Peter Bingham & Emma Metcalfe Hurst
Interview for Coming Out of Chaos: A Vancouver Dance Story

July 25, 2019

Peter Bingham, Teacher, Artistic Director and founding member of EDAM, dancer in Coming Out of Chaos (1982)

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: What is your background entering into contemporary dance? Could you please share your dance story.

Peter Bingham: I entered into contemporary dance from studying at university. I wasn't dancing at all. I did a weekend workshop here at Western Front in 1975, which was an improvisation workshop with Linda Rubin, and I just got hooked. So that's how I got started. From 0 to 100%.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, really quickly. So that was with Linda Rubin’s Synergy group, right?

Peter Bingham: Yeah. Movement workshops. She had the Western Front. And then she moved over to [the Arcadian Hall] and she made that place into a dance studio. And then the Main Dance students took it over [as Main Dance Place]. I think Linda moved to Edmonton or Saskatchewan at that point? Somewhere.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: That was at the Arcadian Dance Hall, right?

Peter Bingham: Yes. They had a big dance sign on the side of it.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yes. I've seen pictures. Where on Main Street was that?

Peter Bingham: Between sixth and seventh.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: And what side of the street?

Peter Bingham: East.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: On the East side, okay. Is the building still there?

Peter Bingham: No, it got burnt down. Otherwise they'd still be in it.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: So, around that time when you got involved in the Vancouver dance scene, in the ‘70s and in the ‘80s, how would you describe the creative atmosphere like at that time?

Peter Bingham: It was pretty free-wheeling and loose, I guess. It was a very open time. It was definitely a time when you could move into the arts from this, just go nowhere, and make a go of it. Even though I never [tried] to make a go of it. I just enjoyed doing it.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, and there were opportunities...

Peter Bingham: They just came along. Eventually people started offering money to do it. Then I realized I was making my living, more or less.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: And that was your career choice.

Peter Bingham: Yeah, so it got made over time.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Your long-term involvement with the Western Front is particularly unique too given their background in performance art. That seems to have come into a lot of your early pieces, as well as in your work with Helen Clarke.

Peter Bingham: Yeah. And Jane [Ellison], and Lola Ryan, and Michael Seamus Linehan. There was about nine or ten of us that were working down in the Western Front. And once Linda [Rubin] moved out of there, and moved over to Main Dance place, we more or less occupied the studio. Western Front was generous enough to let us use it, and I've never left it. I was an owner for maybe ten or fifteen years as well.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: It's a great space and such an amazing resource for artists, as well as dancers over the years. So many people have come through this space and have a relationship or history with it.

Peter Bingham: Yeah, I did a lot of performance pieces. Flaky [Rosehip] / Glenn Lewis – did work for him and Paul Wong. Richard Negro. Margaret Dragu. I did quite a bit of work with Linda [Rubin]. And then Jane [Ellison] and Helen [Clarke] and I did some work together. Helen [Clarke] and I did a lot of work together. And then in the more dancer realm, Andrew Harwood, and Helen Clarke, and I were a trio called Fulcrum. That lasted for a few years. We did a national tour, and that was sort of when I realized that I was doing something not necessarily for my life, but for the time being. My life goes full-time.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: You recognized it was gonna be a full-time commitment from there on.

Peter Bingham: I didn't know that. It was more like one month, two months at a time. You had to survive. I did other work. I drove a truck for the post office for a while.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Oh, cool. And then at that time, you had also recently bought a house with your brother and you were doing renovations on it?

Peter Bingham: 1980 probably. 1980 or ‘81. Me and my brother bought a house and my whole family was involved in that [laughs]. We built it. I'm still living in it. The market crashed, so we couldn't sell it. We'd just lose all the money we put into it. So, we decided to try and keep it sweet. We struggled a little bit but it was worth it. Now I've got a house.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, now you've got a house in Vancouver [laughs].

Peter Bingham: Yeah, rare opportunity.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, definitely. Building a house seems to me like an example of your athleticism which influenced the dance forms you and Lola Ryan were working with at that time.

Peter Bingham: Yeah, my teachers were also good though. I had Steve Paxton. He and I roofed his barn. We spent the whole time talking technique, but it's more about your level of interest and curiosity.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Sometimes just carving out space to be able to speak with someone or spend time with someone is also important. And in the process, you learn other things about them.

Peter Bingham: Yeah. That was sort of what it was like with Steve [Paxton].

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Was there a strong sense of community at that time? Maybe instead of thinking about that generally, I'd like to look at that more specifically in terms of your affiliation with contact improv and Steve Paxton. What was that relationship like and what was that community like?

Peter Bingham: Well, the community was like a local thing. And Steve [Paxton], of course, injected himself occasionally too because we asked him to come. Nancy Stark Smith as well was a big proponent of contact stuff. She's still teaching contact. But the community here was, I wouldn't say it was divided, but it was – it didn't interact, particularly in those days. Those of us who are improvisers, athletic, and those that had done dance training, scissor kids. There was a fair mix of those in the Synergy world, but there was also Anna Wyman, or Paula Ross, or I guess, to some extent, Judith Marcuse. She came a little later. But there was some crossover. Michael [Seamus Linehan]l and Anne [Pepper] did a performance called Experimental Dance, which had a lot of people like Judith [Marcuse], and some contact people; Steve [Paxton] and Nancy [Stark Smith] and Andrew [Harwood] and himself.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: And was that here at Western Front?

Peter Bingham: At The Cultch.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Okay, so that was another site where performances were taking place.

Peter Bingham: Yeah.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: And because you're saying that there was this kind of division at that time, did this division come from distinct types of training?

Peter Bingham: That's a hard one to call it a division. There was just no crossover. I don't know what people thought particularly.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: But Synergy was one of those places where those different worlds were able to come together?

Peter Bingham: Yeah, we did technique and improvisation, it was not just a free-for-all. Which we needed. You know, I believe in technique. Contact technique and dance technique.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. And that they can uplift each other.

Peter Bingham: Oh yeah.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: How would you describe the creative ethos looking back at that time period? What kind of elements, or common interests, and themes were you trying to address, or were interested in?

