Emika: Things I Cannot Avoid Saying
Emika: Things I Cannot Avoid Saying
Documentary (dance/history)
Canada, 2021
Runtime: 1 hr 14 mins
Language: English
TEASER TRAILER
Open access
SCREENER
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We acknowledge the land that Things I Cannot Avoid Saying was filmed on is the traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples, and is now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. We also acknowledge that Toronto is covered by Treaty 13 with the Mississaugas of the Credit.
This land acknowledgment is based on our current knowledge about the history of generations before us. This film touches upon one portion of history where land was taken from a racial group and we acknowledge the multitude of past and ongoing injustices of this land. We recognize this acknowledgment is one meant to honour this history and, in addition, share this resource by Johnathan Elliot: Acknowledgment.
TICAS is a feature documentary film about the state of the arts during the covid-19 pandemic. Through the creation of a dance piece about the intergenerational trauma caused by the Japanese internment in Canada during WWII, dancer and choreographer Mayumi Lashbrook grapples with the challenges of creating in quarantine for a digital-first audience.
Directed by Christian Peterson, who collaborates with Mayumi remotely, the film culminates in a self-recorded dance short.
The choreographic process of TICAS began with an interview with Mayumi’s grandfather. In it, he shared memories of his youth, from his forced displacement to a sugar beet farm in Manitoba during WWII to an uncomfortable sojourn in Japan. These memories, and old family photographs, were the basis for Emika, the character created and embodied by Mayumi for this piece.
Things I Cannot Avoid Saying is a documentary feature film documenting the process of discovery in translating dance from physical to virtual spaces. Culminating in a short dance film choreographed, performed, and film by dancer Mayumi Lashbrook, the 90-minute dance documentary explores multiple storylines: the filmmaking process and collaboration with director Christian Peterson during COVID-19, the dancer-led creation of the choreographed film itself, and a reflection on the intergenerational trauma resulting from Japanese internment camps in Canada during WWII.
Isolation has displaced the artist’s workplace from the analog to the digital, the world to the self.
Through Things I Cannot Avoid Saying, both Mayumi and Christian have found ways to work together and have discovered realms of their own creativity that had yet to be explored. This film is a public expression of these discoveries, a sharing and questioning of the limitless possibilities of creativity.
While technology has been increasingly integrated in my practice in mediums such as music videos, dance films, and media arts collaborations in performative spaces, the current climate has brought forth the need for dancers to craft these things themselves. I have danced and choreographed in several films with two more that were set to happen this spring. I feel compelled to deepen my knowledge and understanding of the choreographic space delineated by a lens to further my abilities to create within it. During the pandemic, I have worked to accelerate my performative abilities in the technical realm through self-taping. In my choreographic process, I typically use the mirror in a dance studio in combination with filming myself to craft choreography before setting it on dancers. Without the luxury of a proper mirror at home, I’ve worked solely with video, which has opened new perspectives and understanding of how the lens captures and renders the body. In my current explorations, it’s brought up questions:
What does it mean to create a two-dimensional version of an otherwise three-dimensional work?
What is the difference between archival and documentary footage?
What’s the relative value of content vs. form for the viewer?
How will the audience experience this narrative?
Can we use distance as the context for collaboration?
- Mayumi Lashbrook, on the impacts of COVID-19 on her artistic practice
PRODUCTION DETAILS
Things I Cannot Avoid Saying
is produced by Roxton Media
in collaboration with Aeris Körper
The cast and crew of Things I Cannot Avoid Saying are brought together by their visible and invisible marginalized experiences. Toronto is recorded to have 51% priority groups. With that ratio as our minimum measure of diversity, we have made cast and crew decisions to ensure that our team’s makeup reflects that of this city and can thus meaningfully amplify the plurality of perspectives within it.
CORE CREATIVE TEAM
Christian Peterson and Mayumi Lashbrook have collaborated twice: first in the context of the 'Art Of Colour Dance' video series as well as on the dance installation/performance 'Powerhouse' by Aeris Körper, presented at Hamilton's Frost Bites Festival.
