeau senior, and he did all these wonderful things for people, like if you were poor and an artist, you could get these grants–year-long grants. There was wonderful support because of the liberal philosophy at that point. It got worse in the ‘80s. It was much more difficult. For Kokoro, we formed in 1986, but we didn't get funding for six years or something ridiculous. EDAM formed in ‘82, but because EDAM was such a lightning bolt–[it was seen as] shocking that we were doing a seven-person collective, which of course, never worked out, but you try these things, right? We [EDAM] got funding right away because there was so much interest in that, so it was kind of a hotbed of experimentation.

People weren't afraid to do things. We just thought, Oh, we're going to collaborate, we're going to do each other's work, we're going to choreograph, we're going to do all this stuff, and we did that to a certain degree, but we only had one studio space. That was a huge problem for seven choreographers. Six choreographers, and one musician, and no dancers!

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, yeah, [laughs]

Barbara Bourget: We were all going to dance in each other's work. That was a very interesting exploration. The ‘70s were good for the Trudeau years and then the ‘80s got more difficult. So by the time Kokoro went for funding, it was, like, tight. It must have transitioned into the Conservative Party at that point.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. My understanding of the ‘70s, with the formation of the Canada Council for the Arts in ‘52, was that these groups and collectives of artists were just able to get right in there and get financial support and had such a profound effect on the cultural and artistic vitality of the country.

Barbara Bourget: It was kind of an explosion. The good thing about now, is that because [Canada Council for the Arts] has–in the last 20 years or something, not had much money because the Conservatives were in power. Now, there’s more money in the system so they’ve started all these new programs and where people are getting funding–more young people are getting funding, which is really important, and people like us, the older guard, are still able to access funding. So that's really good. Things have really turned around a little bit. They’re not perfect, but it’s much better than the US. He got rid of the only thing they [the States] had, which was the National Endowment for the Arts. Trump just tossed it.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. They are also confronted with very little–if any–government funding, it’s mostly private funding so how does that affect the type of art one can make?

Barbara Bourget: It's terrible, terrible.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, it's really bad. I'd be curious to see how other dancers in the States are doing it.

Barbara Bourget: Oh, it's a struggle. It's a struggle.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. So we've also been talking a bit about companies and studio spaces as well. You've mentioned a few different studio spaces that you were operating out of at that time. Could you tell me about some of the studios you operated out of–specifically their names and their locations, if you can remember them, or even just the neighborhoods. I'd be really interested in hearing about that.

Barbara Bourget: Harbour Dance, which still exists but is now on Granville Street, was on Hastings St. across from what used to be Sears, so that's one. We worked with Mountain Dance Theatre in Burnaby in what is now called the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts, at that time it was Burnaby Arts Center. We worked out of there because they supported us. We didn't have to pay for that because the company was sort of a resident company there. We worked at EDAM at the Western Front. If we were desperate, we would go to a community centre or something, but there were not a lot of studio spaces.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Pretty limited then.

Barbara Bourget: Really limited.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: I was talking to Savannah [Walling] over the weekend, and she said at one point they were operating out of Karen Jamieson's living room for a little while; using the available spaces that they had to practice.

Barbara Bourget: Terry [Hunter] and Savannah [Walling] had a space that still exists, it's in Chinatown, and they were on the second floor of this funky building. They lived in the back, and there was a studio in the front, but they didn't really rent that out. Karen [Jamieson]'s first space was on Main Street, which, I think you must know, they put a floor in. I taught company classes for her for a little while in that space. So that was a space but again, I can't remember [the name]. Savannah [Walling] did a piece on me called Pandora's Box (1983) and I cannot remember where we rehearsed it, but I know we rehearsed it because I do remember performing it at Paula Ross' dance studios. She had a studio which ironically used to be my ballet teacher's studio, Mary McBirney, and that was a great space on West Broadway and they sold the building and it turned into a laundromat. It was so good because it had a beautiful floor and one small studio, and a large studio. Paula [Ross] taught there and performed there for years because it was very cool. When you were desperate, you would just try to find something, somewhere. Sometimes people had a basement or whatever.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Could you share a description of the floors and what you as a dancer were looking for in a floor?