Peter Bingham: I think we're interested in the aesthetics of athletics. Quite strongly. We did a lot of practicing doing athletic things, and most of the performances were centered around athleticism. They started changing in around 1983. '84 maybe. I did some crossover work with mountain, rock climbing. It was that kind of stuff going on. Lola Ryan and Jay [Hirabayashi] did quite a bit of work on athletics, running, and basketball, and we did a piece called Run Raw: Human Deviation (1983) – this is probably the first collaborative piece that EDAM did. It was the first collaborative piece that we all made otherwise, you know, duets and trios and stuff like that. Before EDAM, I performed with Jennifer Mascall and Lola Ryan. They were my main people. We did some duets together. We performed at the Western Front here quite a bit. We used the whole building a couple of times.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Really? To do pieces?

Peter Bingham: Yeah. EDAM/MADE (1985) was a big piece where we had performances downstairs, and up here [in the Western Front], and it was a video installation piece. There was a big Evelyn Roth net hanging over stairs, people who would climb around over it. It was very hippie.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: That's great [laughs]. Very impressive. You said that you were interested in the relationship between athleticism and dance. Then around 1983, '84 that shifted a little bit?

Peter Bingham: It began to shift for me because I was making more and more choreography, and that was also a way into support – they weren't going to give you improvisers support. That was obvious. So I started making concrete pieces.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Okay, I see and then that also coincides with the creation of EDAM.

Peter Bingham: Yeah.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: So this moves us into the next question here: Where were you drawing your personal influences from and maybe continue to do so today?

Peter Bingham: Well, mostly my teachers. You know Steve Paxton, Linda Robin, Nancy Stark Smith, Lisa Nelson. And you know, my partners like Jennifer [Mascall], Lola Ryan, and Helen Clarke, Andrew Harwood, Tyler Merril, Barbara [Bourget] and Jay [Hirabayashi]. I mean, they all had something different to offer. We used to train with each other. I mean beyond taking class with Diane Miller, I took mostly contemporary dance with those guys; Jennifer [Mascall], and Barbara [Bourget], Lola MacLaughlin.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: What were some other driving forces influencing dance production at that time? And I'm thinking about funding, or social movements, or anti-institutional sentiments...

Peter Bingham: I think there was a general anti-institutional element in the world at that time, and so the art followed suit. But I don't really know how to answer that question because I was just under the influence of the whole life that I was living. It was about involving yourself. It was more, I guess, more conceptual. The Western Front stuff was all conceptual, pretty much.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. And lived experience merging art and life.

Peter Bingham: Yeah. This building is a really important part of it all. Just being here.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: And that moves into my next question about where you and your community were located. Are there particular neighborhoods and spaces that you worked out of? And then I was hoping if you could share any vivid descriptions of those places to paint the picture of what they were like?

Peter Bingham: Well, Terry Hunter [and Savannah Walling] had a space down in Chinatown, or on the edge of Chinatown which was eventually taken over by Noam [Gagnon] and Daina [Gingras], Holy Body Tattoo. Or maybe it was just Noam, I can't remember. But we did performances in there, and my first choreographies were performed in there. A piece called Reflect and Radius. And that's where we did all the rehearsing for Coming Out of Chaos with Karen [Jamieson]. And the Western Front here and basically, generally speaking, there was a little more East / West Side happening. There was still a lot of hippies in Kitsilano. It wasn't – what's the word?

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yuppies?

Peter Bingham: Yuppie is a good word. It's impossible now. My family lived in Kits. I go over there quite often. To the beaches. You got to remember the beaches otherwise you don't remember where you are. One of the things I do, conceptually, is to just go walk on the beach and record it. Our conversation. Use that as a stepping stone [for developing work].

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, go for a walk.

Peter Bingham: I did that with Crystal Pite when we made our duet together. Suffice it to say I've done it a number of times [laughs].

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: The beach really locates you. I think I recall you mentioning the beach in your autobiography, and how it’s a spot that you’re drawn to.

Peter Bingham: Yeah. Well, one of the arguments that people used to make about lack of audience was that nature was too powerful here, and people would rather be at the beach. So you know, in a way, referencing that stuff in my work helped to bring the work inside. It's not nature but I've always done sort of nature pieces here and there but they're... um collages.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: That's a nice way of putting it. I guess that speaks to certain kinds of organic qualities.

Peter Bingham: Well, the work I'm doing now is not so organic. It's very trained so it feels organic to the dancers, but it's technically very difficult.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Mm hmm. I guess I'm thinking about contact improv and my understanding is that you kind of respond to the other person, or to the energies and the environment in which the jam is taking place.

Peter Bingham: Yeah, well, anybody can do contact but not everybody can perform it. I mean, the dancers are way excelling. They excel well beyond connection-making dance–I think contact could be a folk dance. I used to dream of it because it's, you know, it's... all of these words just flow out of my mouth. You know, it's like, sexually indifferent or it's supposed to be. It's male, female, male, male, female, female, duets, trios, quartets. All of those apply in the base.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Right. So it’s supposed to be egalitarian and extinguish certain kinds of gender performativity?

Peter Bingham: Gender equality. So your size makes a difference, I mean, that's certainly one of the things we figured out. Or I did. If nobody else agrees with me, that's fine. But you know, your size makes a difference, right? So if you're a little person, you can expect to be able to move a big person, but not in the way that a big person can move you. And, you know, little people have to learn how to be heavy if they don't want to get moved around a lot. People need to learn to be light so they can add to the moving. But I spent a lot of years turning contact into something teachable, as formed, not as an idea. That's where the choreography comes in.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: That's interesting. I'd like to touch on that further down. I was wondering, do you remember anything about the influence of funding bodies at that point?

Peter Bingham: Well, what they told us as a group was that there was no funding. We had to fight for it. And there was a woman, Monique Michelle, who was the head of the Canada Council dance section, and maybe the whole thing. I remember having a bit of an argument with her in our downtown hotel. I'm thinking, find us some funding or I was gonna quit. The rest of the EDAMites were kicking me under the table, shut up! But it was really clear to me that she wasn't going to forward any funding to us, so I just put it to her that it was her job to find us funding. And we did performances in Ottawa that year, and I guess we got a travel grant. Our first grant was to do Run Raw: Theme and Deviation. It was an Explorations grant. But she [Monique Michelle] came to the performances. She brought me flowers. Nobody else.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Well, that's a turn of events right there.

