Savannah Walling & Emma Metcalfe Hurst
Interview for Coming Out of Chaos: A Vancouver Dance Story
Version 2 (Long)

August 21, 2019

To view more archival materials, see Terry Hunter & Savannah Walling, Terminal City Dance Collection

Savannah Walling, Theatre artist, writer, performer, Artistic Director of Vancouver Moving Theatre and the DTES Heart of the City Festival, dancer in Coming Out of Chaos (1982), founding member of Terminal City Dance Research

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, with extra additions for more historical context.

ACRONYMS: 

• Terminal City Dance = TCD

• Terminal City Dance Research = TCDR*

• Simon Fraser University = SFU

• Vancouver Moving Theatre = VMT 

• Vancouver Dance Centre = VDC
  
  

*Terminal City Dance changed its public operating name to Terminal City Dance Research in February 1982. 

~

Savannah Walling: So, what I've created for you is a chronology for Terminal City Dance (TCD) in the years from 1980 to 1983. That is going to give you an indication of what was happening, what was created, and where the company was at – starting to rip apart in diverse directions: this shifting, evolving organizational structure, the rehearsals, repertoire being created or presented by TCD, and other creative activities. One such was a Performance Exchange series involving many of the dancers from Coming Out of Chaos plus other artists. Other creative activity led up to performances at the 10th annual Dance in Canada Conference (Ottawa, 1982), where TCD presented four choreographies: Solo from [Coming Out of] Chaos, Banana Split, Creature, and Drum Mother. And finally two new companies were born after Karen, Terry Hunter, and myself resigned from TCD.  

The TCD chronology will give you a better understanding of the people involved, and threads and rivers running through this history. There was a real ferment of dance activity in the 1970s and early 1980s. The reason I created the chronology is because SO much was happening, that I’ve had a hard time remembering the details of what, when and with whom.  My memories were colliding, overlapping, elusive, or lost. Constructing the chronology is restoring memories of that time of Chaos and of the new organizations and creations emerging from, and alongside Chaos. I will also pass on to you media reviews and quotes about TCD. These describe the company, its impact, and the artistic territory from which Coming Out of Chaos emerged.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Oh wow, this is amazing and really generous of you! Thank you. One of my first impulses when I started this project was to make a timeline for everything that happened because there are so many notable events and memories to document. It’s a lot of history to filter through. 

Savannah Walling: I had never done a timeline for TCD before. I mean, I've kept records of bits of its history, but I’d never assembled all these pieces into “The Big Picture.” There was a lot written about the company [TCD/TCDR] during the years it existed and toured. Very little has been written since then. This interview is an opportunity to sort through the chaos of memories and emotions surrounding the creation of Coming out of Chaos and other TCD repertoire, the transformation of TCD, and emergence from “chaos” of new performing arts organizations and a dance centre.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: I first found out about TCD through work I was doing in the Western Front’s performing arts archives. Some of the older audiovisual materials in their archives were documentation of TCD with you, Terry Hunter, and Karen Rimmer. I didn’t realize at the time that was Karen’s former last name. There was also Linda Rubin, who organized a contact improv conference at Western Front over a weekend? 

Savannah Walling: Yes. In 1973 Linda Rubin relocated her Synergy Movement Workshop studio from Robson and Granville to the Western Front. She hosted contact improv events. She was one of the dance teachers with whom I studied in the 1970s. 

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: So, in a lot of ways, this project is piecing together those early years for me, and hopefully for others too. 

Savannah Walling: An important turning point was the decision to break up the TCD collective; the culmination of two years of gradual fracturing, intermixed with attempts to create a new organizational frame – large and resilient enough to contain the diverse creative energies of its founding members: Karen [Jamieson], Terry [Hunter], and myself.   

In February 1982, the company assumed a new name, TCDR Centre, and a new organizing structure. The new organizing structure was an umbrella organisation with three main areas of activity: A program of Exchange Performances, initiated and curated by myself in the beginning and later by Barbara Clausen, I believe; a dance company directed by Karen [Jamieson]; and dance collaborations by Terry [Hunter] and myself. All of these activities and touring projects were produced by Terminal City Dance Research. We also assumed new roles: Karen [Jamieson] as Artistic Director and Terry [Hunter] and myself as Associate Directors. The Performance Exchanges started in 1981 and brought together choreographers and artists from many disciplines to meet and exchange ideas through informal studio-performances. This was also an opportunity for work-in-process presentations of new work at TCD including Coming out of Chaos.

Between February and June 1982, we were rehearsing Karen [Jamieson’s] choreography for Coming Out of Chaos and touring it across Canada; Terry [Hunter] debuted the masked drum dance character Drum Mother and a new drum-dance choreography Drum House; Terry [Hunter] and I (with musician Ahmed Hassan), toured our work to Haida Gwaii; I curated Performance Exchanges; TCD premiered a video-documentary (Terminal City… Dance at Work by Michael Goldberg); and all of us traveled to Ottawa to present choreographies at the 10th Annual Dance in Canada Conference. This was a time of great creative ferment. By March 1983, Karen was touring an ensemble of dancers, and Terry and I were touring Eastern Canada with our own repertoire. 

On September 1, 1983, Karen [Jamieson], Terry [Hunter] and I resigned from TCD and Barbara Clausen was named Director of Terminal City Dance Research Centre. This was the first appearance of the term “Centre.” Terry, Karen, and I went on to form two separate and independent performing and touring companies. Karen [Jamieson] formed the Karen Jamieson Dance Company. Terry [Hunter] and I formed Special Delivery Dance / Music / Theatre, today called Vancouver Moving Theatre. In November 1983, the Board of Directors of TCD moved to recognize Karen [Jamieson], Terry [Hunter], and myself as founding members of TCDR Centre. 

TCD Society continued to support the work of TCDR Centre, under the direction of Barbara Clausen, “as a force for new dance in Vancouver by means of the Performance Exchange series, the Independent Dance program, and the creation of a centre for dance information and exchange in Vancouver.” [Barbara [Clausen] moved forward on the search for space to house several working groups and a central administrative space.] During 1985, TCDR co-produced the 2nd Annual Dance Week, at the Firehall Theatre, a program of independents from Vancouver and across Canada and produced the Vancouver Dance Calendar.

This TCDR vision merged with a concurrent push by the larger community to form a support organization for all dance in Vancouver. [In the early 1980s, an ad-hoc group of Vancouver dance company managers met informally to share information and discuss issues, including the need for a multi-purpose dance centre. A Vancouver Dance Alliance had formed, made up of the management of nine major Vancouver Dance Companies, including: Karen Jamieson Dance Company managed by Joyce Ozier; Special Delivery Dance / Music / Theatre managed by Carolyn Lair; and TCDR managed by Barbara Clausen, representing the city’s independent dancers.  

[In May 1985, Barbara [Clausen] resigned from TCDR to move to Ottawa and work for the dance office of the Canada Council for the arts. She passed on a box of TCD Society records to Joyce Ozier as a way that TCD Society could facilitate the society's transformation into the eventual organization that the Vancouver Dance Alliance and others were planning to create. A decision was made to make The Dance Centre project the main focus of TCD. TCD’s name and non-profit and charitable status were utilized to access funding for a feasibility study for a new dance centre. Crediting for TCD-funded projects taking place in 1986 was assigned to The Vancouver Dance Centre – including a feasibility study for a new Dance Centre. Joyce Ozier was hired to coordinate the one-year pilot project in 1985-86. Grant Strate (now the board chairman of TCD Society) and Joyce Ozier (now the administrator of TCD Society) opened an office in Gastown at 1 Alexander ST.  Over the course of 1985-86, the name Vancouver Dance Centre became the public face of TCD Society and the name under which projects were credited.

On August 12, 1986, the TCD Society’s name was changed to the VDC Dance Centre Society. Grant Strate was elected president of the board, and Barbara Bourget was a board member. On Barbara Clausen’s return from Ottawa in 1987, she was hired as The Dance Centre’s first Executive Director. Today, The Dance Centre operates out of and manages the Scotiabank Dance Centre facilities. 

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Oh wow. That’s a really important history I didn’t know! 

Savannah Walling: That's why I've given you that chronology: the larger picture of what was going on.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Definitely, yeah. And also where we are today. 

Savannah Walling: Yes, and where we are today; a part of Vancouver’s dance history that has been little recognized or remembered.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: So let's change that! [laughs] Well, thank you for that introduction. I was wondering if you could talk about your background entering into contemporary dance. Could you please share your dancing story?

Savannah Walling: I will do my best on that. As a kid, I had a bit of exposure to tap and modern dance – just a bit. It didn't really hold, except for a love of spinning. My sisters and I used to create and act out mini-creations inspired by musicals like GIlbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado or old songs like Sweet Molly Malone. I sang in church choirs, starting at four years old. In high school, I studied trombone, and performed in the marching band at football half-time shows and in orchestra for high school musicals. By university, I discovered ethnic dance, especially Balkan, Hungarian, and Israeli dances. I danced with Miriam Lidster’s Stanford University folk dancers at local events, before travelling for a year in Eastern Europe and the near East.

Then in 1968 I emigrated to Vancouver with my first husband, Jim Bryan, in protest against America’s  Vietnam War and shock at the assassinations of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. 

Jim and I had danced together in university but in Vancouver, had trouble finding a place to folk dance as we didn’t know the city. After I got a job as a library clerk at Simon Fraser University [SFU] on Burnaby Mountain, I enrolled in the non-credit dance workshop that I discovered. My first teacher was Anna Wyman, who replaced Iris Garland who was on sabbatical, and I continued with Iris Garland after she returned. The non-credit contemporary dance workshops were housed under SFU’s Centre for Communications and the Arts, along with music, theatre and film programs. These free workshops attracted dancers of all skill levels from across the city. Such an exciting opportunity and life-gift when I think back to those days. While I was working in the library and studying dance at SFU, I also dropped into theatre workshops taught by John Juliani, founder of the Savage God Theatre Company.

I was so shy about stepping into modern dance that it took me almost a year to get the courage to move from blue jeans into leotards to be a “real” dancer. In addition to SFU’s modern dance classes, I was also going to Helen Goodwin’s dance workshops at Intermedia: a collective of dance, media, and music artists working in a warehouse on 575 Beatty Street, and performed in a group choreography by choreographer Yvonne Ranier, visiting from New York City. I also took some classes from Paula Ross at her Hastings Street studio – I knew that she did concerts, but I hadn’t yet seen her choreography. I knew of her reputation as a rigorous teacher of high integrity. It was all very exciting. 