Barbara Bourget: You want a floor that has some resilience, some bounce to it. It's hard to find–like Harbour Dance, which is now on Granville St, their floors are sprung and they're quite nice. They're soft and they've been there a long time. The Dance Centre’s floors are okay. We [Kokoro Dance] have two studios in the Downtown Eastside at KW Studios. [They are] funny shaped and also [have] sprung floors. There are [starting] to be more spaces in the city, so we are fortunate but there's way more people now. Simon Fraser is Downtown now too, so that's fantastic. When they're not in session, you can rent that space for dirt cheap if you need to.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Wow, that must be an amazing resource. Do you have any other descriptions–like vivid imagery or smells or just something really sensory, of the spaces that you used to work in at all?

Barbara Bourget: All dance studios all smell in a particular way [laughs]. I've been in them all my life and I couldn't differentiate between one and another. I do remember, I very much liked Harbour Dances' first studios which were on Hastings St. because it was an old funky building. It smelled like years of grilled cheese sandwiches or something like that, right? I remember in New York, you'd walk up three, four, six flights of stairs to these really small studios, and you could feel the movement in the bones of the building–that that's how long people had been dancing and that's what I really liked about the first Harbour Dance studios because they'd been there a long time and before that I think it was a dance studio. There used to be a dance studio on Pender St. Very small but in a building I think that is no longer there. Dance studios just have a [pause]–there's always a brightness to them. The light is always really, really good. The studio we worked in [at Burnaby Arts Centre] had windows all the way around so it was beautiful out there because it's right on Deer Lake. Really gorgeous, but what I remember most about that is having to commute. The highway was not like it is today. It was better actually because I hate the highway now, it's scary. But we drove out every morning and it would be forty minutes there and forty minutes back. So I remember that traveling. That was hard. If you had to go on the bus, [it was] like three hours or something. It was bad [laughs].

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Oof. We've covered this a little bit, but how were you involved with The Centre at SFU back in the 1970s to the early ‘80s, if any?

Barbara Bourget: Originally I met Iris Garland – who was the prime mover and shaker to get that dance program happening, when I was 16. She came from somewhere in the US, I forget where, and she was teaching dance through the athletic program [at SFU] and we had met her.

She came to ballet with Miss [Mara] McBirney, I think. She's a woman that once you met her, you would never forget her–tall and skinny like a bird. Beautiful person. I had met her and Mauryne Allan and I had performed when we were kids up at SFU. So I had already had a kind of relationship with her. When I came back to town, I met up with her again, and it was wonderful to have that kind of relationship. [I] actually taught at Simon Fraser for about eighteen years on and off, so I built a relationship through that process, being a teacher. I did my MFA there, too. So, I've had a [long] relationship with [SFU ]– not so much now, but I did up until 2004, I think.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Interesting. What are some of the main factors and conditions that allowed this type of work to happen, in your opinion? And how would you say those have changed today?

Barbara Bourget: What type of work do you mean?

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Like the type of work that you were all producing in the late ‘70s, early ‘80s or so.

Barbara Bourget: I have no idea. It's for people like you to figure out! [laugh]

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: [laugh] This is true.

Barbara Bourget: We just responded to the energy. You talk about the sensory part of the human being–it’s so essential to our lives. In dance it's even more essential because dance is only, in my opinion, about experience and sensation. You can't think a good dance, it has to be in the bones of people on the floor, right? You can't pretend it's something else. So for me, it was just that people started to produce work, and I do think it had to do with the Trudeau years where there was a little more support. Mountain Dance got a couple of grants for a year to hire people. The feds wouldn't do that now. And this was to make work, this wasn't for anything else.

In the ‘80s, there were just so many of us too, because–don't forget, we are baby boomers.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. [laughs]

Barbara Bourget: And, as our children tell us, there's too many of you people! There were a lot of baby boomers. When you look at Karen [Jamieson], and Terry [Hunter], and Savannah [Walling], and all of the EDAMites–if we went and looked at all the people who were working during that time, there's more because there were more people. Now it's a little harder I think. There hasn't been such a generation like the post-war generations. There were so many people, and so hopeful about the future. I think that that was one thing–now people are depressed, [especially millennials].