Peter Bingham: Well, I think it just spoke to the fact that I was willing to stand up for us, and she respected that.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Did you continue to get funding after that?

Peter Bingham: We did. Our first grant we got was Explorations to make Run Raw: Theme and Deviation and then we started getting small amounts. We had enough to hire a manager and rent an office. And then do work on our own, with friends. It just sort of slowly increased. It was four of us in the final analysis at EDAM. It was seven to start with. So we are splitting resources and we were dancing for each other which wasn't the greatest idea because we all had different styles. If you're a technical dancer–if you want to put it that way, I don't like that word really, but if you're a traditional dancer, contact doesn't necessarily come that easily, or some of the athletic explorations that we were doing–getting the fine lines and fine tuning of the body requires a lot of technical expertise. And that includes in contact and improv too. If you look at the dancers that are doing this work, or at least that worked for me, you can see their technical skill as technical skill. You certainly wouldn't expect somebody who's just stepped into the studio to do it.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Do you remember after getting funding from the Canada Council for EDAM, there were seven of you who initially applied, were you able to get paid hourly? Or was it an honorarium per piece?

Peter Bingham: I believe that what we did was we split the money equally. For the creative money. We had to have money for the office and studio, but we had that figured out because we had the Western Front. So, same deal. We used the Western Front to a large degree for performances. We did a lot here. And we helped out with the upstairs performance art people. There's a lot of international artists coming through. It was kind of an interesting time.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, I did an archives project at Western Front when I was here in 2018 on performance art by women in their archives. It was really neat to see how many people came through here and how important the residency program is in enabling that to happen. Your work and Lola Ryan's in there as well.

Peter Bingham: Karen [Jamieson's] in there. Paul Wong's work, Body Fluid I think it was called? That was pretty well-seen. I mean, performance art seems like a closed book especially back then the work was–I don't wanna say brazen. It was very self-oriented.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Interesting. And was that just for performance art or dance as well?

Peter Bingham: Well, no. Dance was not nearly as interesting as performance for me. Their [performance artists’] drive to conceptualize always interested me. Dance didn't satisfy that. Dancers would make good performance artists but I don't know if they make good performance art.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: My understanding is that Helen Clarke was always really interested in performance art.

Peter Bingham: Yeah, pretty much yeah. She was my wife too. We were together for eight years.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Nice. And then you guys also had a creative relationship too?

Peter Bingham: We did. We made works together. Or we helped each other make work.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: I was wondering, could you describe your working environments at the time, or even the conditions that you were working in? The state of the spaces, or descriptions of the floors even?

Peter Bingham: Well, in general, I worked here. I didn't really work in other spaces. I did some work in Main Dance when Linda [Rubin] refinished it, so it was a huge top floor like in the peak. There was about a seventy foot by forty foot studio space. It had a dance space down below too where Judith Marcuse was. So when Linda [Rubin] moved there, those of us that were working with Linda [Rubin] went with her there, but then we were doing our own work. We were using Western Front where she'd moved out of. They were generous enough to let us use the space if it was empty. So we never paid for it. That was how we were able to make the work. It also made us available to them. It's like a little pool of performers.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: A reciprocal relationship. And then both of those spaces would have had sprung floors?

Peter Bingham: The Western Front does not have a sprung floor. But it's sunk enough. And then got raised and it's lifted off of the pylons by about this much. So the whole floor is kinda sprung. I went down there one time and put sheets of plastic all over the dirt down there to try and keep the temperature warmer in the winter. The floor started shrinking so I had to pull that up in a hurry. It took three weeks and I can see the difference. It all recovered. It recuperated. It's a living floor. But as far as spaces go, I mean, we did performances at The Cultch. I remember at least a couple of performances there at the Firehall when it got started. Karen [Jamieson] was in Cinderella Ballroom on Main Street in the early ‘90s. 11th and main. It's a rollerblade store now.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: I was wondering what was your involvement with The Centre at SFU [Simon Fraser University], if any?

Peter Bingham: I didn't really get involved with SFU. We knew SFU in that John MacFarlane worked there and Jennifer [Mascall] was married to him basically–not married, but they were together. So we did some performances up there through that connection. I taught up there for a. couple of semesters in the theatre department, run by Penelope Stella and Mark Diamond. They had seen Andrew [Harwood], and Helen [Clarke], and I performed in Ottawa and saw the opportunity to get me up there. So I was up there for a couple years. I did a fair amount of acting, not having any acting training either.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. That's similar to what Lola Ryan was saying, in that her background was not in theatre, but she still taught theatre.

Peter Bingham: She was at Studio 58.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, theatre is an interesting element to bring in. There's a lot of movement that goes into theatricality. Teaching was also another source of revenue for you all as dancers, too.

Peter Bingham: It's a hard way to make a living. You know, it's supplements.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: What were the main factors and conditions that allowed this type of work to happen in your opinion?

Peter Bingham: Well, the generosity to the Western Front, curiosity of us dancers who were interested in furthering the work for no money, just because we're interested in doing it. It was a lot of fun. Physically it was a lot of fun. It was like being an athlete without competing. And just, you know, a general community feeling of involvement–people involving you, you involving them. I do light for you, you do sound for me, I'll dance for you. Stuff like that. We [EDAM] kept getting improvements in the funding and stuff. As we broke apart, the funding raised. Barbara [Bourget] and Jay [Hirabayashi] were the first two to leave. They got married. There was definitely some tension in those days, but I didn't participate in that much.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, I would imagine just just in terms of training, styles, and personalities.

Peter Bingham: Yeah. And people have opinions that are founded. I just keep quiet about it. I would just say people in general justify their own lives even when they don't need to.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: How have these factors and conditions changed today as someone who is still continuing with dance?

Peter Bingham: Well, they've come and gone for me, in a way. I'm still supported, but they stopped raising my funds. I don't know how many years ago now. Ten years ago. There was a point when I could hire eight dancers.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: And that's full-time?

Peter Bingham: Well it was like probably six or seven months full-time and then part-time on UIC [Unemployment Income Compensation] for the other five months so they never had to stop dancing. Get a part-time job maybe. But that's the way a lot of the Canada Council is funded. Hire your workers for eight months or five months and then lay them off. And then they'd find different sources of income. When I took over the company [EDAM], I had to show that I was gonna support four choreographers because that was what the funding was doing for this company, because there was four of us left. It was Jennifer [Mascall], Lola [Ryan], me, and Lola [MacLaughlin].