The SFU non-credit program up on Burnaby Mountain was a super opportunity! The training that Iris Garland provided combined technique, improv, and choreography – all strongly influenced by the Alwin Nikolais technique. Norman Legget was brought in to teach ballet, but other influences arrived too. SFU brought in exciting touring companies like Entre-Six and Mime Omnibus from Québec, and Theater of the Deaf from Gallaudet University in Washington, DC, a centre for deaf and visual performing arts.

SFU also hosted month-long intensive dance workshops by guest instructors. They included New York City dancers Phyllis Lamhut and Gladys Bailin from the Alwin Nikolais Dance Theatre Company, Chase Robinson and Albert Reid from the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, and Ontario dancers Judy Jarvis and Danny Grossman.

SFU also hosted intensive mask and mime workshops: Mummenschanz, a Swiss mask theatre troupe; Haro Maskow and Adrienne Pecknold from the Canadian Mime Theatre from Niagara on the Lake; and Claude Kipnis, a French Mime who established a company in Illinois. I also attended their workshops. 

Another highlight at SFU was Mediums (May 1969), an experimental interdisciplinary fusion created by Karen [Jamieson], her then-husband filmmaker David Rimmer, dancer Edith Feinstein, and Edith’s partner composer Phil Werren. Such exciting work by SFU dance students and faculty!    

During those years working as a clerk in the SFU library, I dropped into theatre workshops offered by theatre resident John Juliani. I gave up my lunch breaks to do this – juggling around my work schedule – and got into a bit of trouble with my employer. I finally quit my job as a library clerk where I worked under the basement’s fluorescent lighting, after experiencing  piercing, unrelenting headaches. From the day I left that library job, dance became my passion and life work.

In the fall of 1969, another exciting invitation: Iris Garland took a sabbatical for several months of intensive dance work with a few students from her SFU dance workshops. The dancers  included me, Karen [Jamieson], Sharon MacDonald, Dickie Uhte (who would later design Drum Mother’s costume), Edith Feinstein, and Betsy O’Neill. We had rehearsal space at the Alexandra Neighbourhood House in exchange for teaching community workshops by some of the more experienced dancers like Sharon MacDonald. We trained with Iris Garland in technique, improv, and composition, and did a bit of local touring and touring into the states. It was during my time with this group that I created my first big group choreography, Group Maya. After Iris Garland returned to her university job, we emerging dancers were worried about how to move forward. I thought, Someone better choreograph something to keep us together.  So I volunteered. I choreographed Group Maya and the dancers were myself, my husband Jim Bryan, Edith Feinstein, Betsy Klein, Karen Jamieson, Sharon MacDonald, Diki Uhte, and David Dressler, with face masks created by Martha Smythe. We performed Group Maya in the SFU theatre at the Festival of Religion and the Arts, sponsored by the Simon Fraser University Chaplaincy and the Centre for Communications and the Arts.

After this performance – and following a summer intensive workshop at SFU with New York dancer Phyllis Lamhutt – Karen Jamieson took off for New York City to study dance at the Louis-Nikolais Dance Theatre Lab in fall 1970. I followed her there after Christmas. The school was housed in a huge building called The Space, at 344 W. 36th Street, in midtown Manhattan’s garment district. The building also housed the Alwin Nikolais Dance Company, the Murray Lewis Dance Company and Joseph Chaikin’s experimental Open Theatre.  

Our teachers at the Louis-Nikolais Dance Theatre Lab included dancers Murray Louis, Alwin Nikolais, Phyllis Lamhut, Gladys Bailin, and the legendary Hanya Holm from Germany. The training went on all day long: technique, improv, and composition. Large classes – forty to fifty or more dancers. I used to go upstairs to see the open rehearsals put on by the Open Theatre of The Serpent and The Mutation Show. Life-changing to witness this physical theatre.

Karen [Jamieson] and I also studied at the Merce Cunningham Studio at Westbeth in Greenwich Village, where our teachers included Chase Robinson, Albert Reid, and Merce Cunningham.  We studied ballet with Alfredo Corvino at Dance Circle, on 8th Avenue and 47th Street. He was an exceptional ballet instructor from Uruguay whose Cecchetti training method was passed onto him by Margaret Craske. Serene, accessible, anatomically sound, beautiful classes that drew contemporary and ballet dancers from across the city..

During my two years of study in New York City (1971-72), I performed in concerts for independent choreographers like Karen and Victoria Larraine, toured with the Merle Lister Dance Company, and performed in group choreographies with the Phyllis Lamhut Dance Company, including Field of View with music by Phil Werren, at Barnard College, and with Jamie Cunningham and the ACME Dance Company, performed on the US Treasury steps in Wall Street.  

My partner Terry [Hunter] joined me in New York City for part of the time where he got a janitorial job at The Space. Terry [Hunter], Karen [Jamieson], and I attended so many exciting concerts. I remember John Cranko’s Stuttgart Ballet, the Joffrey Ballet, the New York City Ballet, Paul Taylor Dance Company, Erick Hawkins Dance Company, Paul Taylor Dance Company, Martha Graham Dance Company, Richard Schechner’s Performance Group, Andrei Serban’s theatre productions at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Centre, and composers Meredith Monk and Elizabeth Swados. Lots of inspiration. Lots to push against. Learning what excited and moved me and what didn’t. The training in New York CIty was hugely valuable and so was the self-discipline that came with it. Rich artistic nourishment, though it was increasingly obvious that I was walking a different  creative road.

On coming back to Vancouver in May 1972, I continued to choreograph and take dance classes at the Western Front, the Arcadian Hall, and SFU on Burnaby Mountain where Iris Garland was teaching and bringing in guest instructors. Karen [Jamieson] returned to Vancouver after performing with the Alwin Nikolais Dance Theatre, and began teaching dance at SFU. At some point, Karen [Jamieson] invited me to assume some of her dance classes, so I became a sessional lecturer in contemporary dance up on Burnaby mountain from 1975-1979.

Memories tumble together… all the years Karen Jamieson and I were involved in dance together. We danced in each other’s choreographies at SFU’s concerts of student and faculty repertoire. In 1974, Karen Jamieson and I put on our own concert of choreography – I have a photograph of my dad with the poster on the wall. We danced with the Alexandra House Dance Workshop and in Yvonne Ranier’s group choreography in 1969. We danced in Savage God: My Celebration at the Vancouver Art Gallery. The marriage of theatre director John Juliani and Donna Wong in January 1970 was both theatre and living ceremony: the story of their lives from conception to wedding day. We choreographed and performed with other dancers; an evening of Dance Loops for Intermedia’s 3rd and final multi-art exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery in May 1970. There were aluminum geodesic domes in every room of the gallery. Each of us dancers choreographed for one of the domes.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: I was going to ask you if that was the Dome Show. 

Savannah Walling: Yeah, that was the Intermedia Dome Show. The 1970s were exciting years:  Taking dance classes at Norbert Vesak’s West Vancouver Studio of Dance and Allied Arts; at Linda Rubin’s Synergy Movement Workshops at Robson and Granville, the Western Front, and the Arcadian Hall where she was joined by Gisa Cole and Jamie Zagoudakis; with choreographer Linda Rabin, visiting from Montréal; and always up on Burnaby Mountain in SFU’s non-credit non-degree dance workshops. 

Mauryne Allan, Freddie Long, Zella Wolofsky and Betsy O’Neill founded Burnaby Mountain Dance on campus at SFU in 1973, and later moved “off the hill,” and became known as Mountain Dance Theatre. They were joined by Barbara Bourget. 

In the 1970s there was a surge of government-funded job creation programs designed for youth, probably hoping to avoid social unrest from unemployed youth flooding the job market. This included summer employment by Opportunities for Youth (OFY) and winter employment by the Local Initiative Program (LIP). These programs opened up opportunities for emerging artists and for new theatre groups like Tahmanous and Touchstone Theatres.

In the summer 1971, I was hired by the Simon Fraser Mime Troupe for a summer in the parks project touring Burnaby parks. We performed The Farm Show and offered mime workshops at community centres and institutions. That’s where I met and fell in love with Terry [Hunter]. In fall 1972, some of the troupe (including me) went on to jobs with Vancouver Lab Theatre (VLT), teaching movement and physical theatre workshops at schools, institutions and Matsqui Prison Farm, as well as training and exploring in physical theatre. Then Terry Hunter, Doug Vernon, and I (we had worked in both groups) formed the Mime Caravan. We toured BC for two years with Stories and Calamities in Pantomime and other shows. 

From 1975-76, I also performed with and contributed choreography to Contemporary Jazz Dance Theatre, directed by Gisa Cole and Jamie Zagoudakis, later renamed Prism Dance Theatre. Jamie was a jazz choreographer, and Gisa was trained in Martha Graham technique.  

Other memories… one summer, visiting my parent’s home in Hawaii, I studied Hawaiian dance with elder Emma Sharpe… attending workshops in Balinese and Javanese gamelan music and dance at the Western Front and the SFU Music of Two Worlds Summer Music Intensives with K.R.T Wasitodipuro, I Nyoman Wenten, and Nanik Wenten. In 1988, I studied Balinese mask dance with Pak Tutor in Petulu, Bali.

Memories overlapping, tumbling, the 1970s and 1980s… New York City – daytimes studying at the Alwin Nikolais Dance Theatre Lab, then racing to catch classes at the Merce Cunningham Dance Studio, the Alfredo Corvino Ballet Studio, the Dance Theatre of Harlem school for African Dance, up on West 152nd Street… the Lincoln Centre’s Library for the Performing Arts to look at recordings of modern dancers and learn more about the interdisciplinary creations of Sergei Daighilev’s Ballets Russes. 

Back in Vancouver… workshops in Decroux mime with Dean Fogle, neutral and character mask workshops with Wendy Gorling and Doug Vernon. Immersive psycho-physical theatre workshops with visiting artists: Director Richard Schechner, Spalding Gray, and the Performance Group from NYC; Ryszard Cieslak and Yurek Bogajevicz, actors from Jerzy Grotowski’s Polish Laboratory Theatre of Wroclaw; and in Alberta with Richard Fowler and Eugenio Barba, founder of Denmark’s Odin Teatret.

VMT also partnered to bring guest artists to Main Dance Place and the Firehall: Dancer Henry Smith, Artistic Director of SOLARIS / Lakota Dance / Theatre and his practice fusing dance, theatre, mind-body fitness and martial arts; and dancer Jo Lechay (from Montreal’s Création ISIS ) and her collaborator director Eugene Lion (Techniques of Authenticity).  

