Ep. 28 - Arriving while Happening (2014)

PuSh Play

NOTE: Due to technical difficulties, the audio quality for this episode is not at the usual standard for PuSh Play.

Gabrielle Martin chats with Josh Martin, Artistic Co-Director of Company 605.

Show Notes

Gabrielle and Josh discuss:

• Collision between separate people, bodies and ideas

• How did the relationship with PuSh begin?

• What does it mean to be in the middle zone between emerging and landed as an artistic group?

• How do collect work together, like different tracks in an album, instead of streamline on a singular vision?

• What was PuShOFF (now Hold on Let Go) and how did that process work?

• How do we show what Vancouver is and what’s happening beneath the surface?

• Making a piece of choreography that is in constant repetition

• How do you cope with the difficulty of consistency and structured improvisation?

• What does it mean to find the true core of a work?

• Bringing together different approaches and interpretations

• It’s crucial to feel that we can put ourselves in relationship to the rest of the world

About Josh Martin

Originally from Alberta, Josh Martin is a diversely trained dance artist with a career-to-date that has led him across North America and Europe, studying and performing in many genres along the way. As a performer and collaborator, he has worked with many other dance companies and independent choreographers such as Wen Wei Wang (Wen Wei Dance), Tiffany Tregarthen and David Raymond (Out Innerspace Dance Theatre), Dana Gingras (Animals of Distinction), Serge Bennathan (Les Productions Figlio), Amber Funk Barton (the response.), Vanessa Goodman (Action at a Distance), Justine A. Chambers, Helen Walkley, Martha Carter, Karen Jamieson, and as a past company member of Le Groupe Dance Lab in Ottawa under the direction of Peter Boneham. Josh’s independent work has been presented in Vancouver, Victoria, Calgary, Moncton, St. Johns, and through the National Arts Centre in Ottawa; as well as in the USA, Japan, and throughout Germany (Winning 1st Prize for Choreography at the Internatonal SoloTanz Festival in Stuttgart). Off the stage, he serves as Vice-Chair of The Dance Centre’s Board of Directors and Chair of its Artistic Advisory Committee. Josh was the recipient of Vancouver’s 2013 Mayor’s Arts Award – Emerging Dance Category.

Land Acknowledgement

This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver.

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Show Transcript

Gabrielle Martin 00:02

Hello and welcome to Push Play, a Push Festival podcast featuring conversations with artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form. I'm Gabrielle Martin, Push's Director of Programming, and in this special series of Push Play, we're revisiting the legacy of Push and talking to creators who've helped shape 20 years of innovative, dynamic, and audacious festival programming.

Gabrielle Martin 00:22

Today's episode features Josh Martin of Company 605 and is anchored around the 2014 Push Festival. Josh Martin is a dance maker, performer, and producer based in Vancouver. His diverse training led him across North America and Europe, and in his ongoing career as an interpreter and collaborator, he's worked with dozens of dance companies and independent choreographers.

Gabrielle Martin 00:44

For over 15 years, he has been one of the artistic co -directors of Company 605, a Vancouver -based arts organization creating, producing, and presenting new dance works throughout Canada and internationally.

Gabrielle Martin 00:58

Co -led by artistic directors Lisa Marico Gelli and Josh Martin, Company 605 produces a wide range of dance projects in a shared creative process, placing emphasis on rigorous choreographic propositions and movement exploration.

Gabrielle Martin 01:14

605 is an ongoing exchange and collision between separate people, bodies, and ideas with each project seeking and celebrating the unique possibilities created in their attempt to coexist. The Company has performed from coast to coast in over 30 cities across Canada, as well as in the U .S., Central America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.

Gabrielle Martin 01:34

Here's my conversation with Josh. We are here on stolen, traditional, ancestral territories of close Salish peoples, possibly of Spanish and so -called Singapore. So far, it's been just on the rise here.

Gabrielle Martin 01:52

We're going to shoot outside. It's raining, so we're inside. Here we are.

Josh Martin 01:58

kind of soggy.

Gabrielle Martin 01:59

Lighting can be better, but we're dry. So this is a really great opportunity to talk about your relationship with the festival through 605 Collective and Company 605, your co -interest and director of Company 605, with Lisa Gelly.

Gabrielle Martin 02:18

And your relationship with Push, I mean, you can tell me where it starts, but I'll just contextualize that the first work that Push presented of Collective, 605 Collective, was an inherent album in 2014.

Gabrielle Martin 02:32

So we'll start there, we'll talk about that work and get a sense of what it was like to realize that work for the festival. And then also talk about Loop Lao, which Push presented in 2019, as well as your work as curator of Push Off or co -curator along with Lisa.

