Episode 7: As everything returns to soil - Caroline shaw and vanessa goodman in conversation with rebecca bruton and nicole mion

Vanessa Goodman, a small white woman-presenting human with short dark hair pulled into a bun, sings into a microphone. The creamsicle orange cord of the microphone is wrapped around her body. In the background to the left, there is a blurry image of Caroline Shaw. photo by Dana Szyndrowski

Vanessa Goodman respectfully acknowledges that she lives, works and creates on the ancestral and unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples, including the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō, Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations. She holds a BFA from Simon Fraser University and is the artistic director of Action at a Distance Dance Society. Vanessa is attracted to art that has a weight and meaning beyond the purely aesthetic and uses her choreography as an opportunity to explore the human condition. She has received several awards and honours, including The Iris Garland Emerging Choreographer Award (2013); The Yulanda M. Faris Scholarship (2017/18); The Chrystal Dance Prize (2019); The Schultz Endowment from Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (2019); and the "Space to Fail" program (2019/20) in New Zealand, Australia and Vancouver. Vanessa's work has been presented in Vancouver by DanceHouse, SFU Woodwards, Music on Main, The Firehall Arts Centre, The Dance Centre, The Chutzpah! Festival and The Shadbolt Centre for the Arts. Presentations further afield include the Fluid Festival (Calgary), Kinetic Studio (Halifax), The Dance Made in Canada Festival (Toronto), On the Boards (Seattle), Risk/Reward Festival (Portland), Offset Dance Fest (Brooklyn), Switch Lab (Bucharest), L1 Festival (Budapest), Estorgenuis (New York), BioFriction/ FACTT (Lisbon) and The Bienal Internacional de Dança Do Ceará (Brazil). Vanessa has been artist-in-residence at Cutivamos Cultura/BioFriction (Portugal), The Dance Centre, Dance Victoria, Harbourfront Centre, The Shadbolt Centre and The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, where she was also on faculty. Recently, Vanessa presented work and was a facilitator for Trinity Laban's 2020 Co-Lab Project (London). Commissions include works for Alexis Fletcher, Springboard Dansé Montréal, the plastic orchid factory (with Ame Henderson), Votive Dance, Lamon Dance, Modus Operandi and The SFU rep class. This season the company will be premiering two new works, "Core/Us" and "Tuning", and be touring "Graveyards and Gardens" with Caroline Shaw in Canada and the US and "BLOT" with Simona Deaconsecu in Canada and Europe.

Caroline Shaw, a freckled, white woman-presenting human, sits crosslegged while leaning towards an old analogue tape recorder. Caroline is wearing a burnt-orange knit sweater and a moss-green toque. The fringe of her reddish hair pokes out from under the hat; her hands are resting in her lap. There is a black microphone and an orange cassette tape on the floor next to the tape recorder; a sherbet-orange electrical cord cuts the image in two. photo by Dana Szyndrowski

Caroline Shaw is a musician who moves among roles, genres, and mediums, trying to imagine a world of sound that has never been heard before but has always existed. She is the youngest recipient of the Pulitzer Prize in Music for Partita for 8 Voices (Roomful of Teeth), and she works often in collaboration with others, as producer, composer, violinist, and vocalist. 2022 will see the release of work with Rosalía (on upcoming album MOTOMAMI), the score to Josephine Decker’s film The Sky Is Everywhere (A24/Apple), the premiere of Justin Peck’s Partita with NY City Ballet, the premiere of the new stage work LIFE with Gandini Juggling and the Merce Cunningham Trust, a premiere for NY Philharmonic and Roomful of Teeth, the premiere Wu Tsang’s silent film Moby Dick with live score for Zurich Chamber Orchestra co-composed with Andrew Yee, a second album with Attacca Quartet called The Evergreen (Nonesuch), the premiere of Helen Simoneau’s Delicate Power, tours of Graveyards & Gardens (immersive dance theater work co-created with Vanessa Goodman), and tours with So Percussion featuring songs from Let The Soil Play Its Simple Part (Nonesuch), amid occasional chamber music appearances (Chamber Music Society of Minnesota, Caramoor Festival, La Jolla Music Society). Caroline has written over 100 works in the last decade, for Anne Sofie von Otter, Davóne Tines, Yo Yo Ma, Renée Fleming, Dawn Upshaw, LA Phil, Philharmonia Baroque, Seattle Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, Aizuri Quartet, The Crossing, Dover Quartet, Calidore Quartet, Brooklyn Rider, Miro Quartet, I Giardini, Ars Nova Copenhagen, Ariadne Greif, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Britt Festival, Vail Dance Festival, and many others. She has produced for Kanye West, Rosalía, Woodkid, and Nas. Her work as vocalist or composer has appeared in several films, tv series, and podcasts including The Humans, Bombshell, Yellowjackets, Maid, Dark, Beyonce’s Homecoming, jeen-yuhs: a Kanye Trilogy, Dolly Parton’s America, and More Perfect. (CS 2022)