To deepen our training, TCD brought in guest instructors: Diane Miller (ballet), Iris Garland and Mairin Wilde (Laban), Peter Bingham and Lola Ryan (contact improvisation), Reid Campbell (voice),  Terry Hunter and Sal Ferreras (percussion). VMT brought in guest instructors Lorraine Thomson (Baris dance), Joseph “Pepe” Danza (percussion), Peter Feldman and Peter Eliot Weiss (theatre) and actor singer Ralph Cole (voice). Over these years, dancers were moving into the city, including Barbara Bourget, Judith Marcuse, Lola MacLaughlin, Jennifer Mascall, and Lola Ryan.

Transformative personal turning points for me were: 

• Creative collaborations with actors Pamela Harris and Richard Fowler (The Festival Characters, 1983-85), and UK’s Welfare State International (False Creek, A Visual Symphony, 1986). 

• Receiving  the first annual H.K. Kealiinohomoku Research Choreographic Fellowship in 1988 from Cross Cultural Dance Resources (Flagstaff, USA), awarded to honour the memory of a young dancer who tragically lost her life. A life-gift of a research residency, mentored by dance anthropologist Joann Kealiinohomoku (author of "An anthropologist looks at ballet as a form of ethnic dance" ) and immersing in CCDR’s liibrary of rare books, journals and media on global dance, theatre and music cultures.  Joann  arranged - through her relationships - invitations for me to witness cultural events and ceremonies of the Hopi, Navajo, Yaqui and Apache nations. Humbling and eye opening. 

• Invitations to attend the International School of Theatre Anthropology, directed by Eugenio Barba of Odin Teatret. The 4th session in Holstebro, Denmark (1986) - The Female Role as Represented Onstage in a Variety of Cultures - and the 12th session in Bielefeld, Germany (2000) - Dramaturgical Techniques in the Performing Arts.  An international network of theatre and dance artists, directors, scholars and academics researched multi-cultural acting techniques by means of workshops, lectures, dialogue and performances.  Participating artists included master performers in Brazilian, Nihon Buyo, Odissi dance, Noh Theatre and Peking Opera.

Eye-opening, humbling, inspiring and hugely formative experiences, led by visionary and master artists. So, that's a little bit about my dance history!

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: That's an amazing timeline of events that you've put together!

Savannah Walling: How fascinating to follow the timelines of every single dancer involved in Coming out of Chaos and the histories of every single Vancouver dancer. I am a master of none of those art forms that I described, but every single thread is woven into the fabric of our art practice in Vancouver Moving Theatre, from productions and projects to festivals. The 1970s-1980s were exciting years of experimentation in North America and beyond – in dance, in mime, in physical theatre, in music. Such an exciting time, nourished by many cultural rivers. 

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: What was the creative atmosphere of that time like?

Savannah Walling: Around SFU and the Centre for Communications and the Arts, It was a very welcoming and inclusive atmosphere: a non-credit non-degree program free for anybody in the city. The dance program drew dancers from all over the city from many movement backgrounds. Very accessible... lots  of opportunities… very high-quality teaching. Exposed to multi-art influences, in the work going on at The Centre in dance, theatre, music and film. Lots of cross-disciplinary exploration was part of the zeit-geist, part of the programs’ openness and inclusivity… a very collaborative-friendly environment. The Alwin Nikolais dance technique utilized a less codified vocabulary in contrast to ballet, or the Graham and Cunningham techniques.  

SFU’s theatre stage was an ideal venue for dance and it was accessible for emerging choreographers. You didn’t have to pay for the cost of the lighting equipment, technicians, and the venue. There was a willingness to try anything, and a formidable rigor brought in by dance artists like Phyllis Lamhut, exciting and very challenging.  

But there was some old-style negative baggage brought in by visiting artists that I strongly disliked: instructors singling out people for their weight, or labeling “you're creative, you're not, you're creative, you're not,” etc. The dark edge was public shaming. I wasn’t personally singled out in that way, but I was intimidated. I watched, and I didn’t say anything in front of the teachers. I vowed to respect the dignity of students, performers, and collaborators. A few cliques were forming around certain dance schools whose directors had stringent expectations that you would not study anywhere else. SFU was just the opposite: we were encouraged to explore and collaborate. In TCD, we continued to be nourished by influencing streams. 

This commitment to exploration and daily training began in 1975, from the first days of the ensemble that became Terminal City Dance – when Karen Jamieson, Terry Hunter, Marion-Lea Dahl, and myself were rehearsing in the field surrounded by forest on the UBC Endowment Lands, before we could afford a studio. We invited a friend and colleague – Hugh Macpherson – to pass on what he’d learned in an intensive workshop connected to a performance by Yoshi and Friends, actors, martial artists and priests. Yoshi Ouida had trained in martial arts, and classical arts of Noh Theatre, Kabuki dance, and Bunraku storytelling before joining Peter Brook’s International Theatre Research Centre in Paris. Hugh shared with us teachings and exercises from his workshop with Yoshi and friends, before going on to join our ensemble. This experience laid the  foundation of our first year’s explorations into the question “What is dance?”

Our second year began with acquiring a small dance studio in a warehouse on Raymur Avenue and a decision to take the name TCD. The group, minus Hugh Macpherson, now included Peggy Florin, Menlo Macfarlane, Michael Sawyer, Karen Jamieson, Terry Hunter, and I. We began and ended the year by participating in paratheatrical workshops given by Yurik Bogajewicz, a former member of Grotowski’s Polish Lab Theatre in Wrocław, Poland. The psychophysical work was challenging and personally revealing. This work provided a foundation for the year’s choreographic explorations.  A quote from Grotowski rings true for me about our history in TCD: “Creation involves effort, obstacles, something achieved. It is not something simply avoided or arrived at by whim. It is an effort brought out of commitment, risk and, in many cases, pain.”

By 1977, we established TCD society to create a legal structure to house our work. From the original collective, Karen, Terry and I continued.

Other cross-influencing streams arrived with musicians we commissioned to create music for our dances – much of it performed by ourselves. Composers from Toronto like Henry Kucharzyk, who we brought to Vancouver for intensive work on music fundamentals, and  Michael J. Baker, John Oswald, Philip Werren. Alsom Vancouver composers Eric Brown, Tom Hajdu, Elyra Campbell, Ahmed Hassan, Berry Truax, and Current Figures. Terry [Hunter] and I’ve continued to collaborate with composers in VMT, who I’d like to honour: Sergio Barroso, Joseph ‘Pepe” Danza, Dorothy Dittrich, Beverly Dobrinsky, Renae Morriseau, Joelysa Pankanea, Wyckham Porteus, Ron Samworth, Ya-wen V. Wang, Neil Weisensel, Russell Wallace, Shon Wong, Takeo Yamashiro among others. 

Years of touring at international festivals with Vancouver Moving Theatre exposed us to many cultural rivers and multi-art influences: Asian classical forms of Kabuki and Noh theater, Peking Opera, Korea’s Samul nori drummers, India’s Kathakali dance theatre, Balinese dance theatre and ceremony, Korean Samul nori drummers as well as to North American and European physical theatre and artists like the brilliant Czech clown Boleslav Polívka.  

We’ve been exposed to and inspired by these artists and art forms – not trying to emulate, but to allow our work to be informed by these nourishing seedbeds, in projects guided by artists from the cultural traditions involved.

 Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Amazing. I was wondering if we could talk about any kind of driving forces that were influencing dance production at that time. I'm thinking about funding bodies, social movements, anti-institutional sentiments, these attitudes and beliefs that were present in that era.

Savannah Walling: We were not funded for about the first two or three years we worked in TCD. Funding arrived gradually, bit by bit. I’m not sure what you mean by the other influences?

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Did you see dance as a means to respond to social movements and attitudes of the 1970s? 

Savannah Walling: For myself, dance was a way to pose questions – to pose and investigate questions about life: our concerns for what’s going on in the world around us and inside of us.   Drum Mother (1982) emerged during calls to end the nuclear arms build-up and escalating Cold War. Terry [Hunter] and I wanted to create art for places of celebration where people gather in a spirit of peace and hope for the future.  

In TCD, we posed questions about life and art through the language of dance. 

When thinking back to the three of us – Terry [Hunter] and Karen [Jamieson] and I – and with others who joined the TCD journey, we engaged with dance of the whole self: bringing together body, voice, spirit, intellect, emotion, and then sharing all this with an audience. Communicating to audiences was essential. We investigated connecting points between music and motion, motion and emotion, motion and thought. Those values were really important to us. The audience is part of the circle we want to reach. Dealing with emotional realities and paradoxes surrounding us, within us – that’s why this work was important for ourselves and our audiences.  All of these values and intentions made it exciting to work with each other's choreography, to  dance together. Reflecting this multifaceted world enabled us to navigate differences between us in the studio and to bridge cultures and different social groups in reaching our audiences.  

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Finding a common language.

Savannah Walling: Yeah. Work worth doing. Beautiful work around dance. This world view was something that we shared, each of us in our own way.  We were storytellers in visual and musical forms, using our bodies, our voices, songs, rhythms, to create dance theatre. Dance that was larger than its parts, drawing from many sources, fed by many cultural streams. Those were values we shared.  

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Thanks for pointing that out. I was wondering if you could speak to where you and your communities were located? 

Savannah Walling: Yes. Well, Simon Fraser University and its Centre for Communications and the Arts were up on Burnaby mountain – a long trek up the hill. Helen Goodwin's classes were at the Intermedia warehouse at 575 Beatty Street. The Paula Ross Dance Studio on Hastings Street, was located not far from today's SFU Woodwards. The Dance Gallery (Diane Miller, Grant Strate and Earl Kraul) taught ballet at 319 West Hastings Street. The Contemporary Jazz Dance Theatre (later Prism Dance Theatre) was at 518 West Hastings.

Linda Rubin’s Synergy Movement Workshops began at an upstairs studio near Robson and Granville, before moving to the Western Front at 303 E. 8th, and then on to the beautiful heritage Arcadian Hall at 2214 Main Street. After Linda returned to the prairies, the Arcadian Hall became the home of the Main Dance Place pre-professional dance training program, as well as other groups including the Karen Jamieson Dance Company, and [TDC] Vancouver Dance Centre. After the building was destroyed by arson in 1993, the Main Dance training program moved to the Hastings Auditorium at 828 East Hastings, later the home of Mozaico Flamenco until they were evicted when the building was sold to a developer.  