Josh Martin 02:49

Microwave Yamamoto, yeah.

Gabrielle Martin 02:51

Yeah, the theater replacement team and your work with Push Off, which is now Hold On Let Go, which continues today and has a, had a direct and has an indirect relationship. Definitely part of the kind of what makes Push Push, even if it's not the push programming.

Gabrielle Martin 03:07

So we'll talk about that. So yeah, please take us back to the beginning. How do you, how did the relationship with Push Start?

Josh Martin 03:15

I have to assume that Joyce Rosario, who was the executive director of New Works around that time, who was managing company 605 or 605 Collective. I don't know, is that? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So company 605 grew out of being 605 Collective, which was in our early days managed by New Works, first Barbara Claussen, and then Joyce Rosario taking over the helm of New Works at a certain point.

Josh Martin 03:48

And so we kind of grew up together inside of that organization, and then around that same time, I think Joyce was making the jump to be associate producer, associate curator of Push Festival, and I think that had already sort of tried to build a relationship between Norman and 605 Collective.

Josh Martin 04:09

And then it just sort of happened that kind of things aligned in a certain year, and then we had just premiered the work in the end of 2012, and so there was a chance to kind of get eyes on it, and then I think Joyce probably convinced Norman that it was worth having more eyes on it, and we were just starting to kind of have some international traction around that time, so it was invited to be part of the 2014 Push Festival.

Josh Martin 04:38

Go ahead.

Gabrielle Martin 04:38

like eight years after the founding of collective successful

Josh Martin 04:44

Yeah, I mean, the official society of the 605 Collective was 2009, but we had started working in 2006 as sort of a group of individuals, so Sasha Kozak, Michael Miyauchi, Lisa Jelly, myself and Shay Kubler were kind of the original core artists of this collective that had started.

Josh Martin 05:03

All of us very emerging artists, all of us kind of from a mixed bag of genres of dance, most of us from commercial dance and sort of finding our way into contemporary performance. And so, yeah, this was our kind of second big project.

Josh Martin 05:21

You know, we had done lots of little things, but Inheritor Album was our second full -length work, I guess.

Gabrielle Martin 05:28

And why do you think, well first of all maybe you can tell us what that project was and why you think it was the right fit for Push.

Josh Martin 05:37

Well, I don't know why it was the right fit for Push necessarily, but I can tell you that the starting point or the title inheritor album was just sort of this recognition of us being in this kind of middle zone where we were not quite emerging, we were kind of moving past that, but we weren't landed yet in terms of knowing what we were doing, but yet we were feeling this, I guess this place in the middle of both kind of in the position of receiving what had been left for us from previous generations and also being aware that we're kind of changing things or helping to build things too and a responsibility inside of that.

Josh Martin 06:17

And I think we all knew that that was like rich territory to explore content wise, but that it's not a piece we could summarize in like a work, you know, like it's just too big. It's too huge to think about where you are generationally inside of change or inside of the question of what you've been left with or what you've been left to deal with and what you're creating for others to deal with in your wake.

Josh Martin 06:44

But we knew this idea of an album was kind of interesting because then it allowed us to kind of just pick out things that were coming to us from it and just build it as a collection of work as opposed to one singular idea that was going to somehow encapsulate the entirety of this idea.

Josh Martin 07:02

So I think that for us it felt good, especially as emerging creators, that we were just going to bite off these ideas in ways that were, you know, five minutes long and then leave it, you know, and then move on to the next one.

Josh Martin 07:15

And so I think we also felt like, okay, this is like kind of we haven't seen a lot of dance formatted like this and it feels like this is something that we feel, you know, inclined to move towards as a way of making or as a way of coping with making that's something that feels big.

Josh Martin 07:33

So yeah, the idea of collecting work, especially as a collaboration, was much easier than trying for us all to somehow conceive of the same vision for this piece, you know.

Gabrielle Martin 07:45

So like different tracks in and out.

Josh Martin 07:47

Exactly, different tracks in an album, and I think, you know, in some ways it meant that the work was very eclectic and it had a lot of different dynamic to the highs and lows of it, or the, I don't know, the aesthetic of it.

Josh Martin 08:02

But we worked with an artist named Miwa Matryek, who I think has had a relationship with Push Festival, or at least Push Off has been here during the Push Assembly, now is based here in Vancouver, who was doing all the video design, and so that was the other piece of it that we wanted to really approach, was to kind of create these specific worlds without having to build sets for every single one of the tracks,

Josh Martin 08:24

but to bring in her projection design into the space, so floor projections and wall projections, and being able to kind of not build them as some sort of technological interaction piece, but to work with them as like another dancer in the space.