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Okay, so then there were the four of you. When did you take over [EDAM], in your role and title of Artistic Director?

Peter Bingham: We were all Co-Artistic Directors and I just became the Artistic Director.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: And when did you take that on?

Peter Bingham: 1989. And basically it's weird because–this is one of my stories, is that we were having a big meeting at my place, and we weren't getting along, or the aesthetics of the company was really fractured, it wasn't unified. And I got fed up, and I left my own house, and said, I quit. So I quit. So I was the first one out of there. And about four months later, Steve Paxton was coming, and [it’s been planned] like a year before or something so we knew he was coming. And they were saying: We know Steve's your guy, and you should probably come back and at least do Steve's work. And I said, Okay, I'll do that. I just do Steve's work. And so I did that, and I was there for a month and a half or whatever, and Barbara [Bourget] and Jay [Hirabayashi] quit, and Ahmed [Hassan], at that point was pretty much gone. He'd been gone for quite a few years, but he couldn't do much. He wrote compositions from his bed. So there was the four of us. Anyway, when Lola Ryan decided to quit, Jennifer [Mascall] said she wouldn't stay without Lola [Ryan] there, so she left too. So it was me and Lola MacLaughlin. And Lola [MacLAughlin] and I wrote a grant together that had Steve [Paxton] and Lisa [Nelson] as choreographers, to keep the numbers four for support. And Lola [MacLaughlin] quit before we got acknowledged for funding, so I had to rewrite the grant. When it was overdue, I just re-wrote it and called them. I found out that she was leaving from them [Canada Council]. I didn't find out from Lola [MacLaughlin]. She doesn't remember it that way, but that's what I remember. The Canada Council saying: You know Lola's quit. I said, Really? They said, Yeah, she's pulled out. So I guess your application's no good. I said, I’ll have another application to you in a week, and hung up. I think it slid under the table. I think what happened was they felt my determination. I re-wrote that grant. I had help. I wasn't doing it by myself. There was Mona Hamill and this guy named Richard who was doing the books and stuff, and I got another choreographer [Serge Benathan] to keep the numbers rate sort of filled in and they also got half the money.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Wow. So that was in the late ‘80s then?

Peter Bingham: That would have been ‘89, ‘90. Because I took over in '89 but we still operated as –Jennifer [Mascall] had a full-length show to do in May, and I did a full-length show also before the end. Then I hired eight dancers just after that.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Right. That's a pretty dramatic story. Having to contend with the loss of a partner that way.

Peter Bingham: There's definitely contention around Lola [MacLaughlin] not telling me she was quitting. She doesn't remember it that way. She told Kaija [Pepper] that we sat down over a glass of wine and decided it was okay, or new it was for the best, or whatever–which we might have done, but it was well after I found out. Like I said, I found out from the [Canada Council], otherwise, I wouldn't have found out and I wouldn't have gotten any money. And I would have been out–[it was] one of those times or periods of times where it was hard to hang on to your money.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: The ‘90s. Yeah.

Peter Bingham: Yeah. Project-driven

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: It was a tumultuous and competitive funding environment at that time.

Peter Bingham: Well, it still is. It hasn't changed. You know you have to convince your peers that you're worth your while, whatever that amounts to. There's a lot of egos in the art world, and why you not me? I've never bought into those arguments. The word competition is not used very often. They were juries of your peers. They would try and get as much funding out as they could. But there was arguments. I sat on a number of DACs, Dance Advisories Committees, and funding peer groups, and people really honestly struggled to be fair. I mean, I've never experienced anybody not being fair.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: That’s good to hear. Moving into the project-specific part, what is your first memory of Coming Out of Chaos that comes to mind?

Peter Bingham: I have a memory of walking down Columbia St. with Lola Ryan and Jennifer Mascall, and talking about forming a company. That was just after rehearsal had started for Karen [Jamieson's] piece. I remember ballet class at eight-thirty in the morning, which was bizarre for me because I'd never taken ballet. I did some contemporary dance technique, but also, it was eight eight-thirty in the morning, and I was used to dancing from four or five in the afternoon, so it didn't make sense to me to dance in the morning. The body wasn't ready for it. If you've been up for a good chunk of the day, you're more ready to go.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Right, yeah, more limber.

Peter Bingham: Yeah. It took me a while to get used to that. I was also working on this house that I lived in. Bringing my wages home to the house pot. I remember that we didn't get the money we asked for, [we were] told we're gonna get $200 a week, and we get $75.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Oh, so a significant decrease.

Peter Bingham: Anybody else mention that?

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: No, no one's mentioned that yet.

Peter Bingham: Maybe it was specific to me because I had to ask my brother if I could do this project because we were building a house. He asked me how much I was making, and I said $800 a month. He said, Well, okay, if you contribute that to the pot, that should replace you for the time you're doing this. And then they didn't get their funding and they only paid us $75 [a week]. I came very close to quitting because I had this other responsibility and my family was down my throat. I explained all that, that didn't seem to help anything.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Do you remember how you would get to Karen Jamieson's studio for rehearsals?

Peter Bingham: I rode a bike. I had a knee operation in 1978, which they told me was a failure. And I went traveling for a year with Helen [Clarke]. I spent five and a half months in the waves on the Eastern coast of Australia. And then, all that wave action stabilized my knee. I didn't even know I was doing it. I was just so in love with getting into the ocean ‘cause I used to think I hated swimming. Until you can get into water, it's like that. It's like, Oh, I don't hate this.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Did you surf?

Peter Bingham: No, I did a lot of body surfing, which is quite intense. You had to jump into the wave. I loved it. It was sort of like doing contact, really. We were away for a year. So we were five months travelling in Australia, and then spent three months working in a hospital, and we flew up to Indonesia, to Bali. Went to Indonesia, up to Malaysia.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Were you dancing then?

Peter Bingham: No, it was my swan song dancing because they told me that my knee was unstable. The cruciate ligament was torn right in half, and then it literally moved like this [demonstrates with loose hand gesture].

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: How did you hurt your knee?