In TCD, we started training and rehearsals out in a grassy field surrounded by forest at the UBC Endowment Lands. When the weather was turning cold, we snuck into UBC’s Old Auditorium at 6244 Memorial Road. When this turned problematic, we rehearsed for the rest of the year in Karen [Jamieson]'s living room in Kitsilano. I remember that before the TCD ensemble formed, Karen [Jamieson] had a Gastown studio where we sanded the floors. TCD also rehearsed briefly at the Mathers heritage house and grounds at 6490 Deer Lake Ave, Burnaby Arts Centre. After we left Karen’s living room, TCD secured a rehearsal studio – a live-work space – in a warehouse at 260 Raymur Avenue, across from the BC Sugar Refinery. Terry [Hunter] and I took over the studio lease from musician Randy Raine-Reusch; composer Elyra Campbell was our flat-mate. From there, we moved to the second floor of the Lim Sai Hor Kow Mock Association clan house at 525-531 Carrall Street.

Some of the rehearsal and performance halls VMT has worked at over the years include: the Carnegie Community Centre at Main and Hastings, the Cinderella Ballroom (185 E. 11th), the Polish Community Centre (4015 Fraser Ave.), Welsh Cambrian Hall (215 E. 17th Ave)., the Ukrainian Hall (805 E. Pender St.), the former Vancouver Theatre Coop (771 Prior St.), the Russian Hall (600 Campbell Ave.), the Vancouver Japanese Hall (487 Alexander), the Western Front (303 8th Avenue), Main Dance Place (828 E. Hastings Place), the Djavad Mowafaghian Art Centre and Fei and Milton Wong Theatre at SFU Woodwards (149 W. Hastings), the Chan Quang Temple (1795 E. 1st Ave.), the Progress Lab 1142 (1422 Williams Street, and the Glass Slipper (2714 Prince Edward Street, destroyed by arson in 1997). These were some of our dance and theatre homes.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Wow. That's great. Could you share any vivid descriptions of these working environments and spaces? Any sensorial experiences – it could be smells, or it could be feelings or qualities of the interiors of the studios or spaces that you've rehearsed in. Are there any that stand out?

Savannah Walling: We began our rehearsals and training on the UBC Endowment [Land] grounds, in a grassy clearing encircled by forest, with space to move safely. Beautiful fall days.   I remember the floors we danced on in studios. We spent so much time rolling and going up and down from the floor, pressing our feet into the floo, softening our backs into the floor – I’ve always loved working on wood floors. The openness of the UBC Old Auditorium’s second floor, the openness of Karen [Jamieson]'s Gastown studio, brick surrounding, and big windows open to the port and the sea. Karen [Jameison]'s living room was such a small confined space, we had to shrink and condense choreography to fit into the room. Karen had a baby too. The Raymur studio was larger than her living room. It had a linoleum floor, bare walls with high windows – too high to see out of – and a raised area at one end where we stored musical  instruments and tumbling mats. Across the street was the railroad track; sometimes the railroad bell got stuck and drove us crazy, ringing loud and long. We had a lot of privacy, and could be as loud as we wanted in our vocalizing, drumming, and improvisations, but we needed more space to move. A larger studio. 

One day, Terry [Hunter] was driving on Carrall Street in Chinatown, he looked up and saw a sign saying “For Lease.” It only cost $120 a month for the entire floor: a space large enough for Terry and I to live in the back and for TCD to rehearse in the front. Affordable for us if we were prepared to put in the labor to convert it into a dance studio. The building had formerly been a residential dormitory with tiny rooms for Chinese workers and new-comers. We took down the walls in half of the second floor to open up space for dancing, then brought in big sanding machines to create a floor that we would love to spend time on. There was a noisy old heater hanging from the ceiling, and big windows at the front of the building. I even have a photo, [shows photo]. This is from one end of the studio – you can see the windows that led onto the balcony. That gives you an idea of the room size.   

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: So was this taken during renovations? 

Savannah Walling: No, this is after renovations [laughs]. Before renovations, the space was broken up into tiny rooms.  And you can see this floor has been sanded.  

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. 

Savannah Walling: It's an older style building. 

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. So then the windows, were they...

Savannah Walling: The windows are at this end – big, large windows letting in lots of light.  There’s a balcony that you can see from the street. It’s at 525-531 East Hastings Street. We brought in a piano and drums. I’ve learned more about the Lim Sai Hor Kow Mock Benevolent Association building over the years. It’s home to contemporary Chinese Canadian cultural practice, and reminders of ancestral ghosts. The building was constructed in 1903 by the Chinese Empire Reform Association. By 1912, after China’s last emperor abdicated, the building functioned as a Chinese school before becoming the home of the Lim “clan society” who provided translation and support services for its members. On the third and top floor is the ancestral altar, the banquet, meeting room, class rooms for language instruction, and a library. Our second floor used to be a dormitory residence with tiny rooms rented to society members.  We used to hear mah jong tiles clacking below us on the first floor and rehearsals of the Ngai Lum Musical Society. From the balcony we could watch the annual Chinese New Year’s Parade and the Chinese Lion Dancers who bring good fortune and chase away evil spirits. From the balcony we watched construction of the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Chinese Garden, being built in a traditional way by craftsmen from China. Terry Hunter and I got married in 1978, the year TCD moved into the building, and we held our wedding reception in the studio. So that’s a little bit about the physical spaces where we worked.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: That's great. That's really lovely to get a sense of all these places you were in. My next question following that is: What was your involvement with the Centre at SFU? You've already given a pretty thorough background about that, but if there's anything else… 

Savannah Walling: Although I was never a registered student at Simon Fraser University, my life has been interwoven with it. I started studying dance in 1969, at the non-credit dance program offered by the Centre for Communication and the Arts. I danced and participated in concerts as an emerging and faculty choreographer. I also dropped into workshops taught by theatre resident John Juliani, attended  music and mime workshops. And I took the dance intensives taught by Danny Grossman, Judy Jarvis, Gladys Bailin, and Phyllis Lamhut. Karen and I presented a concert of our choreography at the SFU Theatre in 1974. As a sessional lecturer in dance from 1975-1979, I taught dance technique, improv and choreography – both credit and non-credit courses. For ten years (2010-2020), Vancouver Moving Theatre partnered with SFU Woodwards Cultural Programs and Full CIrcle First Nations Performance to produce Bah Humbug! in the Fei and Milton Wong Theatre. I served as co-writer, co-artistic director, and singer-actor as a Crachit child and the ghost of Christmas Future. I loved performing a movement-based character into my 70s.   

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: So, leading off of that last question, what were the main factors and conditions that allowed this type of work to happen, and in your opinion, how have these changed today?

Savannah Walling: Well, one huge factor was the free, non-credit, non-degree dance program at Simon Fraser University that gave access… access to free training, access to a theatre with technical equipment and support. A lovely venue seemingly designed for dance. There's nothing like this kind of accessibility today. A huge factor. It [SFU] was regularly bringing exciting guest teachers from other parts of Canada, the US, Europe and Asia. SFU hosted intensive workshops that stimulated technical development, new choreography and choreographic identities, alongside a built-in mentoring process. Lots of good things came with SFU moving into a credit program, but there were losses too, around accessibility.

Another factor that allowed this type of work to happen was the sheer doggedness of Karen [Jamieson], and Terry [Hunter], and myself, and the other dancers with whom we worked. We  were crazy enough to do this work without grants in the early years. Teaching dance part-time at SFU helped Karen [Jamieson] and I keep bread on the table. Terry [Hunter] brought in a bit of part-time income accompanying dance classes on percussion. And Karen’s then-husband, David Rimmer, had an income, but still, it was very, very bare bones. We shared the administrative responsibilities between us in the early years.

I think it was in year six we accessed our first grant to bring in a part-time administrator to help us set up a tour and hopefully access more funding. This was Joyce Ozier. Probably more time  to access enough survival income to give up our second jobs and just dance. I can’t remember the details. Eventually Canada Council and provincial funding support made it possible to bring in other dancers and staff, and to pay ourselves for part of the year. Dance ensembles across Canada in the 1970s started accessing enough funding to hire ensembles, develop a vocabulary, an approach, and repertoire, while earning enough weeks and months of employment to qualify for unemployment insurance during the off seasons. The Touring Office of the Canada Council was established in the 1970s and made it possible to tour ensemble companies across the country, and to interact and network with artists developing work in other locations. Government funding for the Canada Council was eroding in the 1980s. By 1993-95, there was a massive reduction in federal arts funding and an economic slump, making it harder to sustain ensembles and to tour across the land. 

But for many years, the Simon Fraser University dance workshops and intensives were a way to network with artists from across the city and beyond. The intensives drew artists from across the city, from other parts of Canada, and sometimes up from the States. These kinds of artistic and cultural exchanges – together with the Dance in Canada Conferences and the National Choreographic Seminars – expanded our network of potential dance and music collaborators. For Terry [Hunter] and myself, participating in intensive physical theatre workshops linked us with long-time collaborators.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: It sounds like the emergence of grant funding bodies really enabled the community and collaborations to thrive and expand! These next questions are more based around Coming Out of Chaos. What is your first memory of Coming Out of Chaos that comes to mind?

Savannah Walling: Well, the first image that comes to mind is Karen [Jamieson]'s Solo from Coming out of Chaos that we worked on just after the national tour of Chaos and just before her performance at the Dance in Canada Association, I came to rehearsals to provide dramaturgical and structural feedback. I remember her describing my role as a kind of creative midwife. This is my initial memory. During rehearsals, I dimly remember Karen asking us to bring songs into the studio. Lola [MacLaughlin]'s song choice was the one Karen incorporated into the show. I remember rehearsals being a coming together of independent dancer artists whom I respected and liked, whose art practices and conversation I enjoyed. I’m astonished at how much I don’t remember. Terry [Hunter] remembers a “rocking” movement I did. I remember how we dancers would suddenly start running… we’d vocalize… we’d improvise and improvise...

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Can you tell me more about your first memory of giving feedback to Karen about her Solo? 

Savannah Walling: This was when we were preparing to take it [Solo from Chaos (1982)] and other TCD choreographies to the 10th National Dance in Conference.  

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: That was out in Ottawa? 

Savannah Walling: In Ottawa, yeah. 

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: And Solo from Chaos was the opening from Coming Out of Chaos?

Savannah Walling: She drew upon content and vocabulary from the opening section of Coming Out of Chaos. I provided feedback to help her develop raw material and structure it into a solo. 

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: What was your first impression when you were approached by Karen Jamieson about participating and Coming Out of Chaos in 1981?