Josh Martin 08:40

And so, I think there was varying levels of success of how that worked, but I think it really added this visual layer to it that I think was compelling for people to watch, especially when we're mixing really physical dance inside of it.

Josh Martin 08:58

So yeah, I think that was, for us, it felt like trying to make a big piece. Now, in retrospect, it's not that big of a piece, but it felt big for us, and it sort of became our launching pad.

Gabrielle Martin 09:11

collaboration and because of the integration of the projection. Exactly.

Josh Martin 09:15

And trying to take the time to kind of really build out this album in a way that we could fine -tune and tweak each little track and try to make sense of it together as a collection that we could perform as a bit of a journey for ourselves but let it be all independent ideas.

Gabrielle Martin 09:34

The next year, 2015, you started working with Theatre Replacement as a co -curator, director of Pushup.

Josh Martin 09:43

Yeah, so Joyce Rosario, Chris Nelson, had, I believe in probably 2010, they had both been working on trying to build this, you know, this off festival of Push, but mostly about taking advantage of who was here during Push Festival, because it was this encounter between international artists and international presenters and arts workers, that the local scene was, you know, there was ways to interact with it,

Josh Martin 10:20

but I think they really wanted to get people's work visible, and so they had built Push Off, and New Works had housed it, and Chris Nelson's Antonin had housed it, and together they had kind of built these partnerships around it, and then when Joyce was leaving New Works for Push Festival, and when Chris was leaving for Lift Festival, I believe, yeah, oh right, and then it was the question of, okay,

Josh Martin 10:50

are we going to keep doing this thing, or who's going to keep doing this thing, and I know that Feeder Replacement had jumped on it to try and make sure that it didn't fall away, and New Works was in the change of hands, not sure if they should keep it, and so Company 605 decided, well, we're working with Feeder Replacement on another work right now, too, and that feels like a really good relationship and a good partnership,

Josh Martin 11:13

so we jumped on as being kind of the dance representative of Push Off at that time.

Gabrielle Martin 11:20

And so then, your role and responsibility was to curate the local artists that would be presented in programming that ran parallel to the push -ups.

Josh Martin 11:33

That's right, yes. I mean, I guess our role was to sort of envision, you know, how do we show what Vancouver is in the context of this international festival that's happening around side of it? How do we show what's kind of happening underneath the surface of the city or what's not on in the side of the theatres at this moment, but like give a sense of the community that's here?

Josh Martin 11:57

And so I think that we immediately were approaching it from the idea of like, what are people working on right now? Not necessarily like what's out there for sale, but what are people working on right now?

Josh Martin 12:09

Where are they working? How are they working? How do we make people aware of that? How do we build conversations around that with the hopes of relationships kind of forming in international threads being formed?

Gabrielle Martin 12:23

Work in progress.

Josh Martin 12:24

Yeah, work in progress.

Gabrielle Martin 12:26

And then in different venues was progress were you already based in progress lab at that point no no the venues

Josh Martin 12:33

No, it was it was kind of spread out and we had like kind of ancillary events happening also where We knew that like electric company was doing in the middle of a rehearsal process So there was like trips to different places, but the dance center was also being utilized And then at one point we switched to the russian hall as being like kind of a multi -purpose venue for all All sorts of work.

Josh Martin 12:55

So we've kind of been all over the place, but now situated mostly at russian hall as the home base Yeah

Gabrielle Martin 13:01

And then in 2019, Push Presented Luki Bao, what was the process of realizing that project for the festival? Was that a premiere, actually?

Josh Martin 13:12

It was the premiere, yeah.

Gabrielle Martin 13:13

Yeah, what is that piece and what was the process of putting it?

Josh Martin 13:19

I mean, very, very different type of work, I think at that point, like we had, we had done a few projects since Inheritor Album. I think that we had sort of considered like the way that we're making in terms of how often it's like these collages of things and we were really like gung -ho about going towards just one idea.

Josh Martin 13:43

And I think that, so that was, you know, the idea being that we would build this piece of choreography that was in a constant state of repetition and that's the looping part of it. And it went through this whole kind of process where we had set out to make this piece of choreography that was going to transform and change over the course of time, like not necessarily a durational work, but the act of it needed time in order to develop.

Josh Martin 14:13

And so I think we had thought that it was going to be this set piece of choreography that we would build the entire length of, but the more we worked on it, the more that we found a different interest in a side of it, which was really about like how the performers were actually just navigating change, you know, like the more that we worked on it, the more that we were seeing the difficulty of consistency and in fact seeing the dancers cope with that difficulty of consistency or like all of the little micro -airs or omissions or things that got lost or having to be worked on again were kind of the content for the piece.

