Freya Bjorg Olafson
Claire Elizabeth Barratt
Louis Laberge-Côté
Freya Björg Olafson (Winnipeg)
Claire Elizabeth Barratt (Asheville)
and
Louis Laberge-Côté (Toronto)
The discussion will include concepts of the body as medium, the body in motion and the body in collaboration—yet also the body as transient and ephemeral. Exploring work in which the body seems to shed its solidity and concreteness to shift in time and space as though vacillating between alternative times and spaces to the one being witnessed. Transmutations of the body in relationship with technology, nature, sound, concepts and imagery.
Ely Center of Contemporary Art is delighted to organize and host these artists and their event.
Freya Björg Olafson is an intermedia artist who works with video, audio, animation, motion capture, XR, painting, and performance. Her praxis engages with identity and the body, as informed by technology and the Internet. Olafson’s work has been exhibited and performed internationally at the Bauhaus Archiv (Berlin), SECCA – SouthEastern Center for Contemporary Art (North Carolina), LUDWIG museum (Budapest), and The National Arts Center (Ottawa). Olafson has benefitted from residencies, most notably through EMPAC – Experimental Media & Performing Arts Center (New York), Oboro (Montreal), and Counterpulse (San Francisco). Olafson holds an MFA in New Media from the Transart Institute / Donau Universität and joined the Department of Dance at York University as an Assistant Professor in July 2017. This past spring Olafson was one of the recipients of the 2020 ‘Sobey Art Award’. freyaolafson.com
Claire Elizabeth Barratt (aka Cilla Vee) is an inter-disciplinary artist with a performing arts background. She is the director of Cilla Vee Life Arts—an arts organization with a focus on cross-media collaboration. Her work utilizes artistic disciplines of dance, music, text, media, visual and installation art.
Claire has presented her work in venues as diverse as Jacob’s Pillow, the New York Botanical Gardens, Black Mountain College Museum + Art Center and Art Basel Miami. She has performed and taught throughout the USA and in Canada, Europe, Japan, Israel and Pakistan.
Claire received her professional training in London at The Laban Centre For Movement and Dance and at the London Studio Centre For Performing Arts. Her pre-professional training includes the Royal Academy of Dance and the Royal Schools of Music Examinations. She also served an apprenticeship with the Isadora Duncan Dance Foundation in New York and holds an MFA in Creative Practice from the Transart Institute with Plymouth University, UK.
On moving to the USA in 1992, Claire held the positions of Dancer for Unto These Hills drama on the Cherokee Indian Reservation and for Asheville Contemporary Dance Theater in North Carolina, as well as serving as a Co-Founder and Director for Circle Modern Dance and as Choreographer for the Knoxville Opera Company in Tennessee. Once based in New York in 2002, Claire founded Cilla Vee Life Arts and, with the support of arts advocates such as Chashama, Bronx Council on the Arts and Arts for Art, began to develop and present her signature modes of work—including Motion Sculpture Movement Installations and The Sound Of Movement projects. She is the creator of the Living Art pedagogy for performance art. Claire now uses Asheville, NC as her home base and tours frequently to connect and collaborate with a variety of international artists.
Louis Laberge-Côté is an Assistant Professor of Dance at Ryerson University, School of Performance (Toronto, Canada), since July 2018. He is an active Toronto-based dancer, choreographer, teacher, and rehearsal director. An acclaimed performer, he has danced nationally and internationally with over thirty companies and has been a full-time member of Toronto Dance Theatre (1999-2007) and the Kevin O’Day Ballett Nationaltheater Mannheim (2009-2011). He has created over eighty choreographic works, which have been presented and commissioned in Canada and abroad. His research and creative work examines how engagement in thoughtful exchange with the bodily self allows for greater expressiveness, sustainable working practices, and empathic connection. It is rooted in the belief that, by transcending cerebral understanding, dance and somatic knowledge have the power to profoundly transform who we are, reshape our perceptions, and bring us all closer together. His writings have been published by the Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices, Choreographic Practices, The Dance Current, and the International Dance Council Online Library.