Savannah Walling: For myself, Karen’s invite to join the cast of her new choreography represented a continuum of two rivers: our shared dance journeys and collaborations dating back to 1969, and choreographic journeys in TCD since 1975 – from collaborative creation to performing in each other’s choreographies. Coming Out of Chaos was almost forty years ago –  I don’t remember the details of her invite. I really looked forward to rehearsing with dance colleagues. Looking over the old program guide reminds me that this was an SFU commission.  

I’ve always loved being part of Karen’s choreographies. Though I didn't love every rehearsal moment, I loved her vision, the creative conversations, the creation process, the choreographies that emerged, and how they felt in my body when I performed them. I loved her choreography, and how its performance engaged my entire self – mind, body, heart, and spirit. 

During the year of Coming Out of Chaos, TCD was going through a rough time. We had just assumed a new operating name as TCDR. That meant that we were simultaneously beginning rehearsals for Coming Out of Chaos while testing a new organizing structure, with Karen assuming the role of Artistic Director, and Terry and myself assuming roles as Associate Directors. I didn’t know if the company was going to break up or mature into a new phase. TCD was filled with intense artistic activity during this transition. In addition to rehearsing in Coming Out of Chaos, I was collaborating with Terry [Hunter] on development of Drum Mother, a masked drum dancing character, I was curating Performance Exchanges hosted at the TCD studio. And I was preparing for a spring tour of Haida Gwaii with Terry [Hunter] and Ahmed Hassan that would depart two-weeks after our return from the national tour of Coming out of Chaos. I knew I wanted to preserve creative working relationships with Karen [Jamieson] and Terry [Hunter]. It was a treat to rehearse with dance colleagues I really valued.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. Peter Bingham also mentioned that this was one of the first experiences he had where the project was funded and folks were able to get compensation for the rehearsals, not just the performance.

Savannah Walling: TCDs capacity to hire an ensemble of dancers emerged from the success of our previous two years of productions and touring. By 1982, we were earning modest incomes, and I think, by that time, were able to acquire enough weeks of employment to barely qualify for UI [Unemployment Insurance], in the off-times.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: What was the most challenging part about developing this piece and the most meaningful?

Savannah Walling: Well, one big challenge – it was such a busy time. Juggling different styles, repertoire, movement and music. Other [TCD] repertoire was in development and even produced in the same time period. Shortly before Coming Out of Chaos went into rehearsal, we presented a work-in-process version of Drum Mother (1982) at the Chinese New Year’s Parade, performed by Ahmed Hassan. Here's a photograph of him [shows Drum Mother (1982) photo]. 

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Oh, wow. Look at that costume!

Savannah Walling: What became by the end of the year, the full realization of Drum Mother (1982). Drum Mother emerged with drums and mask, totally transformed by Terry [Hunter’s] vision from the character’s origin in my 1976 choreography Pastorale, a role originally performed by Hugh Macpherson. 

TCD’s 1982 year began with Drum Mother’s in-process appearance at the Chinatown New Year’s parade. That same month of January, we premiered my choreography Banana Split at a Performance Exchange hosted in the TCD studio. The composer was Elyra Campbell and the performers were Ahmed [Hassan] and myself. That same event also featured, among other artists, Jennifer Mascall and Lola MacLaughlin in their choreography, Rosebleed. 

Then, we started rehearsing Coming Out of Chaos in February 1982, eight weeks of rehearsal.

In March, during the rehearsals, we presented a work-in-process showing of Coming out Chaos at a Performance Exchange hosted in the TCD studio, along with Dave Rimmer’s film Portrait of Al Niel. A week later, Terry [Hunter], myself, and Ahmed [Hassan] performed repertoire by Terry and myself at Presentation House, North Vancouver. Then in April, we premiered Michael Goldberg’s newly edited video Terminal City Dance... at Work at Video Inn. 

Two weeks later, on April 24, Drum Mother (1982) debuted, appearing at the head of 30,000 marchers during Vancouver’s 2nd Annual March for Peace.

Early iteration of Drum Mother, performed by Terry Hunter at the 2nd Annual Vancouver March for Peace. April 25, 1982. Photograph by Greg Osudchuk, Vancouver Province. Terry Hunter and Savannah Walling’s Terminal City Dance Collection.

From April 26-May 16, the Coming Out of Chaos national tour took place. In the same month of May, Drum Mother (1982) made a guerilla appearance at the Vancouver Children's Festival, performed by Terry Hunter. Her drop-in appearance led to over a decade of touring with The Festival Characters, followed by Samarambi: Pounding of the Heart.  

Then, TCDR partnered with the Firehall Theatre and Jane Ellison of the Western Front to co-present an Independent Choreography Series at the Firehall Theatre, with choreography by Lola Ryan, Peter Bingham, Jenifer Mascall, and Lola MacLaughlin from May 21-22. This was the beginning of Canada Council funding for Independents and the 1st dance event in the newly opened Firehall Theatre. 

The Coming out of Chaos national tour (April 26-May 16), was followed by a TCDR tour of Haida Gwaii from May 31-June 5 with Ahmed [Hassan], Terry [Hunter], and myself.  

At the June 18 Performance Exchange at the TCD studio, Terry [Hunter] performed an in-process showing of his Drum House choreography. The same event included a photo exhibit by Chris Randle, and Ahmed Hassan’s No Heroes, performed by Peter Bingham, Barbara Bourget, Ahmed Hassan, Jay Hirabayashi, and Carina Bonen.  

Next, TCDR flew four works to the 10th Annual Dance in Canada Conference to Ottawa from June 23-27: Solo from Coming Out of Chaos, performed by Karen [Jamieson] and Ahmed [Hassan]; Banana Split performed by Ahmed [Hassan] and myself; Creature, a drum dance solo and Drum Mother’s Gifts both performed by Terry [Hunter].

Then in July, composer Philip Werren and I created and presented a work-in-process showing  Pandora’s Box at a Performance Exchange. Jennifer [Mascall] learned my choreography Runner’s Tale and took it on her tour to Europe. We had another Coming out Chaos performance somewhere in there, around August 12. And Terry [Hunter] was teaching at the Courtenay Youth Music Camp.

By September, I think, EDAM Performing Arts Society was formalizing with independent dancers who’d been part of Coming Out of Chaos, plus Barbara Bourget and Jay Hirabayashi.  

Terry [Hunter] and I did our final [TCDR] joint performance with Karen [Jamieson] at the end of the year [1982] at Tahmanous Theatre’s Fresh Produce Festival. By 1983, TCDR was producing tours of choreography by Karen Jamieson, tours of choreography by Terry and myself, and our collaborators, and more Performance Exchanges. Finally, in July, Karen [Jamieson], Terry [Hunter], and I agreed to resign from TCD. Terry[Hunter]  and I presented one more work-in-process in July, showing under the TCDR banner: Work! World! Work!  The three TCD co-founders submitted our letters of resignation to the TCD Society board on September 1, 1983, alongside Managing Director Joyce Ozier’s resignation, who was then on sabbatical. I had reluctantly declined to join Karen [Jamieson’s] new dance company. Terry [Hunter] and I formed a new dance / music / theatre organization: Special Delivery Dance / Music / Theatre, today called Vancouver Moving Theatre.

All these dance creations and tours were overlapping, and so are my memories forty years later. Those challenges in 1982… so many productions… such diverse visions and styles… so much planning and producing of tours… overlapping one with the other.

In 1982, the year of Coming Out of Chaos, was a creatively fertile and hugely artistically exciting year… .and my heart was breaking. TCD was fracturing. I felt that Coming Out Of Chaos might be my last opportunity to dance in Karen [Jamieson’s] choreography. Karen [Jamieson’s] visionary drive to form her own dance company was a force of nature. Terry [Hunter’s] drive to blend percussion and dance was another force of nature. TCD’s cross- disciplinary practice had been an ideal home for me as a creator. I loved the breadth of art we created between us, but TCD was ripping apart around me. It was so sad, frustrating, and crazy-making. Here we were, achieving a height of success, with lots more artistic mountains to climb – more funding than ever, lots of touring in BC and across Canada, strong press, artists who wanted to perform and collaborate with us. But we were pulling apart as an organization. I was grieving. 

Karen [Jamieson] and I had over a dozen years of shared dance journeys, but now she no longer wanted to collaborate or perform in my choreography. I knew she would create exciting compelling choreography in her new dance company. I knew I was welcome to join as a dancer. But that would mean giving up the compelling integrated dance and music explorations with Terry [Hunter]. Complicating all of this confusion were external forces and management encouraging Karen to leave TCD and form her own company. Some of them I was aware of, some I learned about years later. I felt so torn inside of a chaos of emotions and diverging directions. Enormous pressure to make choices I wasn’t ready to make. It was a struggle to keep focused, to meet the creative opportunities and performing responsibilities. I wanted to preserve good relationships with Karen [Jamieson] and our dance colleagues. I wanted to keep in good relationship with Terry [Hunter], continue our artistic collaborations, and preserve our marriage. I wanted to grow as an artist.

Thinking back to Coming Out of Chaos, I have a really hard time recalling what we DID in the choreography. Which is odd, because I have vivid visual, visceral memories of Karen’s Coming Out of Chaos Solo, and of performing in her other dances like, Two Ladies, The Time Piece, Two Strand River… but when I try to recapture Coming Out of Chaos, my memories are slippery and chaotic – disconnected fragments… elusive, ephemeral, grief-laden. The creative process confused me. Karen [Jamieson] is quoted in Kaija Pepper’s book, The Man Next Door Dances, as saying the dancers “did what they wanted, which was the chaos,” but I was participating because I wanted to dance in Karen [Jamieson’s] choreography at least one more time. I already had an overload of chaos in my life and didn’t need more. That’s what I remember – the chaos. Karen [Jamieson] invited the dancers to improvise, to contribute favorite songs for consideration, movement elements, but I didn’t feel like I had agency – in this context – to contribute in a meaningful way. I was physically interacting with the cast of dancers, but I was also isolated. I was part of TCD’s organizing team, yet Karen [Jamieson] was preparing for flight with her own company of dancers. We didn’t communicate as we had in the past. As part of the TCD organizing team, I was not involved in the conversations among the independent dancers that were foreshadowing the founding of EDAM. Nor did I feel capable of sharing about the undercurrents shaking apart TCD.  