Peter Bingham: I hurt it first playing football when I was fourteen. I lived in Winnipeg, and someone slid sideways into me, and then it just healed, sort of, so to speak that every time I was playing basketball, mostly, it would go out on me. I would go to jump, and then when I landed, it would go out. And that went on for about three years. Stretched it out real good. And I had to get cartilage removed when I was seventeen. And that stopped it from going out, but it was kind of wobbly. Eventually it ripped in Toronto, at the Toronto Dance Festival.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: During a performance?

Peter Bingham: Just before.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Oh my gosh. What did you do?

Peter Bingham: Well, I sat in the front row and watched Helen [Clarke] and Andrew [Harwood] try and do it by themselves. And eventually–I still had my performance clothes actually, I don't know why – I crawled up onto the stage, I said, My other three limbs are good. Basically. They looked after me. Contact's amazing that way. If you get the right conception working it, you know, like tender touch or something. And then you carry the weight effortlessly.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. It looks like there's a flow, or rhythm, you get into as well.

Peter Bingham: It can be choppy, but I'm a flow guy. I believe in the sequencing of things. It gets kind of whippy.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Mmmm Whippy. That's a good word [laughs]

Peter Bingham: Whippy. Like whipping cream.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: [laughs] Exactly. Okay, so following that question then, what was your first impression when you were approached by Karen Jamison about participating in Coming Out of Chaos?

Peter Bingham: I was surprised that she would think of me, but she was also asking a lot of my friends to do it as well. I mean, I knew Karen [Jamieson] and Terry [Hunter] and Savannah [Walling], Wendel MacFarlane. There's that woman, what was her name? She moved to New York. Peggy Florin. They were all Terminal City Dance Research. And then Karen, well Karen became Karen after Chaos.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. Was there ever a point when she was invited to join EDAM, or was it pretty clear that she wanted to go in her own direction?

Peter Bingham: I think it was mutual. I mean, I think we discovered that what we had going on was of interest to us–like in terms of our explorations and stuff like that. So, I would say most of the choreography was built on improvisations that she then got us to count, and repeat, which is very laborious.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. And that wasn’t what you all were interested in.

Peter Bingham: Not really.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: It seems like Coming Out of Chaos was really a major point of discovery for everyone–all your likes and dislikes...

Peter Bingham: I guess so. I mean, I was still fairly sure of what I didn't want to do. And that was why I never thought I'd ever make a living because I just wanted to do what I wanted to do. So, I mean, I didn't mind working, or any of that sort of stuff. The piece was a bit... chaotic. And the title of the piece is appropriate to the group that emerged out of chaos. My memory is kind of sporadic. I remember climbing a ladder.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Oh, you do?

Peter Bingham: Yeah.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: The ladder Karen [Jamieson] used–

Peter Bingham: –for Solo.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, but then apparently she also used it in the rehearsals so that she could go up and see everyone's movement from above, from a higher level.

Peter Bingham: Yeah I remember.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: And then she'd come back down and was able to direct the choreography.

Peter Bingham: Right. We didn't have video in those days, so we didn't have a video camera. I'm pretty sure we didn't have a video camera. Yeah no, I remember that now. She used the ladder to go up and watch. But then that became part of the piece. And I'm pretty sure I went up the ladder. At least in the early version of it. It [the piece] took on some other form after we got back from tour. I think we took it to Victoria. Did we? We must have done it at Simon Fraser [University]. Victoria. We took it to Québec City.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Granville Island, I think, was one of the earlier performances

Peter Bingham: Yeah, the Waterfront. I did shows there too. Yeah, changed around quite a bit. It was pretty chaotic. I remember people complaining that we didn't look like dancers. Which didn't matter to me. That part was... fine.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Is that criticism that you had already heard?

Peter Bingham: Yeah, not that directly. I got it in Toronto. They're very... they're a bit stuffy there.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Mm hmm. Interesting. I would be curious to know the historical parallels between Vancouver and Toronto’s contemporary dance scene at that time.

Peter Bingham: Yeah. I think the performance art and theatre coming out of Toronto is really strong, but the dance, I think, has been held back by tradition. I think Vancouver had much more of an alignment with Montréal. I taught there and performed there a few times.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Cool. Would you say in terms of their ethos, or–

Peter Bingham: Just their interest is much more–

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: –conceptual? Similar artistic concerns?

Peter Bingham: Yeah, I remember Marie Chouinard coming to class.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, she's a really cool performance artist and dancer.

Peter Bingham: She's great. She's ultra these days.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. So had you worked with Karen [Jamieson] before Coming Out of Chaos?

Peter Bingham: No. I knew who she was. And I saw her perform here. I saw her perform the little baby piano here [at the Western Front].

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: She played piano?

Peter Bingham: Those little toy pianos.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Oh, a baby piano, not a baby grand piano [laughs]. Oh, that's hilarious. Cool.

Peter Bingham: Yeah. I don’t know. I think we all felt like [there was] Terminal City Dance, and then the rest of us which wasn't EDAM yet. I think there was an affiliation, you know, post-modern affiliation. Radical. Was the word that was used often. Irreverent. There was certainly a label that I got attached to me. Emma Metcalfe Hurst: I feel like that word comes up a lot in relation with Western Front [laughs].

Peter Bingham: Yeah, well, that's what I mean about it being free, free-for-all.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. Very much so. And then why did you participate in Coming Out of Chaos?

Peter Bingham: Oh, because I was asked to do it and it was a job and I thought it would be fun with Karen [Jamieson]. I had never worked with Barbara [Bourget] and Jay [Hirabayashi] or Lola [MacLaughlin] and Ahmed [Hassan] and Savannah [Walling]. There was a common thread amongst us. I don't know if it was in improvisation, or if it was because those guys didn't really improvise. Like I said earlier, they counted everything. I didn't know that that was legitimatification. That's a word, legitimatification?

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Legitimize? [laughs]

Peter Bingham: I don't know. I mean dancers count, don't they? But they don't–dancing is dancing. Counting is counting. I mean, that's the objection I have. I think you can use counts to get together, but you gotta get them to the point where you've dropped them. And that's hard. I feel like in a lot of ways it's better to work on the dancing and rhythm, and that the counting will work itself out, like let the timing, so if we need to count a little moment, sure. Just to get tied together. But the music is your score, and so is the room you're in, the kind of movement we're doing. It was basically radical athletic movement. It's very difficult to repeat.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: And not very conducive to counting.