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. It's rough.

Barbara Bourget: Our youngest son is a millennial. The difference between him and [us], [hand gesture moving upward]. We completely understand. I mean, it's not like you're not inheriting anything with any hope in it–it's all doom and gloom. Whereas in the ‘60s, the ‘50s – I was born in 1950 – after the war, it was like a canopy got lifted off everybody's head and oh, my God, things are gonna get better! We're going to like each other, and for a while, I think it worked but it fluctuates.

Barbara Bourget: I think that's all part of it. We just began to meet each other and cross-pollinate, and that was very exciting because all of us had been so separated by space and time, like I said. To actually do a workshop with Terry [Hunter] and Savannah [Walling], meet Karen [Jamieson], meet Jennifer [Mascall], meet Lola [MacLaughlin] and Ahmed [Hassan] and Peter [Bingham] and Lola [Ryan] was really exciting ‘cause we hadn't had that opportunity [prior]. We were kind of hunkered down at Paula [Ross’], and I’d been hunkered down at Mountain Dance [Theatre] and Jay [Hirabayashi] danced a while for Mountain Dance [Theatre], but they were pockets. Paula was very protective and she wasn't really interested in [mixing]. She liked having dancers, but she was very much her own person.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Kind of insular then.

Barbara Bourget: Yeah, and very focused on her work, which in my mind, is brilliant. She's left quite a legacy although no one knows where she is [laughs]. She's still alive. I keep meaning to see her, figure out what to do. But anyway, I think it was just a moment in time that somehow we all grasped without even understanding why.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, it's only in reflection, looking back at it all now...

Barbara Bourget: Yeah. When Grant [Strate] arrived in '83, he was a big catalyst because he had come out of York University, and the Toronto scene so he had a lot of experience with assisting people in getting these things out. He made a difference to this community in a very palpable way. We could feel him, his presence, and that was a good thing I think.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, he was a really important figure and it’s my understanding after speaking with Karen [Jamieson] about Coming Out of Chaos that he was the main catalyst encouraging her to move on from Terminal City and helped her get funding for Coming Out of Chaos. So that comes to my next round of questions then: what is your first memory of Coming Out of Chaos that comes to mind?

Barbara Bourget: I was sitting in the kitchen having my Stoned Wheat Thins and cheese, and Lola Ryan was telling me, That's not enough for lunch, Barbara. Why are you eating so little? That's my very first memory. I think I left after two weeks. Jennifer tells me that I was actually only a placeholder for her, but you have to understand that Jennifer [Mascall], Jay [Hirabayashi], myself, Peter [Bingham], Lola [MacLaughlin]–we all have history.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Oh, of course. [laughs]

Barbara Bourget: So, I don't even know if that's true. I just think she says these things sometimes just to see what you're gonna say to her. What the reaction is. I left because I couldn't afford to do the project–this is my memory, but then Jennifer [Mascall] told me, No, no, you left because I came back. I said, Well, I don't remember that. But anyways, I don't know what happened. I had a child and I don't think there was money in the beginning, so I couldn't stay. I had to go get a job. I do remember I applied at Safeway.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: So, at that point you left and were you intentionally thinking about getting out of dance for a little bit?

Barbara Bourget: I had too, I didn't have any money and I had a son. And a very angry mother. [laughs]

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: [laughs]

Barbara Bourget: I went back to work for Paula [Ross].

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Okay, so that's what you did at that point.

Barbara Bourget: Yeah.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Interesting. Then – just trying to get the sense of the timeline here – my understanding is that Coming out of Chaos premiered in 1982. I would assume rehearsals probably started in 1981.

Barbara Bourget: The other person who had come back to the city, or had come to the city in 1980 was Judith Marcuse, and this is an important thing for you because she started her company.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: What was her company called?