In this situation, I found meaning in doing my best to commit to the process whole-heartedly, and to appreciate this rare opportunity to work side by side with a whole group of dancers whose artistic practice I respected and conversations I enjoyed. Because this, too, was a once in a lifetime opportunity. When I think back to Coming Out of Chaos, it was like being in the center of a whirlpool, or tornado, all these memories, questions and emotions flying, spinning round me. With the wind blowing, ready to tear apart the TCD that I knew and loved. Where was I going to land? Where was TCD going to land?

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. With no real sense of where’s the best route to go. 

Savannah Walling: Yes. Exactly. 

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: You've got all these options. 

Savannah Walling: It took another three years for the evolution of TCD and its founders to play out. So all this was my experience: a choreography composed of cascading fragments, immersed inside chaos – or a somewhat composed chaos shaped by Karen’s choreographic vision… dancers finding their way through chaos… but at the end of the dance, in my memory, we were still in this place of chaos as we retreated. I wish I could see the choreography – is this memory a true one? The dancers exiting from the stage… Were we still in the place of chaos from which we entered? I just don't remember. 

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: That sounds like a really challenging time to be in at that time, going into a project that directly confronts this really profound shift in your life. 

Savannah Walling: It was. 

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Did you find Coming Out of Chaos cathartic, or did it add further to the confusion? 

Savannah Walling: No, definitely not cathartic. Traumatic. Because of what was happening around it and inside of it. But still it was good to have done and been part of, even as dancing in it plunged me deeper into chaos. The good thing about the experience – I was still in relationship with Karen while TCD was in transition, and at a time when there was so much grief and confusion that couldn't be talked about verbally. 

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, this process was a way to express it. 

Savannah Walling: A way to be in relationship and working together.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, that's important. So what did you take from working on Coming Out of Chaos that has shaped or influenced your practice today, if anything direct? 

Savannah Walling: It is hard to untangle what I took from Coming Out of Chaos from what I took from TCD. Collegial friendships and respectful friendships and relationships have endured. My personal friendship with Ahmed [Hassan], and Lola [McLaughlin] too. Lola [MacLaughlin] had been in an earlier relationship with another friend of ours [Lawrence Brezer] before her relationship with Ahmed [Hassan]. Terry [Hunter] and I used to visit Lawrence [Brezer] and Lola [MacLaughlin] in their Downtown Eastside home before Lawrence went off and became part of Kei Takei’s Moving Earth dance company and Takei’s partner in life and father of their son. Lola [MacLaughlin] and Lawrence [Brezer] lived in a small, tiny cabin on Cordova Street, just west of Main Street, where we had long wonderful conversations around the arts.

After she and Ahmed [Hassan] connected, they moved into the building known as The Cozy Corner at 100 E. Hastings and Columbia Streets, today it’s called New Brandiz Fast Food. She and Ahmed [Hassan] shared an apartment with Michel Dallaire – the director of La Ratatouille Clown Theatre. Doug Vernon, one of our house-mates at the Lim Sai Hor Kow Mock Association, also performed with La Ratatouille. La Ratatouille performed in the July 1982 Performance Exchange at the TCD Studio. So again, there was all this interlinking. Terry [Hunter] and I used to go for pot-luck suppers and conversation over at the “Cozy Corner” with Ahmed [Hassan], Lola [MacLaughlin] and Micheal [Dallaire]. I danced in some of Lola [MacLaughlin’s] choreographies at SFU and other places. 

So, there were these webs of friendships and creative exchange. Barbara [Bourget] later performed in Pandora’s Box (1983), a solo that I began co-creating with composer Philip Werren during the Coming out of Chaos year. Jennifer [Mascall] toured my choreography [Runner’s Tale]. Interweaving webs of relationship and artistic exchange.  

Working with Karen [Jamieson] on her Solo from Coming out of Chaos gave me insights into the drama embedded in directional choices and staging, as well as into the way geometrical forms reveal patterns of growth and dynamic processes with parallels to spiritual crisis. This learning has stayed with me in staging other creations since then.  

I also came out of Chaos, with a strong sense of the importance of story… storytelling and storytellers. It’s been a process of years, moving from abstract dance, to repertoire involving characters and narrative. The experience of chaos catalyzed in me, without being aware of it at the time, that strong need for story – to communicate story, to tell story.

I retained my ongoing pleasure in rhythmic work and the vocalizing and began getting vocal percussion coaching from Ahmed [Hassan]. Vocal, rhythmic, and percussion work has characterized VMT’s repertoire during and since that time. 

I carry forward from our work in TCD – including Coming Out of Chaos – an enduring commitment to collaborative process: from scripts to co-productions and engaging with community. 

Moving beyond TCD, Terry [Hunter] and I embarked on exciting collaborative creations – for the first few years, non-verbal, theatrical, music-embedded productions like Festival Characters, Drum Mother’s Gifts, Ab audire, and Samarmbi: Pounding of the Heart. Most recently, Bah Humbug! co-produced with SFU Woodwards & Full Circle: First Nations Performance, where producer Michael Boucher and I co-wrote a script with input from the cast. Purely collective creation, however, was only really successful for a couple of TCD pieces, such as Wrestling Match; 15 Minutes for Dance in Canada. That’s probably why today, in VMT, we combine collaborative processes with a vertical organizing process. 

All these are legacies of TCD and Coming out of Chaos that have endured, shaping and influencing my art practice till today.  

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, those are all important elements to bring out of that original work. 

Savannah Walling: Yeah. The experience of being in the Coming Out of Chaos group piece, where, theoretically, there was opportunity to contribute music or movement elements. But I felt there wasn’t space to contribute as a choreographer or story creator – partly because it was such a large group. So I felt frustration, not being able to give personal voice within the choreography or find room for that. At the same time, I understood that the purpose of this process was to support Karen’s [Jamieson] journey towards her fully realized choreographic voice.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: As a dancer who participated in Coming Out of Chaos, did you find it also gave you an avenue to find your own voice as a choreographer? 

Savannah Walling: I'd say it gave me something tangible to push against. I emerged from the experience as a story-maker – in words, movement and music. That has been a deepening part of my practice over the years. 

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: There was a really vivid review that I found, and it describes you: "A wraith in pale apricot satin begins slow steps across the stage, a voice, high and floating hovers near her, a spirit filling the air with clear slow tones. She stops. Pulling up the head of a prone man in white." And that was from Van Dance, 1982.

Savannah Walling: I remember that. And only for Karen [Jamieson] and her choreography would I have ever worn pale pink, because it's a colour I've avoided all my life [laughs]. But, it was an effective design choice and what was needed. There's a photograph here from Coming out of Chaos. A vivid visual metaphor of that moment in time. I’m sitting, wrapped around Karen [Jamieson's] hips; she's reaching out, looking, with this expression of crying out – crying, trying to pull away, trying to pull forward. And in the photo, I see myself, with a loving reaching… reaching to connect again, within a moment pulling us apart. Although I didn't recognize that dynamic at the time, when I look at the image now, this strikes me really strongly.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, definitely. That's a very poignant metaphor for both of you at that time. 

Savannah Walling: I was living in the midst of semi-controlled chaos. Living in the middle of a tornado of creative projects and emotions, bits and pieces flying everywhere. I really wondered how long we rehearsed. Then read a review that said we rehearsed eight weeks. So I guess that’s what we did. 

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Is there a single word you would use to describe the process of developing Coming Out of Chaos?

Savannah Walling: My description? Descending into chaos. That's the image I have, recalling the experience, what comes to me. There was a parallel process: some things coming out of chaos, some things accelerating into chaos. As for myself, it would take me another two - three years to clarify my artistic direction. 

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. So you made it out of chaos! 

Savannah Walling: Yeah [laughs]. Well, truthfully, I have experienced moments of chaos since then [laughs]. At other moments, within different choreographies and collaborations. But those are other stories. 

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: There are always many layers of chaos.

Savannah Walling: Yeah. I was astonished when I created a chronology for the Coming out of Chaos year, and the transition years of TCD. When I look at the chronology and see how much  was going on, I understand why it is so hard to remember. Just before rehearsals started on Coming Out of Chaos, I choreographed Banana Split, about a dysfunctional relationship between a man and a woman, or between anybody: “You’re driving me nuts! Why is it always my fault?” Karen [Jamieson] really disliked Banana Split – partly its style, partly its content. It emerged from my collaboration with composer Elyra Campbell and with performer Ahmed Hassan, both involved in Coming Out of Chaos. Banana Split was black comedy, a cameo of life in chaotic dysfunctional relationships and miscommunication.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Could you share any memories you have about working with Ahmed Hassan and Lola MacLaughlin? Elyra Campbell's name came up a couple of times in the reviews for Coming Out of Chaos, and I'd never heard her name before. 

Savannah Walling: I met Elyra in dance classes, I'm pretty sure, probably with Linda Rubin or Gisa Cole. I also knew her as a singer. She was a lovely house-mate with Terry [Hunter] and myself when we lived in the Terminal City Dance live-work studio at 260 Raymur Avenue. My memories are hard to disentangle, the years tumble over each other. At a certain point she moved to Seattle to study music, found out she had cancer, and survived the treatment. Then she shifted direction to focus on voice and harp – Celtic harp, Celtic-style music.  

We were friends for a long time and I thought it would be fun to collaborate. We came up with Banana Split (1982) piece – a sung piece for which she composed a score of music and vocalizations specially tailored for myself and Ahmed [Hassan]. Rehearsing Banana Split might have been when Karen [Jamieson] and Elyra [Campbell] connected. I don't remember the music Elyra [Campbell] contributed for Coming Out of Chaos. I've been trying to remember what that might have been. A friendship [with Elyra Campbell] continued for Terry [Hunter] and myself and our son. Strong memories of visiting her when she was dying, when the cancer returned. A dear friend, a huge loss. When she left for the spirit world, she gifted me her entire wardrobe – I guess she wanted to see me dress in more style. Terry [Hunter] and I were pretty poor back then. All these years later, I still wear some of her garments, with memories of Elyra [Campbell] embedded in their very threads. I am wearing her memory, even as I’m reviewing this interview. She created a couple of beautiful albums, was on her way to a strong music career when the cancer returned. She was a good friend of singer Ann Mortifee, as I remember.  

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: I’m sorry for your loss, it sounds like she was a very special and close friend for you. I'm trying to learn more about her, and, same as you, trying to figure out how she was involved in Coming Out of Chaos because her name was on the original handbill as a composer and mentioned in a couple of the reviews too. 

