EMMALENA FREDRIKSSON IN RESIDENCE
Photos of Emmalena Fredriksson by Luciana Freire D’Anunciação
Emmalena is joined in BLOOM by C.Diab, the electro acoustic project of Vancouver-based musician Caton Hower Diab.
Welcome, Emmalena! It’s wonderful to have you back to BLOOM again.
Thanks!
When did you know dance was what you wanted to do?
I grew up in a sports family where dance was just one of many things, along with soccer, cross country skiing, ice skating, and so on. Not until I was 15 or 16 was it clear - “I think I really like this.” I wanted to audition for a dance school in Stockholm, but I dislocated my knee really badly. It was a long recovery and for 6 months I could not walk, run or do anything. So, I changed my mind - maybe dancing wasn’t for me. I went a different route in my studies, tried a bunch of other things. Then, a couple of years later, “No, I think I still need to dance.” I remember asking the director of my school “Can I change my major?” I was doing language and social studies and had to audition for the dance major program. But once I did, it felt good. After high school, I auditioned for professional programs, and eventually went into a 3-year program at SEAD in Austria. It was a lot of trial and error, start and stop, but it always felt very right. Even as a professional, I so passionately work in the field, and have a few times felt “This is too hard. I should just get a regular job and do something else.” I tried it for a while, got pulled back into dance, tried again to quit and got pulled back in. It’s a blessing and a curse.
What’s the blessing?
It is clear to me that dance is my blessing. I love, I love dancing. I don't doubt that dance is what I'm going to do. It’s very obvious to me that dance has chosen me and I'm kind of just along for the ride in some ways. That’s the blessing.
And the curse?
It’s not an easy life path to choose. There are lots of set-backs - financial instability, physical well-being at times - injuries, pain, body image, and the rejection that is part of things (grant applications, auditions, and so on) when they don't go well. In the past 10 years I’ve been teaching a lot - the years are going fast. I tell my students that nobody’s ever going to thank you for choosing this life path. You have to find something you love about being this field. It has to be worth it for yourself. And I think that's the way to not become bitter.
When did you begin choreographing?
I am 39 years old and I’ve been making work for going on 20 years. I think there’ll be at least 20 years ahead of making more.
I remember making up dances for my mom to watch endlessly as a child, particularly like the water dances in the summer, being in the water as she sat and watched on the shore of the lake. I recall making solos for the first time around 2004 in a professional training program in the north of Sweden and I can remember making stuff in high school before that – I remember I made a series in bus stops (the kind that are framed with glass walls).
Making dances is a well inside me. For me, asking “Why make dances?” is like asking why eat, why drink, why breathe? It is a way of being. It's a way of living. It's a way of processing this experience we call life that makes a lot of sense to me.
What inspires you?
The different ways people express themselves, whether it be through music, writing, visual art, film…Conversation inspires me. I’m very inspired by other art forms. I think that's why I collaborate as much as I do. I love working collaboratively; encountering different artists’ way of thinking about things brings me a lot of joy.
When you were asked to participate in BLOOM Choreographic Residency what was your first thought?
I thought “Oh yes, what a gift of time and space, to just get to be an artist for a change”, followed by a deep exhale, before checking my calendar if it was physically possible and responding to the email.
I’ve recently been very busy getting some projects off the ground that began in 2020 and early 2021, and we’re in that final home stretch. Recently I've been maybe more of a project manager and a producer than a creator. For freelance artists, getting a project off the ground involves a lot of work.
My fellow artist friends and I work multiple jobs while also trying to create dances, participate in each other's work, promote it on social media, advocate for our community and social change, write grant applications, have romantic relationships and families, work out, eat right and find time to sleep. You know, all the things.
Don’t get me wrong there is a lot of fun in there too, I do what I love for a living and have made a living out of what I love. And it is a fear of mine too, to not live life fully. As if it is the only antidote to all the sadness in the world, to somehow try to counterbalance the pain from losing people I love, an antidote to all the disconnect and spiritual deprivation I see around me. If I can at least say that I’m alive and that I’ve lived, maybe all will be worth it in the end.
How do you develop and enter a creation space?
As an artist in the craft of dance and choreography, having this residency time has made me consider how I nurture that. For the Bloom Residency I wanted to carve out some space to dream, rest, read poetry and dance. Feel life move through me at a slower pace. Part of that is time to rest, to look out the window. And then having time to listen to what my body really, really wants to say and really wants to do and let ideas come, experiment and play with them.
I wanted to read poetry from women before my time and of my time. I have a growing collection, and some I've read over and over again - Mad Girl's Love Song by Sylvia Plath (1953), Wild Geese by Mary Oliver (2004), While Love is Unfashionable by Alice Walker (1984), Give me this by Ada Limon (2020). Somehow poetry feels so rebellious to me as an art form in this day and age – so bold. I am always eager for suggestions of poems.
I wanted to listen and dance to music that allows me to feel the expanse, something to rock me into that dreaming space. I’ve invited the musician C. Diab to play with me in the performances. I've been playing one of his latest recordings on my laptop, and I look forward to feeling the sounds live in the space. His music is very textured and the resonance of the sounds that he makes, and the soundscapes he weaves excite me. They open up spaces in my creative thinking that I really enjoy. It’s our first time working together - I think we’re meeting for 1 or 2 rehearsals beforehand. I’m looking forward to that.
I've been laying on the floor a lot during this residency, reading poetry and looking out the window. I felt really good to be in this space today. I had an idea to create a stage set / scenic image for the show with jigsaw puzzle pieces. In 2019 when my tremors were really bad, my therapist told me that I needed to get a hobby. A calm hobby, like laying jigsaw puzzles to unwind my highly strung nervous system… I got into it but not in the calm leisurely way, I stayed up all night obsessively needing to finish what I started… It was hard for me to leave it unfinished. It was hard for me to do anything leisurely at that time.
The other day I was thinking about how people always try to puzzle together the pieces of their lives, metaphorically speaking. I am no different. I guess it is an attempt to find balance and happiness. But I wonder if it is even possible, do we ever feel like the puzzle of life is laid out perfectly? Aren’t we always carrying pieces around that we don’t know where to put? Or that doesn't fit the situation we’re in now because they are from a different puzzle, a different time in our lives? Maybe balance or perfection is only found in the imbalance and imperfection? Maybe we just have to get better at carrying the pieces around, knowing that life will always be fragmented? I don’t know if I will work with the physical puzzle pieces in space anymore. But the thought lingers.
BLOOM performances are deliberately small and informal. It’s 10 days until they arrive. Can you give us a snapshot of where you are at?
I’ve a little bit more space in the week to come. I'm trying not to stress about the product aspect, and to really be true to what it is to create something new. What is it to listen to what maybe wants to come out?
I’ve given my three adjectives to the sommelier. I still don't know what it is that I am making. I have five hours on Tuesday, when I’m meeting with the lighting designer, hopefully giving her a clearer sense of what I'm doing. The rest of the week holds 3 more 5-hour sessions, and that’s pretty much it!
Twenty more hours to listen to what wants to come out. I’m excited, looking forward to that. I'm excited for C.Diab to come into the studio with his guitar and his bow. I'm excited to share it with some people in the Bloom performances.
