Taylor Neal & Robert Gasdall (2023)
Dates of residency: Term 7：11/6~12/1 2023
Taylor Neal (they/she) is a Canadian artist currently based in Australia, working as a writer, yoga and dance instructor, and frontline worker. Through their artistic practice and engagement with diverse media, they seek to deepen the understanding of human sensibility. Neal has performed internationally at shows and festivals including WIGGLE, Main Event, Still Moon Parade, The Taboo Show, the Ucluelet Cultural Heritage Festival, and The Hollywood Theatre.
Neal integrates a passion for dance, performance, and language with training and study in contemporary art and photography, communications, art history, feminist theory, theatre design at Concordia University, and fashion design at RMIT University. Through this interdisciplinary background, their work addresses identity, movement, sexuality, and the ways in which the body navigates space and the natural world.
Robert Gasdall (he/him) is an emerging Canadian Butoh dancer and multidisciplinary artist. His practice is rooted in principles of dance therapy and somatic movement. Trained in dance and choreography at Concordia University, Gasdall has pursued dance as a means of exploring trauma. More recently, he has developed trauma-informed movement scores that employ the body and therapeutic frameworks to cultivate healing approaches.
Gasdall began performing and choreographing in Montreal, presenting works such as syzygy at DB Clarke Theatre and Somebody’s Eyes at the FOFA Gallery. In 2022, he participated in the SAIKONEON artist residency in Japan and has continued performing in British Columbia, including at the Ucluelet Cultural Heritage Festival.
During their residency at SAIKONEON, Neal and Gasdall collaboratively developed choreography for a new performance, dedicating approximately one month to research and rehearsal. Their residency concluded with successful performances at GASBON METABOLISM (Yamanashi Prefecture) and Kawakaze no Garden (Tokyo).
Performance Statement:
Conduction; the transfer of heat energy from one body to another by direct contact. Conduction aimed to explore the ways in which emotion manipulated space, and embodied spaces, through experimentation with contact and movement, intimacy and distance, and fluidity and structure, within the physical and energetic container of relationships. Using contact improvisation and experimental dance, the artists employed the process of Conduction as their framework for entering into contact each day for a month during their residency at SaikoNeon, with the intention of exploring how different emotions and states of being occupied different qualities and quantities of space. Through weight and energy exchange, balance, gravity, and trust, the artists developed a structured, contact improvisation-based physical language for practical use, which aided in emotional processing and communication between intimate bodies.
Taylor Neal & Robert Gasdall (2023)
Dates of residency: Term 7：11/6~12/1 2023
Taylor Neal (they/she) is a Canadian artist currently based in Australia, working as a writer, yoga and dance instructor, and frontline worker. Through their artistic practice and engagement with diverse media, they seek to deepen the understanding of human sensibility. Neal has performed internationally at shows and festivals including WIGGLE, Main Event, Still Moon Parade, The Taboo Show, the Ucluelet Cultural Heritage Festival, and The Hollywood Theatre.
Neal integrates a passion for dance, performance, and language with training and study in contemporary art and photography, communications, art history, feminist theory, theatre design at Concordia University, and fashion design at RMIT University. Through this interdisciplinary background, their work addresses identity, movement, sexuality, and the ways in which the body navigates space and the natural world.
Robert Gasdall (he/him) is an emerging Canadian Butoh dancer and multidisciplinary artist. His practice is rooted in principles of dance therapy and somatic movement. Trained in dance and choreography at Concordia University, Gasdall has pursued dance as a means of exploring trauma. More recently, he has developed trauma-informed movement scores that employ the body and therapeutic frameworks to cultivate healing approaches.
Gasdall began performing and choreographing in Montreal, presenting works such as syzygy at DB Clarke Theatre and Somebody’s Eyes at the FOFA Gallery. In 2022, he participated in the SAIKONEON artist residency in Japan and has continued performing in British Columbia, including at the Ucluelet Cultural Heritage Festival.
During their residency at SAIKONEON, Neal and Gasdall collaboratively developed choreography for a new performance, dedicating approximately one month to research and rehearsal. Their residency concluded with successful performances at GASBON METABOLISM (Yamanashi Prefecture) and Kawakaze no Garden (Tokyo).
Performance Statement:
Conduction; the transfer of heat energy from one body to another by direct contact. Conduction aimed to explore the ways in which emotion manipulated space, and embodied spaces, through experimentation with contact and movement, intimacy and distance, and fluidity and structure, within the physical and energetic container of relationships. Using contact improvisation and experimental dance, the artists employed the process of Conduction as their framework for entering into contact each day for a month during their residency at SaikoNeon, with the intention of exploring how different emotions and states of being occupied different qualities and quantities of space. Through weight and energy exchange, balance, gravity, and trust, the artists developed a structured, contact improvisation-based physical language for practical use, which aided in emotional processing and communication between intimate bodies.