Savannah Walling: It is true. Here's a bit about her biography [shows archives binder to Emma]. Singer, composer, classical music, jazz, background in modern dance. Exploration of extended vocal techniques and improvisation.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: There you go. Thanks for sharing that. I know this next question is really hard for a lot of people because of the closeness of your relationships with Ahmed [Hassan] and Lola [MacLaughlin] – creatively and personally. I was wondering if you’d be willing to speak about that? 

Savannah Walling: Yeah, when I look at that picture of Ahmed [Hassan] and Lola [MacLaughlin], [sighs]. I never expected them to leave this world so soon. I think I met Ahmed [Hassan] at the 2nd National Choreographic Seminar at Banff in 1980. I remember him introducing us to Claudia Moore and Robert Desrosiers in Toronto on the TCD Cross Canada tour. We became friends in Vancouver, doing things together, he’d come to dinner, berimbau in hand, or vice versa. This was well before he and Lola [MacLaughlin] formed a relationship.  After he moved back to Toronto, we’d keep up the visits on our VMT tours. More visits when he partnered with Peggy [Baker], visits with both of them. We’d already met Peggy Baker through Michael J. Baker, her first husband, a composer whom Karen had brought out for a TCD commission. Lots of cascading memoires. I have a vivid memory of Christmas time in Toronto, reading aloud  T.S. Eliot's "A Child's Christmas in Wales" with Michael J. Baker, Ahmed [Hassan], [Peggy Baker], Terry [Hunter], and myself. So many intertwining threads.  

I also have vivid memories of rehearsing with [Ahmed Hassan] for TCD, and how exciting it was – working with him in movement, and vocalizing. He toured with the TCD ensemble in 1981. Our duet in Banana Split. One-on-one sessions coaching me on his vocal percussion technique.   And then the sadness and bewilderment, as he and the rest of us recognized that he could no longer perform certain movements. We didn’t know why or what was happening, but what had been possible was no longer possible, and there was sadness. This was five, six years before he was diagnosed with progressive Multiple Sclerosis.  

Soon after EDAM formed, he moved to Toronto for some really exciting composing with Robert Desrosiers dance company and other projects. We also were aware of him [Ahmed Hassan] and his family raising his daughter, and the challenges of being a single parent. So many stories. So many threads. Even as Ahmed [Hassan] was slowly losing physical control, he continued to create and perform. A beautiful and courageous spirit.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst : Yeah, truly. And Ahmed [Hassan] moved to Toronto shortly after Coming Out of Chaos right? 

Savannah Walling: Yeah, pretty soon after that, shortly after EDAM was founded. I don’t remember when the relationship between him and Lola [MacLaughlin] came to a close. Terry [Hunter] and I continued to visit with Ahmed  [Hassan] over the years. Our last visit when he was in the Toronto hospital, and barely able to move or communicate. 

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: I’m sure he appreciated that you could be there with him. Do you have any memories about working with Ahmed Hassan and Lola MacLaughlin specifically for the Coming Out of Chaos project?

Savannah Walling: Elusive memory fragments… pulling Ahmed [Hassan] slowly up by an invisible thread... 

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: And anything about Lola MacLaughlin? Do you remember anything about working with her at all or her process? 

Savannah Walling: I remember her belting out the Bob Dylan song Maggie's Farm…  wishing I got to belt out a song like that… She did it with such fierce, heart-felt, delicious gusto… 

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, I think that was also an image that was captured in one of the reviews, so it must have been memorable.

Savannah Walling: Punk-ish and edgy. 

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Interesting. So how did Coming Out of Chaos shape your creative and collaborative relationships and your community afterwards?

Savannah Walling: Coming out of Chaos was my last experience dancing in Karen [Jamieson’s] choreography, in that transition year of TCD. I’ve followed her choreography ever since. It’s been deeply satisfying to witness the evolution of her artistic creations and her bridge-building body to land collaborations. I continue to be inspired by her visionary practice. 

Years later, after she came to work In the Downtown Eastside with the Carnegie community centre dancers, our pathways began to again overlap; her explorations with the community dance workshops have led to live performances at the Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival. Coming together in support of these presentations have been spirit-nourishing for me, healing food for the relationship. 

Moving on from Coming out of Chaos and TCD, our [Terry Hunter and my] practice was shifting, and how peers viewed our practice was shifting. A confusing transition. Dancers saw our work as theatre. Theatre artists saw it as dance. We were on the outskirts of either discipline, collaborating with actors on a new interdisciplinary fusion (Festival Characters) and moving onto the national touring circuits. We had the occasional concert at home, we had moved out of the dance circles. Mostly we were on the road, touring to schools and festivals. We ended up touring for seven years with creations involving physical theatre, non-verbal movement, live music, stilt dancing and dramatic narrative (Drum Mother’s Gifts, Samarambi: Pouding of the Heart). One of the masked characters had drums embedded into a large hoop skirt. Another character pulled a wagon of musical instruments. Another masked character had a sound system built into her “rib cage,” utilizing echo and delay sonic effects. Very interdisciplinary, theatrical storytelling, reminiscent of mummers’ plays… communicating through movement, music and visual spectacle to audiences from many different cultures. 

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. 

Savannah Walling: We were performing in environments outside of conventional mainstream “high art” venues: at expositions, open-air parks, pavilions and streets, community halls and alternative spaces. Most of our touring took place outside of Vancouver. We continued daily physical training, bringing in guest instructors from a variety of disciplines. A personal turning point was becoming a parent in 1990. I could no longer do everything. Becoming a homeschooling parent (at my six year old son’s request) was another big change. I couldn’t keep up the daily training. I had to give up something. So over the years, my dancing took second place to writing scripts, and taking on roles as director and artistic director, although I’ve continued to perform into my 70s.   

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: So in terms of the dance community, are you still seen mostly as theatre? 

Savannah Walling: We’re probably seen as theatre artists and interdisciplinary artists.  An interesting line to navigate. We’ve co-produced theatre productions, all with live music. You know, the Brecht in the Park production of The Good Person of Setzuan [with Touchstone and Ruby Slippers Theatres, 1998]. We co-produced In the Heart of a City: The Downtown Eastside Community Play with the Carnegie Centre and Japanese Hall (2003, leading to a 2-decade legacy of annual Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festivals). The New World Theatre / PuSh Festival co-productions: The Idiot and Crime and Punishment (2005, 2011). We’re All in This Together, a giant screen shadow play exploring the roots of addiction directed by Kim Collier (2007), and A Downtown Eastside Romeo and Juliet, a tragic comedy directed by the brilliant clown and mask designer Gina Bastone (2008). The Bah Humbug! co-productions with SFU Woodwards and Full Circle: First Nations Performance (2010-2020).  Some productions have been strongly community-engaged and featured local community artists, as well as professional artists. Some projects centered on story- telling and music (East End Blues and All That Jazz, 2006-2018), or mixed dance with music and theatre (Bread & Salt, 2013). The Big House integrated all the performing arts with feasting (2015). Against the Current was a collaborative cross-cultural performance mixing Japanese Canadian Taiko drumming with storytelling and Salish song (2015). We partnered on The Train of Thought (2015), an evolving journey of art-making and (re)conciliation led by Toronto’s Jumblies Theatre; by train and other means, we took a counter-colonial route from west to east coast, with 25 stops, 75 travellers, 95 partners and hundreds of participants. VMT’s last big touring production was Weaving Reconciliation: Our Way (2018), a new play and cultural encounter created and performed by Indigenous actors and knowledge keepers. We’ve covered a lot of territory. 

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, it's rich territory to work in that interdisciplinary space. 

Savannah Walling: Mhmm. I don't know how much the dance world knows, or is aware of what we're doing. 

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. Thinking about this being a pivotal time for all of these participating [Coming Out of Chaos artists] and their careers, and ultimately, the future of Vancouver performing arts, it’s interesting to see how present community-based practice is amongst these artists. 

Savannah Walling: Yes, community-engaged practice, and many kinds of interdisciplinary practices have been part of the journey. Distinctive visions emerged from Coming out of Chaos and TCD, with the births of Karen Jamieson Dance Company, EDAM, and what began as Special Delivery Dance Music Theatre to Vancouver Moving Theatre, as we're known today. Those who knew us as Special Delivery, might not realize Vancouver Moving Theatre is the same organization. EDAM in turn shifted and split with Ahmed [Hassan] heading off to the fruitful collaboration with Desrosiers Dance Theatre, Jennifer Mascall stepping out to form Mascall Dance, and with Barbara [Bourget] and Jay [Hirabayashi], to form their Butoh influenced company Kokoro. Lola MacLaughlin formed Lola Dance, and Peter Bingham took over leadership of EDAM. All these developments are really foundational to Vancouver’s performing arts scene. 

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, I think those are really important connections to make.

Savannah Walling: Whatever that chaos was, coming out of chaos, descending into chaos… Whatever it was, it gave everyone involved – including Karen [Jamieson] – something tangible to push against. Everyone involved pushed off into new directions.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, so it built a momentum of sorts. 

Savannah Walling: It built a momentum–

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: –a force.

Savannah Walling: Yeah, or built into a vortex that reversed its spin to whip into a multitude of directions, profoundly influencing art that has been created, and continues to be created in the city. They [the Coming Out of Chaos artists] all joined or formed organizations, many of them enduring until today. I think that's hugely significant when you're looking at the history of dance in this city.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, that's a really good observation; identifying the “ensemble.” Do you think a work like Coming Out of Chaos would be made today? Why, or why not?

Savannah Walling: I have no idea. What would be needed? Choreographic vision from somewhere, connections with a variety of artists, a web of relationships, a commitment, and patience with each other to explore together. The dance community, to me – and this is my impression and I can be totally wrong – feels more fragmented than in the early 1980s. That was a special time with converging circles of artists involved in each other's circles of practice. I don't know if that experience is part of the dance world of today, to the same degree, in the same way. Perhaps today there is more of an emphasis on distinct identities and choreographic practices. But that might not be true at all. I don't know. 

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: But what you’re saying is that there would need to be that same kind of vortex and desire to carry it out, and relationships that can be pulled from, and that those people want, or “need,” to come together. 

Savannah Walling: Coming Out of Chaos was born out of years of relationships formed – collegial relationships, collaborative relationships, friendships, party dancing, training side-by-side in workshops. 

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: So that brings us to our next question: What would you want to see from this project, and what do you think an oral history could achieve and be used for?

Savannah Walling: There are three things I would love to see: first, a written record of this history and with images. Secondly, I would love to see an acknowledgement and recognition of the Coming out of Chaos choreography and TCD's place in the history of dance in Vancouver. Thirdly, I would love to see public acknowledgement of the evolution of TCD Society into the VDC Dance Centre Society, and to the roles of Karen [Jamieson], Terry [Hunter], and myself as founding members of TCDR Centre and of the TCD Society, shortly before the society’s name changed to the VDC Dance Centre Society in 1986. So those are three specific results I would love to see emerge out of this project.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Excellent. That's good to know. 