Barbara Bourget: [Referring to paper printout of timeline] I can't remember. Yeah, so 1981 I have Coming Out of Chaos. That's when it started. I don't know what I did with Savannah Walling, I did something with her. But with Judith [Marcuse], I did the operas. I don't even know when the first piece was performed of Coming Out of Chaos – I should know because Jay [Hirabayashi] was in it, but I think it was performed in Paula Ross' studio as part of a Vancouver dance celebration thing. We were just doing everything we could to try to stay alive because it got really difficult in the early ‘80s to access funding. And because there was more competition once Judith [Marcuse] came back to the city and she had quite a high reputation. She'd come out of Les Grands Ballets. I did her children's show, I did Playgrounds with her. It was a busy time. I think I did Pandora's Box with Savannah Walling in 1983.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Did you mention that Jay was involved in Coming Out of Chaos?

Barbara Bourget: No, I was thinking of Sisyphus (1983). I misspoke. No, he couldn't do it. I can't remember why. I think it was the same thing. We were married by that time. And I think we had children to support [laughs].

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Someone's gotta do that! [laughs]

Barbara Bourget: Yeah. I don't remember when it was, although when I saw the photos on the [Karen Jamieson Dance] website, it was in the space downtown, right?

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah.

Barbara Bourget: That used to be Terminal City's rehearsal space. I do remember seeing it, but I don't think it was very long after it started. I think it was in the early 1980s. We actually started working over the summer, and then it went into the fall and it was performed at that point.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: And then her [Karen Jamieson's] Solo From Chaos came out in 1982, so it was just the same year.

Barbara Bourget: [nods head]

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Did you have any involvement with Terminal City Dance Research?

Barbara Bourget: Not originally, but then I did work with Savannah [Walling] on a couple of projects. One is called Meetings and I can't remember what that was. I did do this piece for her, Pandora's Box (1983), which was an extraordinary work. I don't even know if we have video. I worked with a live dove.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Wow [pause] WOW! [laughs]

Barbara Bourget: And that was also performed at Paula [Ross’]. I think that was done in 1983 [leafs through papers]. Yeah. 1983. Pandora's Box.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Okay, so really shortly after then.

Barbara Bourget: And by that time, EDAM had formed so we were doing a whole bunch of stuff.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: EDAM formed in '82?

Barbara Bourget: '82.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Okay. Just going back to the questions here, what was your first impression when you were approached by Grant Strate and Karen [Jamieson] about participating in Coming Out of Chaos?

Barbara Bourget: I wasn't approached by Grant [Strate]. I don't know if Karen [Jamieson] asked me now because Jennifer [Mascall’s] told me that I was only doing it to [replace her] [laughs], so I don't know. I think you might have to ferret this out a little bit. I don’t remember. I remember distinctly being in rehearsals for two weeks, and I remember the kitchen with Lola Ryan giving me gears about what I was eating, and I do remember we did a lot of repetition in terms of improvisation, and then Karen [Jamieson] would stop and then go back, and you know, can you do it this way? Blah, blah, blah. So we did a lot of that. I remember Ahmed [Hassan].

He's hard to forget. I do remember Lola [MacLaughlin], ‘cause losing those two people was very hard. I don't have any other specific memories, although climbing the stairs and all that stuff.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Had you worked with Karen [Jamieson] before at that point?

Barbara Bourget: [shakes head from side to side], but I did teach classes, and Karen [Jamieson] would take my class. We'd worked in a certain kind of way, but I’d not actually worked choreographically with her. I don't think she taught classes. I can't remember. But we've been in similar classes together, so we kind of danced, and were familiar with each other, but I hadn't done any pieces with her.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Do you remember how that piece [Coming Out of Chaos] was framed to you? Was it a collaboration? Was it Karen [Jamieson] choreographing? I know that this piece in particular is an interesting work to look back on because everyone who was involved in it went on to start their own companies and more or less created a really important foundation for dance in Vancouver and in Canada too. I’m wondering how all of those personalities came together and what happened?