Peter Bingham: Well, it never looked like we were, you know we'd improvise it and we knew it looked good. And then we'd try and put it together. Without video cameras, just from memory. And it would never ever look like even a quarter as good as when you're improvising it. So it was, I mean it was chaotic. I remember bumping into Jennifer [Mascall] two or three times. In Victoria, we put a foot through a wall.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Lola Ryan mentioned that she remembers–

Peter Bingham: Was it a fist or a–?

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: A fist, yeah, punching a wall.

Peter Bingham: Yeah

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: And she couldn't remember why, but it did happen.

Peter Bingham: I think she just was coming around the corner and the wall was there and she smucked it.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Ahhh there you go, yeah.

Peter Bingham: Yeah, which, you know, added to the reputation.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. High intensity. At what point do you remember bringing video equipment into the rehearsal space?

Peter Bingham: When we could afford it. I started using video equipment in the rehearsal space in probably 1988, '87.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: So further along then.

Peter Bingham: We got a special grant from the Canada Council for the four choreographers, so they gave us each $5,000 and said, It's for you guys, it's not for the operations – because we weren't really paying ourselves. So I went out and bought a video camera, and we had some use of the video cameras up here [at Western Front] but they’re quite covetous of their equipment up there. So if they weren't involved, they didn't usually let people use it.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Do you remember what equipment they had?

Peter Bingham: They had 3/4" video, television video cameras. Not the big roll-around kind, but big professional video cameras.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: And those were the ones that also had the long chords with them too, right?

Peter Bingham: They all had chords in those days. Nothing happened without chords.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: I really enjoyed the Movement Arts series in the Western Front archives. With Jane [Ellison] and Lola Ryan and Michael Brodie?

Peter Bingham: [Michael] Brodie's a visual artist, like a painter.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: That was a really neat piece. It was sort of a collaboration between dancers and the camera – like a series of studies, and not just treating the camera like an objective, surveillant eye, but thinking more about the choreographic potential of the camera as a participant.

Peter Bingham: I don't remember that. It's interesting.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. It seemed really forward-thinking looking back at it. It was in the late ‘70s, ‘79 I think that they were doing it.

Peter Bingham: Steve Paxton and Paul Wong did a piece here [at Western Front] called Asteroid. I think they digitized it. They put Paul [Wong] in the centre with the video camera. And Steve [Paxton] danced around the camera. See, there's conception for you. That's Steve [Paxton] for you too. He just finds himself locked in on a small idea and just performs it for an hour.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. The minutiae of a movement. So what was the most challenging part about developing Coming Out of Chaos?

Peter Bingham: Trying to deal with the chaos. Basically, you know, counting. I've said it a number of times already. I didn't feel like I was dancing. So I don't know what it looked like every week. Like I said, video wasn't part of our world, and it was very expensive to get something video'd.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. So access to equipment was also an inhibiting factor.

Peter Bingham: Yeah, well the lower-end equipment started getting better. I had a Super 8, Super VHS camera. The first one I bought. It worked for a while. Then the small cameras now, like just the drugstore cameras and the phones and stuff. Completely turned around.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Much easier to use now and more readily available. And then what did you find to be the most meaningful part about developing Coming Out of Chaos?

Peter Bingham: Learning how to cooperate and to get the best out of myself, I guess.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. A few people have said that it was really a challenging experience, but they learned how to work with each other and better understand each other's aesthetic and conceptual concerns.

Peter Bingham: Well, that was one of the problems with that piece is that Karen [Jamieson] picked a bunch of artists. It would have been a totally different piece if she had hired half a dozen contemporary dancers, she would have had more consistency.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. Do you have any speculation about why Karen [Jamieson] put you all together?

Peter Bingham: I think we were probably the best group available for what she wanted to do. I think it would have been really great to have a better idea of what the process was gonna be like so we could either buy-in or opt-out. I don't know. I mean, I have good memories, as well as frustrating memories. I enjoyed the technical-end of the work, like dragging lighting cables around. And like when we got to Québec we had to hang a whole lighting plot and all the wiring and stuff I had. We shipped it up these stairs into this little performance space. It was nightmarish in that, you know, we had to dance that night.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. And you had to prep everything. The whole stage and lighting. That's a lot. What do you remember about the rehearsals and performances of Coming Out of Chaos?

Peter Bingham: I remember Ahmed [Hassan] playing his drums behind a wall of people. It's a form that Karen [Jamieson's] used many times since, and maybe before that too. There's five [people] lined up and Ahmed [Hassan] was dancing behind it. Playing his drum. I remember doing a duet with Lola Ryan, which is kind of like a wrestling duet her and I were quite comfortable with. I don't have a lot of clear memories of it. It's a long time ago.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Were there any impressions or personal feelings that came out of that process?

Peter Bingham: I think that I understood Karen [Jamieson's] movement vocabulary by the end of it – not to do it, just to understand it, and that it's been consistent ever since. She started developing this thing. Here. You can't see it, you can only hear it. Like this, you know, [does hand gestures]. She was always trying to move herself into a state. I've seen a lot of performance of “state,” particularly here at Western Front, and I think conceptually, it's interesting, but it's not so interesting for an audience.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Formally.

Peter Bingham: Yeah. So I've always wondered about Karen [Jamieson's] work that way, because it does have form and stuff, but it also has this consistence and insistence of living in that vocabulary. Same as Paula Ross. Paula Ross looks like that. I'm sure I am too except I just don't see it. I'm sure we all are.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, it's hard to be objective about one's own practice. So just moving on to the next question here, is there a single word that you would use to describe the process of Coming Out of Chaos?

Peter Bingham: Learning.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: I think you also said chaotic earlier too.

Peter Bingham: Yeah, I did.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah [both laugh]. Okay, so next question, could you share any memories you have about working with Ahmed Hassan and Lola MacLaughlin?

Peter Bingham: I did lots of work with Ahmed [Hassan], and Lol [MacLaughlin] and I also did duets together. Made at least one duet together which we performed at the Playhouse. Ahmed [Hassan] and I were, you know, just basically friends, and we worked together through that vein and I've always felt an attachment to him because of his MS [Multiple Sclerosis]. And you know, him and I performed right into that.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Right, yeah. It was around the time you were all working together when his legs started to give out, right?