Mayumi Lashbrook
Dancer, Choreographer, Producer
Mayumi Lashbrook performs with an “electric” and “life-giving” connection (The Fringe Review, John Hinton). She is a dance artist, choreographer, and co-artistic director whose desires are driven by revealing all possibilities of beauty in the mundane. She performs as a way to find connection, commonality and vulnerability in others. Mayumi is interested in, but not limited to, movement that is fluid, powerful, delicate, weighted, intricate, agile and impactful. Mayumi graduated from Ryerson University’s Theatre Performance Dance program, on the Dean’s list, she is a leader of Dreamwalker Dance’s Conscious Bodies methodology, the 2018/19 Dance Coordinator for the Burlington Performing Arts Centre and the Co-Artistic Director of Aeris Körper. Choreographically, she creates work for stage, film and site specific. She received the REAson D’etre Creating Contact residency in partnership with New Blue Dance in 2017 and was a recipient of the multidisciplinary L’AiR Arts Residency program in January 2020 in Paris, France.
Christian Peterson
Director, Producer
Christian Peterson is a filmmaker based in Toronto, Canada, and the creative director of Roxton Media. A film teacher at Upper Canada College, graduate of Concordia University’s Film Production program, and a researcher at McGill University's Oppenheimer Chair in Public International Law, he's worked on narrative films and webseries, feature-length documentaries, and music videos. He’s worked with filmmaker Atom Egoyan, actor/director Woody Harrelson, and with Eric Piccoli at Productions Babel on the Digital Emmy-nominated series Temps Mort. He was the cinematographer and a co-producer of Millions, The Series, which screened at the New York Television Festival and had its Toronto premiere at ReelWorld Film Festival.
Bowen Mei
Cinematographer
Additional Crew
Camera Assistant & Gaffer / Kellen McCann
BTS Photography / Kat Castro
Arason Navaranjan
Editor
Arason is an editor based out of Toronto, Canada. He studied at Toronto Film School, graduating from their Film Production program with honours in 2017. He has worked across the film industry, on both narrative and documentary projects, in a variety of roles from cinematography to post-production, including with Renuka Jeyapalan and Daniel Grant on the first installment of the web series First Person.
Yobi
Music Composer
Alan Lieu (born 10 February 1990) better known as Yobi, is a Canadian producer, audio engineer, sound designer. Born and raised in Winnipeg Manitoba, he got a start in music at age 17, DJing in local clubs. In 2009, Yobi moved to Toronto, Ontario to pursue his passion in audio engineering and production where he attended Recording Arts Canada and The Remix Project (9.0) for audio engineering and DJ. As he developed a refined taste and sound aesthetic after school, Yobi started taking more interest in music production as a self-taught musician and composer, Yobi uses samplers, turntable, field recordings, keyboard and music softwares as his main instruments. He is known for his dark, layered musical style that blends disparate cultural influences and genres including 90’s British alternative/electronica and hiphop. He has worked with notable clients such as Moose Knuckle, Nike, Arcteryx, Haven Apparel, Maple Leafs Sport Entertainment, Kid Studio as a composer and sound designer. His newest release is a self produced ambient experimental album called “Visions and Prophecies”
Bandcamp / Spotify
Sid Ryan Eilers (they/them)
Outside Eye
“Sid Ryan Eilers has the audience holding their breath with every movement” (Veronica Appia, The Theatre Reader). Sid is a dance artist based in Hamilton and a graduate of the York University dance program (2004). In 2014, they founded Aeris Körper, producing 17 works over 11 years in Hamilton, Burlington, Toronto, and across the GTA. Sid was an artist with the Burlington Whole Shebang (2014-2016) and was mentored by Andrea Nann in her Conscious Bodies Method. Sid has supported Andrea Nann in Memory is the History of Forgetting and Peggy Baker for MOVE.
MEDIA IMPRESSIONS
“New doc looks at how choreographers, dancers push limits of remote collaboration”
CBC Arts / Dec 15, 2020
Read Here
“Historical Reckoning: Two Japanese Canadians who are dancing their heritage”
Dance International / Oct 5, 2020
Read Here
CONTACT
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