Barbara Bourget: I don't know if I can speak to that specifically, but I can say that I think that the personalities of all of the EDAMites were finely tuned for a collaborative process because we'd run into each other, but we hadn't actually worked together. Karen [Jamieson] was a bit of a catalyst on that level because she pulled together the people that would become EDAM. I'm not sure how that happened–I think we had energy, and Karen [Jamieson] would [always] respond to that. I'm quite sure that her process is collaborative in the sense that there's a real back-and-forth with the choreographer and the dancers. The dancers contribute a lot to the process. Dancers always contribute a lot to the process, but I don't work like that. I sometimes would let them embellish. Jay [Hirabayashi] and I work with movement.

It was funny, Karen [Jamieson] talking about Grant Strate telling her that she needed to learn how to do steps [laughs]. On Saturday, she said, That's what Grant said: “You need to learn how to do steps!” Because I don't think she'd ever done the steps. It's always been a kind of feeling, right?

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: What did you find to be the most challenging part about developing this piece?

Barbara Bourget: Well, working in a collaborative process is just killer. You have to be motivated. You have to be kind. You have to be understanding, but you also have to stand your ground. It's very hard and you have to be humble yet cocky. You can't just say no. It's very exciting. We went on to do a lot of wonderful collaborative work with EDAM, but it's time consuming and harrowing in some ways because you can't just put your foot down and say: Okay, we have a half an hour for this rehearsal, and that's it. It's never gonna work that way. You always get bogged down in some kind of philosophical thing, or why do you want me to do that? blah, blah. But it's good. It was especially illuminating for my life and my creative process, because I'd done so much ballet where you don't have a voice at all until you get to the upper echelons. There's a hierarchy there that you are working with, whereas collaboration, all you do is you do your job.

I mean, it's all drive, right? We didn't have that. The first process that EDAM did was a piece called Run Raw: Theme and Deviation and it was harrowing in so many ways [laughs]. I don't think we have that on video either. That's the trouble. Video. When we started doing video, we started with 3/4 inch [U-matic Videocassette], so life has really changed.

I do remember in the Coming Out of Chaos process, there was a lot of talking which is necessary because people didn't know each other all that well, how they moved, or how they thought. Within the EDAM structure, as a collective, there was always a lot of talking too.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. Especially at that point as well, where everyone's developing their own voice and how they're articulating their practice physically and verbally. There's a lot of communication to work through at that point. What did you find to be the most meaningful part of developing Coming Out of Chaos?

Barbara Bourget: I can only say this in the memories I have of seeing the piece. I think there ended up being a kind of caring and articulated loving kindness of some kind. It was funny because there was a lot of embracing and stuff like that in the work. I think it ended up being really vital because of that, because there was so much care. Savannah [Walling] was in the work and she had already been working with Karen [Jamieson] for a few years, so that was a kind of foundation.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: There’s video but it’s very poor quality. So just four or five images [in the KJD archives]. A couple of them are in colour as well. Were you at the performance?

Barbara Bourget: I saw the performance, I'm pretty sure. I can't really remember. They did a few.

It was a great time for the explosion of contemporary dance in the city. It really was. It wasn't just Karen Jamison Dance Company, there was Paula Ross still, and Anna Wyman way over there in West Van, and then Prism Dance Theater, there were so many. Ballet BC was not far off the horizon. There had always been Pacific Ballet, but Ballet BC came out of Pacific Ballet and that was coming on the horizon too. It was becoming much more of a cosmopolitan city, I think. And then the influences of the East and the South.

[ INTERVIEW BREAK ]

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: We were just talking about the Coming out of Chaos piece. Would you mind reiterating what you just said?

Barbara Bourget: I just said that I taught company classes for Karen for the Coming out of Chaos project in 1981, and then I taught over the course of two years in '82 to '84 for her [Karen Jamieson’s] company, and Jay [Hirabayashi] was in the company at that point. I think he was working with her. I can't be sure about that. No! Because we were working with EDAM, so he wouldn't have been working, but he must have worked–? It's hard to remember all these.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: [laughs] We were also just talking about some of the challenging parts about Coming Out of Chaos; working in that collaborative environment, and then some of the most meaningful. I was wondering, more specifically, would you say that Coming Out of Chaos had an influence on or played a role in developing EDAM?