Peter Bingham: He crumbled. He crumbled during the Chaos rehearsals.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Oh, did he?

Peter Bingham: Yeah. Didn't know what was happening with him and then we found out probably six or eight months later, maybe? Lola MacLaughlin would remember better. But yeah, no, I did quite a bit of solo dancing and Ahmed [Hassan] was playing in his wheelchair. And Lola [MacLaughlin] and I did duets together, we improvised together. I believe she trusted me to look after her, so she made a lot more stuff go on, physically. I don't know, I felt Lola [MacLaughlin] had a very specific aesthetic that wasn't particularly copacetic with mine. We could work together, but she was so design-oriented.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: That's in an interesting way to put it. What do you mean by that?

Peter Bingham: There was a lot of form and her movement choices. Form in the space that she was working in. She always had sets – one kind or another. And she had kind of an insistence about the quality of the work that she was putting out. And that all worked to her favour, I believe. Even when she left behind EDAM, she left behind support. And it took her a couple of years to get that happening.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Right. And then she opened up her own dance company?

Peter Bingham: She has her own company. Lola Maclaughlin Dance.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: And that was based out in Toronto, right?

Peter Bingham: No.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Oh, it was based here.

Peter Bingham: Yeah. She was in Toronto. She was working with Robert. So EDAM formed, and Lola [MacLaughlin] and Ahmed [Hassan] – they were a couple. They immediately went to Toronto and worked with Robert. So it was obviously not an exclusive relationship, the EDAM one. And then Jay [Hirabayashi] went to work for Karen [Jamieson Dance Company]. He wasn't in Chaos. He was in Sisyphus, which is a perfect piece for him. And Barbara [Bourget] and Lola [MacLaughlin] made a duet together that I remember. Wearing wigs. I dunno, it's all a blur really. I was working primarily on my addiction to television, so I did a series of performance pieces called Teller of-visions. And Barbara [Bourget] was the TV tart in that piece. It wasn't really funny, but it kind of was funny. We were climbing on each other and slamming each other against the wall. And jumping on each other.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Did you have a TV screen involved in it?

Peter Bingham: Actually, I had Karen's wall from Sisyphus.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Oh, funny

Peter Bingham: She lent it to me.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Where did you perform that piece?

Peter Bingham: Performed it in Ottawa. Performed at the Metropolis Art Show. It was one of their major productions. Formed it downstairs in the studio, and I don't know, twenty-four dancers in it. It was all conceptual work. I had like twenty-four dancers all sitting, looking at an ear. So everybody's looking at an ear, and when we picked somebody to follow, if they moved like that, everybody moved together. Down, up, around. So it was like watching a sea of heads, co-ordinating.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: That reminds me of your piece with Helen Clarke and Jane Ellison with the paper-maché prop. Was it like a paper-maché eye?

Peter Bingham: Big breast thing?

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah.

Peter Bingham: I made that breast. Yeah. That was Jane [Ellison].

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Oh, that was Jane. Okay.

Peter Bingham: Yeah. It's called Aboutabout (1979). There’s a scene where I wore a unitard in that. Not that I would ever do it for anybody else but Helen [Clarke]. I don't know if I answered your question about Lola [MacLaughlin] and Ahmed [Hassan].

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: You gave some good anecdotes about working with them in Coming Out of Chaos. Do you remember anything else about working with them?

Peter Bingham: I did spend a long time doing this rapping-clapping thing. And using Jabberwocky as a literal form. Literary form I should say.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Was that Lola Ryan's influence?

Peter Bingham: No, that was Ahmed [Hassan's] own intentions. He was like, [does hand clapping rhythms]. I can't do it so well because I have Parkinsons. Anyways, we all learned Jabberwocky with Ahmed [Hassan].

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: That's amazing! What a wonderful rhythm to come up with and work with.

Peter Bingham: Yeah, well, that was slow. I'm quite slow with my body these days. We used to improvise a lot together, Ahmed [Hassan] and I. Using that "psycho-babble" we called it. That was our ongoing practice.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Could you describe how those collaborations would work? Would you be dancing and he would be making rhythms with his body?

Peter Bingham: Well, we would both be speaking and clapping together. I wouldn't be dancing.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: So it'd be poly-rhythmic, and explorations of sound as well.

Peter Bingham: Physical expressions and sound. Ahmed [Hassan] used to play a berimbau a lot too. It's a kind of bow that the Kapoeira people [from Brazil] use. Bing bing bing bing bing bing po po bing bing bing. Keep thinking I've got my hat on.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: [laughs]

Peter Bingham: Not used to being without it.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: So, for this next question, we've already touched on this a bit but how did Coming Out of Chaos shape your creative and collaborative relationships, and how did it play a role in the development of EDAM?

Peter Bingham: Well, it played a role in starting EDAM just by getting us together and putting us in a room together. I don't know if it was sort of like such a contrast to the way that we were used to working that it made us drawn towards each other. EDAM didn't really last that long if you look at the history of EDAM now. It went from '82 to '89. I mean, before it was just me. That's what I was straight up telling you earlier. About me quitting. I was the only one that ever quit, you know, and then I ended up with the whole shebang because I just didn't want to quit. When they all started going I said, Well, I'm not going anywhere.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, that’s a strange inversion of events. So my last question for this section is, do you think a work like this would be made today? Why or why not?

Peter Bingham: I heard she [Karen Jamieson] was making it.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: She's been doing a legacy project called Body-to-Body where she's working with young dancers to recreate the Solo From Chaos. I don't think there are any plans in the works to recreate Coming Out of Chaos as a whole. There is a recording of it, but the film is deteriorated. There's only a handful of photographs that we have.

Peter Bingham: I know I used to have photographs of Karen and Savannah and Ahmed and stuff. And you know you keep them forever, and then you wonder why you got them so you let them go. I'm sure I have a pile of photographs somewhere, like in the form of either negatives or press releases. I've got poster image documentation for almost everything we've ever done. And I've got hundreds and hundreds of hours of videotape. They go back to, probably start around 1989. I have some footage of Teller-visions.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Have you digitized any of your material yet?

Peter Bingham: Just a little bit of it. For me making work.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: It's hard to even consider that when you're still producing work.

