Lisa Sandlos - Hands Down!

The Creation of Lisa Sandlos' Upstream: Going with the flow

By Rachel Deutsch

A crowd of interested onlookers gathered around the shallow pond at Harbourfront in the summer of 1995. They were attracted by the sight of five soaking wet female dancers engaged in the creation of a new piece of choreography called Upstream. The tenuous beginnings of a new dance are rarely this public.

The choreographer, Lisa Sandlos, directed them thoughtfully from her perch on the side ledge of the pond. "Try flicking the water in an arc in front of you. Now turn quickly and slap the surface. Sonia and Nicole, lift skywards and suspend. Yes. Now Mary and Vanessa, catch them in your arms as they fall and swoosh them back to their feet."

Sandlos and her outstanding cast from Toronto's independent dance community (Sonia Biernath, Colleen Friedman, Mary Horrigan, Vanessa Lambeck and Nicole La Rochelle) were originally interested in exploring human movement which would emulate the various movement qualities of water. They planned to perform Upstream at Harbourfront as well as in other water sites around the city. When the anticipated funding for the piece did not come through, rehearsals needed to be spread out over a longer time period. The colder temperatures of October forced the dancers back into the studio, but they were committed to continue their work. They took their images and sensory experiences of water inside with them, refusing to stop the flow of their creative process.

The movement of water became a metaphor for the flow of life. Sandlos stated that, "Upstream deals with the ways in which we allow ourselves to be carried along by the flow of life, as well as our struggles of resisting the current."

The music for Upstream is a composition by Ritesh Das, director of the Toronto Tabla Ensemble. "There is a great deal of flow and continuity in Ritesh's music," comments Sandlos, "and it is deliciously contrasted by strong accents and a powerful sense of assertion. There is definitely something East-West about it. It reminds me of a ritual, an introspective meditation, combined with the slogan 'Go for it!"'

Upstream premiered with the original cast in November of 1995 at the 8:08 Series in Toronto. The piece was well received and that night, the director of the MacDancers, Dave Wilson was in the audience. The following year, he invited Sandlos to remount Upstream for his company, made up of talented young dancers from McMaster University in Hamilton. Not only were there performances in Hamilton, but the piece was taken on tour to the American College Dance Festival (A.C.D.F.) in Miami, Florida.

Upstream has never returned to its original birthplace of shallow ponds and water sites. Instead, it has developed into an intricate and challenging theatrical work. When asked if Sandlos still hopes to work in real water again, she says, "That is another piece still waiting to be made. Upstream sprang forth from water, but in order to be realized at all, it needed to move indoors. I learned from the piece itself that there was no point in fighting the current of creativity when it was flowing in another direction."

Sandlos looks forward to remounting Upstream for a third time this spring. This time she will work with five members of her own troupe, The Young Contemporary Dancers of Toronto (YCDT). "The YCDT dancers are very young [fifteen to sixteen years of age] to be doing a piece like this. Upstream is full of nuances and subtleties, as well as being technically demanding. But I felt that the five of them (Rachel Deutsch, Teoma Jackson-Naccarato, Katie Lamer, Leah Page, and Karen Silverman) are now mature and strong enough, both in their dancing and in their world views, that they could handle it. And besides, when I showed them the video, they were completely motivated to meet the challenge."

Upstream will be performed at Dancemakers on April 24 and 25 as part of the Young Contemporary Dancers of Toronto's show called Hands Down! For more information, call (416) 899-6525.

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