Playful, adventurous, and idiosyncratic performances at the intersection of dance, theatre, music, and improvisation.
Part theatrical happening, part movement event, part improvised digital concert; Maggot Brain by Annalise Grammacione & Lifelong by Jennifer Clarke bring together artists whose practices blur disciplinary boundaries and invite audiences into worlds of imagination, transformation, and spontaneity.
Drawing on a rich tradition of Calgary-based interdisciplinary performance, these works treat movement, sound, story, and presence as equal collaborators. Expect inventive encounters, unexpected turns, and performances that are at once intimate, experimental, and deeply human.
Lifelong: A Work in Progress is a lively excerpt from Jennifer Clarke's ongoing choreographic research exploring how we navigate instability, adaptation, and transformation.
Drawing on more than 25 years as a dance artist, improviser, and somatic educator, Clarke is interested in the body and mind's remarkable ability to reorganize, respond quickly, and find new possibilities when balance is disrupted.
This evolving work combines structured improvisation with live sound construction. Guided by a series of shared performance tasks, the dancers respond to one another in the moment, creating movement, voice, and found sounds in real time. Each performance unfolds through listening, curiosity, risk-taking, and collective decision-making.
Lifelong: A Work in Progress celebrates the unexpected. Sound is created live alongside the movement, becoming an equal creative partner that shapes the atmosphere and direction of the performance. Together, the dancers explore resilience not as returning to stability, but as an ongoing practice of adapting, connecting, and discovering what comes next.
This outdoor showing offers audiences a glimpse into an active creative process and the development of a larger performance work.
Lifelong: A Work in Progress is supported in part by the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and the Creative Residency Program and Decidedly Jazz.
Featured Artists
Jennifer Clarke · Artist
Jennifer Clarke recently relocated to Calgary after a 25 year career dance and making in Vancouver. She is now a Calgary-based dance artist, choreographer, improviser, somatic educator, and yoga teacher. Her work explores the continued, lifelong intelligence of the moving body. She works in contact improvisation, somatic exploration, sound construction and performance. With over 25 years of professional experience, her practice bridges contemporary dance, somatics, and live sound to create immersive performance environments. A graduate of the University of Calgary Dance Program, Jennifer has performed, taught, studied and created across Canada, Italy and New York. She is currently developing Lifelong, an Alberta Foundation for the Arts supported research project investigating adaptation, resilience, and the body's capacity to navigate change through movement and sound.