Peter Bingham: Yeah. I've also had an attitude about video. I like video in dance, but I don't like it of dance. Video of dance usually tells you what the piece is for the rest of its life. Once you've watched the video, that's it. That's the piece. The documentation becomes the art. Whether it's a collaboration or not. It's the same with dance. I mean, where is the eye of the cameraman? That's who you're watching. So unless it's a dead shot, you know; two wide angles and a front shot, it's just dead. Pretty much has to be in the eye of the cameraman.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Right. Just to return back to that last question, how do you think work like this would be received by audience critics and other dancers and choreographers today?

Peter Bingham: I don't know if it would be any different. Some people would like it, and some people would find it... chaotic. Trying to remember the costumes we had even. I remember there was a couple of dresses. I was wearing a pair of coveralls or a shirt. I was wearing a shirt that was sewn to a shirt. Susan Berganzi. I had a shirt that buttoned up this way, on my legs in a shirt buttoned down this way. Lola Ryan had the same thing, a different colour. Jennifer [Mascall], I think she had a long dress on. Skirt. And this is from photographic memories. It's not from the piece.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: That’s fine. So then for this last part, as I said, it’s mostly just conversational to discuss the project as a whole. As a dancer what do you think this project, an oral history, could be used for or by whom?

Peter Bingham: Well, for the same reason as people make things; to show it to people. To see the mind of Karen [Jamieson], back then and now. I mean, I'd be curious to know if it looked the same.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Do you think it would be a useful resource to have for both dancers or researchers?

Peter Bingham: For anybody who's making their own work. It's good to look at other people's work so you don't do it. To let artists have their work. Honour that. I mean, we all get work from each other. There's no escaping it. We're just four legs and a torso. You can only do so much. I remember thinking that we were doing a lot of things that were incoherent. Not incoherent – I wasn't sure why we were doing a ballet class in the morning, for example. Even though enjoyed doing them with Diane particularly.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Do you remember being able to ask frank questions like that?

Peter Bingham: I do remember being able to do that. Or at least I remember not being shy to do that. But we were all after her for what she wanted.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: That's been brought up before. People seemed really unclear about what Karen's vision was exactly, that she was doing a lot of internal thinking and not necessarily communicating her vision very well to the dancers.

Peter Bingham: Well, you know the works that have followed that piece, like Sisyphus (1983), Altamira (1986), Rainforest (1987). They're all full-length pieces. And they were quite the statement. I'm surprised she's not using one of those pieces as a memory of her.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: We’ll touch on that in our interview together, but the reason why we’re focusing on Coming Out of Chaos is it’s broader impact on contemporary dance in Vancouver. As well as the formation of EDAM, and you all pursuing your own trajectories after that. So in that regard, it has a lot of roots.

Peter Bingham: You know, I think Chaos confused her as much as it did us.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: That’s a really good statement. This project has been a whole exercise in finding form from chaos, or at least trying to arrange it in such a way to have some clarity. Come out of the chaos.

Peter Bingham: It would have been interesting if we had to let go to the chaos. Instead of trying to control it. I think it's more along our aesthetics. That's where the counting comes in and confusing. It's like why are we counting?

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: That's not chaotic.

Peter Bingham: Well, we can't be chaotic if we're counting.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: So that might be an interesting way of thinking about how to recreate the piece today.

Peter Bingham: Yeah. I don't think dancers count nearly as much as they used to.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Where does that come from?

Peter Bingham: It would be the post-modernists who would have been the non-counters. Improvisers. Or, you know, like figuring out how to dance in unison without having to use numbers. Which you can do also by slowing things down and just counting them out and counting them out and counting them out. And finding the way the rhythm is in it and that requires a tremendous amount of time.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: And patience. Okay, just a couple more questions here: what questions would you like to be explored by looking at Vancouver dance history through the model of oral history and storytelling? I guess I'm also wondering if there are stories that relate to this project or these questions that I've asked you that need to be told.

Peter Bingham: I can't think of any that haven't been told.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: What about focussing a bit on teaching practices?

Peter Bingham: Well, as far as my teaching is concerned, it just comes spontaneously. I don't try and create an oral history. I don't know that anybody does. I do try and remember to share my past. Especially since I'm not dancing. I'm just sitting on a stool.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: So you're still choreographing?

Peter Bingham: I'm making improvisations. I've had a group of dancers that I've been working with for a long time and we're creating very mentally tough scores to stay with, but the crux of them is the remembering of the score. Speaking of counting, it's about remembering and looking for aesthetics. At this point, we're looking for lines, and then at this point we're looking for stillness. And, you know, she’s creating a timeline. It gets to the finish line. It's hard for the dancers, but I think they really appreciate it. It's the kind of challenge that allows them to dance. Which, as an improviser, it's pretty important for me to allow them to dance. I haven't always.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Is that a recent turn in your teaching style then?

Peter Bingham: There's always been a little bit of improvising in my teaching style. Always. But my pieces, I had little bits of improvisation in them and then slowly over the last few years started to shift into like, okay, here's your first couple of minutes of choreography, now you're improvising. And you got three minutes and you're working with that guy over there with his horn. And then the piece comes back into form. So having gone from that form, I go on and off of improvising to improvising completely. It's fun for me to try and figure out how to make the dancers look like they know what they're doing because they do, but they also don't.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Does EDAM still work with musicians?

Peter Bingham: Yeah. I'd bring in other improvisers from the States, mostly. Andrew from Montréal. Lynn Stanley, he's in Edmonton now. Lisa and Steve and Chris Aiken and Ray Chung. I've brought in lots of people over the years to dance with me. And generally speaking, it’s been live music. Mike Vargas. Ron, Sam Werth, Nikki Carter, used to be Coat Cook. And Jeff Corness. I think I even worked with your dad [Peter Hurst]. He did a project for EDAM. So it's interesting you mentioned an oral history because I haven't allowed them to write the scores down. I've made four pieces so far, they were all about twenty minutes each. And they're heavily scored, but they're not allowed to write the scores.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: So is it by memory then?

Peter Bingham: Yeah.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: I guess there’s also visual memory by looking at the dancers.

Peter Bingham: Well, they clue each other. They lead and follow each other. They develop relationships because of the score.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: That’s all of my questions. Thank you for meeting with me, Peter!

Peter Bingham: It's not a problem. I had time right now.