Barbara Bourget: I think it articulated a certain kind of process that nobody was really interested in working in, to be honest. They didn't want one director. We decided that that was not a useful process for us. So yeah, it was useful. I think because we all insisted on doing everything, it was also one of the biggest mistakes because not everybody's good at everything, right? We had a lot of meetings where we'd spend hours discussing whether or not to buy a cash box. I mean, it got ridiculous. So, it was good on some levels and we also got to know each other, which was really good. When we did get together later in '82, we knew a little bit about each person because before that, we didn't really know anybody. We’d just see them in passing, right?

I think it was a good indicator of where the rest of these other artists, who were working with Karen [Jamieson], were going to go. She [Karen Jamieson] was intent on her company. She was working towards a company at that point, we were working towards this collective collaborative vision that we had. So that’s how that worked out.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, yeah. So in that sense, Coming Out of Chaos did have a big influence on the foundations of your practice then.

Barbara Bourget: Yeah, on what became the EDAM practice. Then after four years, it collapsed. Then we went off this way, and Jennifer [Mascall] went that way, and Lola [MacLaughlin] went that way.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: But then you all went on to do really great things in contemporary dance all across Canada!

Barbara Bourget: It was such a fertile environment. It was hard work, but you can't go wrong with having seven really strong opinions, and working through that, and having the respect that we have for each other. I taught staunch, contact improvisers ballet class. You know, it's absurd!

But it really enhanced our own individual processes as well, it wasn't just the group. It opened my eyes to a lot of things that I didn't really know about. I'd never seen contact improv–I had no idea what that was! I never really liked it because I just couldn't get into it–I don't want to be swung around like that! [laughs]

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: It was so different from the world of ballet you were coming from!

Barbara Bourget: Jay [Hirabayashi] loved it. I love doing improvisations. We did wonderful, seven people improvisations where things went, you know, “wacky.” It was fertile for all seven of us.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, yeah. Was this one of your first experiences working with a composer, with Ahmed [Hassan]?

Barbara Bourget: I'd never met anyone like Ahmed [Hassan]. He was such an amazing human being. So full of energy. The first piece we did with EDAM, we worked also with Sal Ferraris, who's a fine percussionist. But yeah, I guess it might have been the first time I'd worked with a composer in the room. That was really amazing as he was so gifted and was constantly noisy, you know? [laughs] They just don't stop making music! All day long.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Do you have any other memories that you'd like to share about the rehearsals and the performances of Coming Out of Chaos? Do you remember the costumes at all?

Barbara Bourget: When I saw the photos I remembered the bright colors. They were kind of like overalls. Susan Berganzi, did those. EDAM also worked with Susan Berganzi, and I've known her well over the years. That was another cross-pollination thing. It was just that kind of meeting of all these people concerned with art-making–in dance specifically, but not just dance, music as well, visual art. Lola [MacLaughlin] had a keen visual art sense.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: So, it was a very interdisciplinary scene then.

Barbara Bourget: Super, yeah.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: We've talked a lot about this already, but is there a single word that comes to mind to describe the process of developing Coming Out of Chaos?

Barbara Bourget: It was probably chaotic! It was definitely chaotic. I don't think you can deal with chaos without being chaotic. When you're working with people for a long time, there's always a time when you're absolutely lost in chaos. Like, you don't know what's happening and why. So I think that that's part of the creative process. I think in that particular one, because of the very strong personalities in the room, it was really challenging for everybody. I'm sure Karen [Jamieson] talks about it that way too, but she was a little bit outside. If you're directing, you have a little bit of a veneer. You're a little protected.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. Do you think work like Coming Out of Chaos would be made today? Why or why not?

Barbara Bourget: Now, what do you mean by that?

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Just wondering about the forms and conditions you were working with that influenced the process, as well as the final outcome. Like collaboration, for example.

Barbara Bourget: I think pieces like that happen quite a lot because basically, dance is a collaborative process. I mean, you can't do it without other bodies, other brains. I think that it happens all the time, just in different ways. Like it's not quite the same as Karen [Jamieson] would approach it, or not quite the same as Jay [Hirabayashi] or I would approach a piece. In actual fact, it’s probably more chaotic now in our time than it was back then because it was a much kinder, softer time.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Do you remember at all how it was received by audiences or critics?

