Landscape Displacement Memory is a digital video series and multimedia live performance fusing dance, storytelling, and aerial drone video. Site-specific dances and rituals in natural spaces are juxtaposed to family oral histories of Soviet immigration, displacement, memory and trauma in a four-part video series shot on high-flying aerial drones. The videos are counterpointed by a live movement duet performed by a human and a drone; puppet and puppeteer; object and subject. The loneliness of performing with/for a drone, meets the loneliness of pandemic life, meets the loneliness of immigration and socio-cultural disintegration.
Choreographer & performer: Ben Gorodetsky
Composer: Larissa Poho
Dramaturgy: Joanna Bundon, Heather Inglis, Jennifer McCoy, Gerry Morita, Jayden Pfeifer & Joey Tremblay
PINCH is a performance and production company led by Ben Gorodetsky. The monthly interdisciplinary variety show PINCH Cabaret celebrates diverse artists from the KW region, functioning as performance laboratory and community arts celebration. PINCH also offers workshops for adult participants interested in exploring the art forms of improvisation, storytelling, and movement.
Ben Gorodetsky is an interdisciplinary performer based in Kitchener. His work has been presented by Movement Research at Judson Church, Tank NYC, Magnet Theatre, Out of Bounds Comedy Fest, e-Volver, Brian Webb Dance Company, Hillside, Guelph Comedy Fest, and SpringWorks. Ben’s the former Associate Artistic Director of Rapid Fire Theatre and has performed, taught, and directed improvisation from Atlanta to Detroit, NYC to LA, Reunion Island to Vienna. He’s co-creator of political satire comedy duo Folk Lordz (VICE). Ben has taught performance at UBC Okanagan, and holds a BFA from the University of Alberta and an MFA from Brooklyn College-CUNY.
Funding and support from the Canada Council for the Arts, Region of Waterloo Arts Fund, Ontario Arts Council, and The Shevchenko Foundation.
Still from footage by Bloom Media