LARA KRAMER ~ THEM VOICES - 2020/21
Montréal Residency: March to May, 2021
Curated by Amelia Ehrhardt
Lara Kramer, Them Voices (2021) Photo: Stefan Petersen
Conceived, created, set and performed by Lara Kramer
Sound creation + editing: Lara Kramer + Simon Riverin
Outside Eyes: Faye Mullen + Peter James
Knowledge keeper: Ida Baptiste
Elder: Emerson Ninigishki’ing
Documentation: Ivanie Aubin-Malo + James Oscar
Lighting Design: Hugo Dalphond
Technical Director: Simon Riverin
Creative Residencies with Dancemakers + Place des Arts + Musée d'art contemporain
Coproduced with Festival TransAmériques + Dancemakers
With support from Conseil des arts et des lettres du Quebec
“Them Voices explores the transporting of sound, body, mobility, imagination, and connection, in relation to a recurring dream, memory, family, and future dreaming.
The artists Lara Kramer positions herself inside shared experiences with her mother and explores hopes, dreams and future thriving. The title Them Voice is interpreted as multiple voices, stories, imagery, that are imbedded in the artist’s body and that are anchored with her mother and family relations. The multigenerational experiences that come before and proceed the artists, future dreaming becomes the crafting of fuel towards new rhythms, new modes of mobility.
Them Voice searches to be inside the place that carries memory and future imagination. Laying out in all possible directions. What has been exerted, what is failed. What is not yet seen or dreamt of. All is together, intersecting in Them Voice. Strives to re-imagine new pathways connected to future ancestors in their flight and journey.”
Lara’s final year of her three year residency takes place in Montréal and it concludes with a Technical Residency at MAC Musée d’art contemporain. Born out of desire to have further critical discourse on Contemporary Dance and her three years at Dancemakers, Lara and writer James Oscar are also collaborating on an Artists Monograph that was initiated between them during her 2020 residency at Dancemakers. This Artists Monograph is supported by The Canada Council for the Arts and the Quebec Arts Council, in partnership with the Fonderie Darling.
ABOUT LARA KRAMER
Lara Kramer is a performer, choreographer and multidisciplinary artist of mixed Oji-cree and settler heritage, living and working on the unceded territory of the Kanien’kahá:ka Nation. Her choreographic work, research and field work over the last twelve years has been grounded in intergenerational relations, intergenerational knowledge and impacts on colonial trauma. Her creations have been presented across Canada and even in Australia, New Zealand, Martinique, the US and the UK.
Lara Kramer’s work employs powerful imagery. Often blunt and raw, playing with the strengths and vulnerability of the body, her pieces stand out for their engagement, sensitivity, close and instinctive listening to the body, and her attention to the invisible.
She has been on the faculty of the Indigenous Dance Residency at The Banff Centre and has taught workshops across Canada and in Australia and New Zealand. In 2016 Lara initiated The Cradleboard Project, a community project fostering the reclaiming of traditional practices developed in collaboration with Anishinaabe artists and knowledge keeper Ida Baptiste that ran for two years in Tiohti:áke/Montreal. She was the guest teacher at Nunatta Isiginnaartitsisarfia – The National Theatre of Greenland in 2018. She also landed her debut role in François Delisle film Cash Nexus (2018) as supporting character Angie. Lara has participated in several residencies including Indian Residential School Museum of Canada in Portage la Prairie (2009) and Dancemakers Artist in Residence from (2018-2021).