Barbara Bourget: People loved it and then it went on to tour and all that stuff. People loved it! I mean, there's nothing new under the sun, but it was fresh in terms of what was happening in Vancouver. It was a different thing. Anna Wyman was doing Alwin Nikolais influenced work; Paula Ross was doing her very amazing work, strong ballet-rooted but also Las Vegas showgirl. Mountain Dance [Theatre] was working with sort of bastardized Cunningham. I think we all did this too. We just all went: Oh, yeah. We just have to be ourselves. But you don't understand that until you've actually experienced all sorts of other things. So it was good. It's funny how people hit the right thing at exactly the right time–we felt like EDAM kind of did that as well–because her [Karen Jamieson’s] career exploded after that. And EDAM was great too, for our careers. Not that it hasn't been hard work for all of us, but it’s better than, you know, working at Safeway. Even for all that heartbreak and stress, I never have wanted to change my life.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, yeah. And the relationships you’ve developed.

Barbara Bourget: Well, in Vancouver, it's very interesting because we have a lot of longevity going on. We're all still working, which is amazing. We're all in our 60s, Karen [Jamieson's] in her 70s, Jay [Hirabayashi’s] in his 70s. It's pretty amazing.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: It is. And seeing how those legacies and histories resonate here. Part of my interest in this project is seeing these overlapping lineages as well. I come more from the archives and visual arts realm, but there is crossover between dance, specifically SFU as well. I know a lot of folks who’ve come out of that program and whose dance practice overlaps into the visual arts world as well. Western Front is also such an important site and stronghold as you can trace back the visual arts, media, and performance origins there. Dance has always been there: Jane [Ellison] is still working out of there, EDAM's still there too with Peter Bingham. I'm really interested in digging that out more; making that presence more known throughout this project and then bringing together all of these voices since you’re more spread out now, but there were times when you were together, and times when you were apart, and then you still have these very close relationships. As you said, this is what? Forty years ago?

Barbara Bourget: Yeah, it's almost 40 years.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: So the longevity is definitely there.

Barbara Bourget: Yeah, it is. It's very exciting.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: It is exciting. Leading into the third stage of the interview here, what do you think this project, an oral history, could achieve and be used for within your community context?

Barbara Bourget: You mean the archival nature of making this recording?

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah.

Barbara Bourget: I think it's absolutely necessary, in fact, because if you notice the way everything's moving, there's going to be no paper at some point. It's all going to be online, cloud, podcast, and so I think it's really important. Jay [Hirabayashi] has got a bee in his bonnet about it now, because if you don't initiate it [archiving] yourself as an artist, then it's going to be harder down the road and people are not gonna wanna look through 150 boxes.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, or you have to simplify that process by determining what has long-term value.

Barbara Bourget: He told me at the archival meeting, someone was talking about throwing away the check stubs, and he says, you can’t throw away the check stubs because I can't remember who the artists are. And I say, Jay, you have to throw away the junk. Like, we have boxes and boxes, and so we need to deal with that. Maybe it could be our summer job, but it's too laborious, right? It's better to do it in this way and also get all of your work up online where it will survive in whatever way, because that's just going to get more sophisticated. We haven't thrown away our little discs, but those are going to have to go too. Everything.

So I think it's [archiving] important. I think it's really important when you consider that Karen [Jamieson's] had a 40 year career, that we've had this one, and that if that’s not archived, it's lost. When I first went to New York, I went to Lincoln Center [at the New York Public Library], there's an archive there for dance. You've been there?

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: I haven't, but the amount of people [I’ve interviewed] who brought this place up as a notable resource they used in their early career are plentiful.

Barbara Bourget: They have stills and old, cranky video of dancers, like at the turn of the century. They have José Limón in the ‘20s. They're black and white, which is remarkable. The modern dance era, they were very conscious, because they were ripping and tearing at the hierarchy of ballet and all that. They were very conscious of actually being recorded and they were all teachers too, so they needed to spread the word. That was incredible. I didn't know that that happened. Lincoln Center is just full of archive stuff.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: And acquiring more.

