The Youth Ensemble: In the beginning...

Posted by Kim

If this was the beginning of this project, the really real beginning, the date would read somewhere in the vicinity of December 2006. Let's go there briefly. DaPoPo's ensemble-of-the-moment: Garry W., Eric B., Steven B. and I, Kim P., had just returned from premiering our newly created show "Apocalypse 2006" at the FEZ-Berlin's biennial "Just Say It" Festival in Berlin, Germany.

Michael Kunsmann, programmer at the FEZ, had extended another invitation to DaPoPo - our third - for the next Just Say It! planned for November 2008 (later bumped to February 2009). This Festival is a celebration of English-language cultures and countries from around the world and draws hundreds of school-aged children and families from the greater Berlin area. Our show performances are typically for high school students, although we do participate in the daily opening ceremonies for all ages.

Leaving Berlin then, and considering the next festival, I wondered aloud to the DaPoPoli about an alternative to our adult-perspective creations. How potent would it be to have an ensemble of young performers create and present a show about issues important to them - telling their own stories and sharing with their peers?

Let's fast forward to tonight, almost two years later. An invited audience sat on the floor in a studio of the Halifax Ballet Theatre to watch the created performance of six emerging theatre artists aged 17-19: Aaron Andreino, Dylan Aucoin, Kaleigh Fleming, Sophie Fong, Ali Richarson and Holly Winter. They all had applied for and been invited to participate in an intensive workshop with DaPoPo. Garry and I introduced them to various physical theatre styles, vocal techniques and the DaPoPo aesthetic under the umbrella of ensemble training and collective creation. We spent almost sixty hours working over three weekends, using these tools in exploration and creation, and culminating with this presentation.

Tonight - the bar set high and boundaries challenged - we watched, along with gathered family, friends and DaPoPoli, as these young performers communicated their ideas in a way new and exciting to them - beautifully and enigmatically, humourously and profoundly. We are very proud of how each of them, in their own way, crossed thresholds... x

And while this is not the really real beginning of this project, it is a beginning of the next phase. Four of these workshop participants will join DaPoPo for our aptly-named "Berlin Project."

From now until February, the new youth ensemble will continue to work with Garry and I, as well as Eric and Annie V. (DaPoPo's ensemble-of-the-now), to prepare for a two week tour to Berlin. As dreamed in 2006, they will create a show for performance at the Just Say It '09 Festival .

They'll assist with workshops the veteran DaPoPoli facilitate at the festival. They'll also be assisting with behind-the-scenes work as we present two original shows "Four Actors in Search of a Nation" and "Apocalypse 2009" at TheaterForum Kreuzberg. AND they will be performing with us as cast for a special presentation of Cafe DaPoPo at The Fluxus Museum in Potsdam. Plus experiencing the wonderfulness of life, art, history and culture in Germany.

There are goals and there are obstacles ahead of us. We're going to lay it all out here as we go through it. So keep checking back. We'll introduce the ensemble members and you can see how things go for us from rehearsing to fundraising, work and social time, applying for passports and getting married (yup), planning the trip and actually being there... this blog goes on til the Berlin Project ends...