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: What do you think a historical project focusing on contemporary dance should look like? 

Savannah Walling: Podcasts featuring people you’ve interviewed. A film of Coming Out of Chaos: A Vancouver Dance Story, and the wild profusion of creativity surrounding it, that seeded the births of Karen Jamieson Dance Company, Vancouver Moving Theatre, EDAM, and the Vancouver Dance Centre. Not a dry documentary, but an emotionally and kinaesthetically evocative interweaving of existing video footage and new footage, created while most of the artists are still living and breathing and historic video material is still usable. Commissioning Kaija Pepper to write a book about this story: a resource for schools and universities.

Savannah Walling: The stories of Coming Out of Chaos, coming into chaos may have something of that Rashomon-like ambiguity in the multifaceted perspectives people share with you.

I’m also reminded of the ancient South Asian story “The Blind Men and the Elephant.” Never having seen an elephant, they each touch a different part of its body, and confidently claim an elephant is like a wall, or a snake, a spear, a fan, a rope… All partially correct… all partially wrong. each holds only part of the reality.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yep, or thinking about how to use the process, or this idea of chaos as a sort of template for a narrative or for a story to be built upon. 

Savannah Walling: Yeah.

Savannah Walling: VMT might have video recordings of Ahmed’s vocalizations in Banana Split (1982), and I have Elyra Campbell’s score for this choreography. I have notes somewhere from Ahmed’s one-on-one coaching sessions on his vocal percussion techniques. I don’t remember now which pieces were videotaped. These might be too old to retrieve.  

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Peter Bingham, when I was interviewing him, he shared some vivid memories as well of working with Ahmed. We were in the middle of the interview, and he just did one of these, like, what would you call it like choreographic vocalizations? Where you make rhythms, but using your hands. 

Savannah Walling: [Savannah performs sequence]

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: That was it! Yeah. And then with the mouth as well. 

Savannah Walling: He [Ahmed Hassan] was always wandering around, his berimbau in hand everywhere he went. He’d play it walking down the street, or visiting for supper. 

In TCD, most of our choreographies we performed to live music, often performed by the dancers. This was distinctive and unique to our company. That love of live musical performance is something we’ve carried into our practice in VMT working with living composers and live music.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yah, that is super unique. Do you have any resources, including people texts, or books, that you recommend I read to continue researching this project?

Savannah Walling: Do you mean researching Coming Out of Chaos? TCD? How deep will your research go? I’ve assembled for you many of the reviews, interviews, programs and flyers for TCD, including Coming Out of Chaos.  I’ve shared with you documents relating to TCD, including the evolution of Terminal City Dance Society into the VDC Dance Centre Society. There is a 50 minute video of Terminal City Dance... at Work created by videographer Michael Goldberg; it premiered at Video Inn in April 1982, during rehearsals of Coming Out of Chaos, shortly before the national tour. Today, I believe it’s the VIVO Media Arts Centre, an artist-run center and video distribution library. The video featured interviews with Terry, Karen, and myself, excerpts from rehearsals and performances, and explored the ethos, practices and performances of TCD during the 1970s. 

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Oh, that's good to know! I didn't know about that one.

Savannah Walling: Yeah, you'll see that when you take a look at the chronology. 

[Emma and Savannah Look through Archives Binder Photos-Conversation]

Savannah Walling: There are references to TCD and/or Coming Out of Chaos in a few books I’ve come across - Kaija Pepper’s The Man Next Door Dances: the Art of Peter Bingham, Max Wyman’s Revealing Dance: Selected Writings 1970’s - 2001, a chapter by Alana Gerecke in  Renegade Bodies: Canadian Dance in the 1970s. There are also articles about TCD and the Festival Characters in back issues of Dance in Canada magazines.

That piece Banana Split (1982) and working together with Ahmed - it was a wild piece and process. Later - after Ahmed [Hassan] left for Ontario - I performed it with Terry [Hunter], my husband and colleague. It was such a challenging piece to rehearse, a crazy-making plunge into dysfunctional relationships and miscommunication that can overlap with real life. 

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, that piece was performed at the Ottawa Conference as well, right? 

Savannah Walling: Yes, it was. [sings] Why is it always my fault? Why is it always my fault? You're already nuts. You're already nuts. You're already nuts. He's a nut, he's a nut, he's a nut, he's a nut, he's a nuttttt. Etcetera, etcetera.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: You're a nut [laughs]. So these are all your personal photos then? 

Savannah Walling: Yeah, yeah. 

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: You were the photographer?

Savannah Walling: No, I don't remember who the photographer was. 

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Oh okay.

Savannah Walling: I don't know if the details are on the back of the photo or not. And then this is Drum Mother (1982). She debuted two days after the opening of Coming Out of Chaos at the Waterfront Theatre.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Oh, wow. Yeah. Was this part of a peace movement? [referring to photo]

Savannah Walling: Yeah. This was Vancouver’s 2nd annual March for Peace. I think 30,000 people turned out to protest the escalating nuclear arms race. 

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Oh wow. 

Savannah Walling: Drum Mother was created for events where people gather in a spirit of hope for the future… environments that support healing, and unifying.  

And then this image is from  Pandora's Box (1983), a new work I was co-creating with composer Philip Werren while rehearsing and touring Coming out of Chaos. Phil and I workshopped Pandora’s Box in July and presented it at a TCDR Performance Exchange, three weeks before the final performance in August of Coming Out of Chaos at the Arts Club Theatre. 

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Dance has the best photographs. It's just amazing. The movement that you capture. These are stunning. Are these both you? [referring to Pandora’s Box (1983) photos]

Savannah Walling: Yeah. They're both me in different parts of the piece. And Barbara Bourget later took on the role of Pandora in 1984 – she did a beautiful performance..

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. I think she mentioned it, actually. In our interview.

Savannah Walling: At the same time, during 1982, Terry [Hunter] was evolving and performing Creature, a masked drum dance, with five drums attached to the costume.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Is it crocheted?

Savannah Walling: Yeah, a costume created by Evelyn Roth.  

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: So this was another parallel project.

Savannah Walling: Yeah. Yeah. Continuing his explorations of dancer as musician and dancer. 

To perform Creature was physically difficult – he had to strain up, down, and around, reaching for the drums on the portable structure he carried. So in fall 1981, he began choreographing Drum House, performing inside a wood structure incorporating tune-able drums. By 1982, he was working on a new vision, Drum Mother, a drum dance choreography in which he could move freely throughout the space and interact with audience members young and old. Drum Mother was the creative seed for Samarambi: Pounding of the Heart, an ensemble piece that we would perform and tour around the world from 1986-1992. Like Drum Mother’s Gifts, Samarambi was simultaneously tightly choreographed and composed while containing opportunities for spontaneous improvisation and audience interaction.

So I'll just give you a quick bit of visuals, photos of choreography that Terry and I were developing during these transition years - collaborations with musicians and actors… and their site-specific adaptations

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Oh, I love the sketches.

Savannah Walling: The Drum Mother (1982) character evolved from Pastorale, a dance I choreographed back in 1976. It was danced by, among others, Terry [Hunter], Karen [Jamieson Rimmer]) and Hugh [MacPherson], who would join TCD in our first year. I met Hugh while we were taking dance classes at Synergy and he was attending the Vancouver School of Art. Hugh performed the role of Mother Folly in Pastorale, dressed in a large hoop skirt without a mask.  Six years later – after months of intensive lobbying by Terry [Hunter], I finally agreed to allow Terry [Hunter] to cut holes in the costume for drums, to realize his vision of a dancing Drum Mother whose language is percussion. [Points to photo in book]

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: What book is this?

Savannah Walling: This is from the 1986 Mime Journal: “Canadian Post Modern Performance.” The issue included a section on Special Delivery Moving Theatre, we changed our name in 1992 to VMT, with a photo essay by Terry Hunter and articles by myself, performers Debbie Boyko, and Mark Parlett, and dramaturg Peter Eliot Weiss. All about Samarambi: Pounding of the Heart – its genesis, development, historical context, our training approach, and artistic purposes. 

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Who published it?

Savannah Walling: Pomona College Theatre Department for the Claremont Colleges, California. 

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: '86.

Savannah Walling: Yeah. Terry [Hunter] and I were strongly influenced by our life in Chinatown and its cultural traditions, and witnessing Lion Dancers from our balcony [in Chinatown]. Terry [Hunter] in collaboration with myself developed Drum Mother, an original character performed in her earliest incarnation (unmasked) by Ahmed [Hassan], in her next incarnation she was masked. She was performed by Terry [Hunter], in a guerrilla appearance at the Vancouver International Children’s Festival. After seeing Drum Mother in action, the festival producer invited Terry [Hunter] to return to the following year’s festival, bringing more dramatic masked characters, leading to our collaboration with actors Richard Fowler and Pamela Harris.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Wow.

Savannah Walling: This is the artistic territory into which we were moving.  

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Oh wow. And these were all handmade costumes? 

Savannah Walling: Yeah, all constructed by collaborating designers. Over the years, new characters emerged. This masked character on stilts, Kronis, has a sound system integrated into its rib cage, producing echo, delay and extended vocal techniques. Upho pulls a wagon of musical instruments. A trickster emerged unexpectedly out of Drum Mother (1982). 

Another piece I was working on: that summer I taught Jennifer [Mascall] my choreography  Runner’s Tale, for her tour of Europe. The solo dance was performed in silence – only the sound of running and breath for a ten minute journey. Seven years later, I expanded the solo into a duet between a woman and man, journeying through life together, accompanied by a percussion score with giant taiko-style drums. Just a bit of an idea of the breadth and styles of integrating dance and music. 

Oh, yes. I can show you the Coming Out of Chaos program guide. 

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Wow! Oh, there it is. 

Savannah Walling: This was a program for when it [Coming Out of Chaos] was done on August 12, 1982. 

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Oh, wow. This is great. We definitely don't have these in the KJD archives. So these would have been handed out?

Savannah Walling: Yeah, this would have been a handout at the concert, at the conference.  On the other side you’ll see The Art of War, for which John McFarlane did the lighting design.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. And there she is. Elyra [Campbell]. Ah, this is super super helpful. Thank you for bringing these in. We can scan them. Thank you so much for putting in the time on all of this!