Barbara Bourget: Oh, yeah. But it was astonishing to see José Limón. And he'd been dead for more than twenty-five years.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Well, it's amazing that they have made a commitment to house those materials too, and identified having a centralized space where people can go to–that the community also has access to, was deemed a priority because these are community-based organizations; you're going to want your community to have access to these materials, to use them. This is related to the question I was asking you about the value and usefulness of oral history. Why is it important to hear directly from the voices of the dancers and choreographers?

Barbara Bourget: Well, it's so exciting to hear people actually talk about their work. When we were in Japan, because we're so interested in Butoh, they also have lots of archival stuff about the first Butoh people, and lots of people talking about it, but we don't understand Japanese. So that was difficult, right? Because we couldn't actually hear what they were saying. So it stimulates the senses. I mean, it's one thing to see dance, but it's another thing [to sense it].

There's a certain kind of knowing that you get from the visual aspect of seeing dance and it touches you in various ways, but to hear artists talk about their work–especially in depth because, you know, dancers, I mean, we don't talk much. And actually, when we do talk on stage, most people want us to shut up. So it's a really interesting process. I think more people should be doing it. Jay [Hirabayashi's] determined we're going to do something, because we have to deal with this backlog of our artistry and unless you move it into the place where people are going to easily be able to see it, no one's going to go looking for it.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, yeah. Unless they know it's there, and it's accessible.

Barbara Bourget: Easily accessible.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, definitely. I think another thing that interests me about this process is that so many of you are teachers as well, and we’ve also talked about this collaborative process. Verbal communication is a pivotal part of both of those two processes; the way that you articulate your instructions to students and collaborators is distinct and important.

Barbara Bourget: All of it. I don't know if I'd still be dancing if I wasn't teaching. Teaching is essential to the process of the art form. You learn so much when you teach. It's not a divine inspiration–I mean, it is kind of a divine inspiration [laughs], but the nitty-gritty every day is so important to keeping the body at some kind of level. As you age, the teaching stimulates somewhere in your body, in your brain. You just know something new about something. I don't know how to–like, Oh, that finger! Oh, I see. And that stimulates an idea, and then you go. If I didn't teach it, I think it would be harder to choreograph because I wouldn't be working on that part of myself. That needs to stay actively engaged.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Moving back to the oral history question, are there any stories that you feel are really important to hear and in your opinion need to be heard, both in Coming Out of Chaos, but also like in general for contemporary dance in Vancouver?

Barbara Bourget: I don't know. I have to think about it. I don't really know. This is the first time I've thought about an oral history. I'd never thought about it before. You know, when you contacted me, I thought: Oh! I know about podcasting, and I know in politics they do a lot of it now where they go back and they talk about that horrible man and blah, blah. So I know it's very useful.

I think one of the most important things is to get the artist in that process, and having other people talk–like you're doing with this is important because you can't just have that voice, you have to have critical mass, kind of this: this is how I saw it, this is how I saw it, which makes it very interesting.

I mean, why do you dance is always a good question because it throws people off. They don't know how to answer it. Why do you dance? I love to ask my students that.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: That's a nice one.

Barbara Bourget: Well, they have to ponder it.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: It's a good question. I'm sure for dancers, what you do is so intuitive and so based in your body. It's like something you have to do, like, you're compelled to it on many different levels. How to articulate that draw would be a challenge.

Barbara Bourget: Absolutely, but you need to know why. Like, dancing is all about, well, it's just being human, right? The brain, the heart, the soul, the physical, intellectual, the spiritual, and the emotional. Everything! You have to tap into all of that to make beautiful work, because otherwise it's Hollywood or something. Step-kick, step-kick.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: The robotic steps. [laughs]

Barbara Bourget: Yeah, who needs that step-kick, step-kick? I mean, it has its place in musicals and stuff. I've seen some beautiful dancing in musicals, but it's not the same.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: [loud noise] Well, that might be the natural ending to our interview! Thanks so much for kicking off this project, Barbara.