Josh Martin 14:55

It was like seeing people having to deal with transformation or deal with things changing that aren't the same and seeing that by setting it we were actually kind of losing something to it. So it was our first time where we were like, okay, I think for this to really be what it is, we have to be a structured improvisation and we have to risk what that's going to be on stage.

Josh Martin 15:20

And so very different from our previous work, which is, you know, we set it, we rehearsed the hell out of it, and then, you know, it's just in our bodies, whereas this was constantly kind of arriving as it was happening.

Josh Martin 15:32

And so we just got really, we geeked out on dance in a lot of ways. And the labor of performers, the labor of dance of how much we're constantly coping with when we dance together and the way that one thing evolves and changes and how difficult that is to deal with.

Josh Martin 15:54

And yet dancers are also like the best, most capable people at dealing with that. So, yeah, I think Loop Lull was basically an experiment of, you know, when we take away the control of this thing and when we kind of hand over to what people trying to be together looks like, it looks like this, it looks like people, you know, being in this place of instability and then moving into moments of stability but then falling back out of it again or seeing people kind of get lost and try to catch back up again.

Josh Martin 16:31

And I think it's just really beautiful to watch dancers have to like really, really navigate it and not just pretend to navigate it, you know. So I don't know, like in terms of the success of the piece from the context of a viewer who's on the outside of it, who doesn't know the interior of the process, who doesn't know kind of the stakes.

Josh Martin 16:53

But for me to watch it, we're still kind of in love with what it became because now it's like a practice that we can do and we have turned that work into a practice that is more of like an installation where we will loop for, you know, forever and we can constantly move through the score in different ways and transform as a group and it's kind of meditative, it's kind of like taxing, it's about endurance.

Josh Martin 17:20

It's about just sort of how to be together and these uncertainty, you know. So it feels like that was definitely a departure from previous moments. So to come back to Push Festival with this completely different work, which probably anybody who had seen our work prior was kind of like, well, what was that?

Gabrielle Martin 17:46

why maybe Joyce, was it Joyce who kind of led that conversation with us? About that work? Yeah. I'm curious if you think that's why Joyce or Norman kind of is more excited about that work as being part of the 2019 festival.

Josh Martin 18:02

I mean, it was a premiere. I don't think that they knew what it was going to be. I think that they knew that we were working on something else, working on an experiment, as opposed to bringing another inheritor album.

Josh Martin 18:17

So I think there was some trust and risk on their part in order to do that as well. But I think it's also just in regards to you form these relationships with artists, especially from the local community, and you return to them to find out what's happening now.

Josh Martin 18:36

Like, what is this progression or what is this evolution of a practice or of the propositions that people are putting forward?

Gabrielle Martin 18:48

So maybe you can talk about that from Inheritor album until, well and we just premiered, Lossie, a week ago, two weeks ago at the Dancing on the Edge festival here. How has your practice evolved over that period?

Josh Martin 19:07

Well, I mean from...

Gabrielle Martin 19:11

I mean, you just told us to listen between a character album and the novel.

Josh Martin 19:17

Well, I think that's just it, is getting a bit more invested in trying to find the core of a work. Just sticking with that, like the type of work that we've been attempting to make for the time and space in between is really about investing more in the research or what's underlying the process in order to have that felt by everybody participating.

Gabrielle Martin 19:56

Does that mean that your research period is longer? Does that mean that you are working with a dramaturg? When you were working with a dramaturg before?

Josh Martin 20:06

I don't know if it's about like these sort of exact changes to a process. I think it's about values. I think it's about, you know, what's being prioritized and for us, the way that we want to make dance is less towards this idea of like, oh, we have a vision, let's find the people and get them to do that thing for us by telling them, you know, it's just this.

Josh Martin 20:30

I think that we're more and more invested in this idea of how we can bring a group of people together and we can all sort of sort it out simultaneously and that not everyone has to have the same idea of what we're doing and that, in fact, those things can coexist and that is, in fact, the work.

Josh Martin 20:49

You know, I think that everyone's approaches can be different to the way that we're working. So if I think velocity, it's like the way that we made that work, we didn't want to dictate this is how you should feel doing this work or this is what the interpretation of it should be, but these are the ideas that have kind of come out of our conversations together or the dialogue and that takes time to build that dialogue or to build this sense of your own relationship to a work when you're a performer or when you're a collaborator.

Josh Martin 21:21

And so I think that that's what we want to have is the space for people to really, you know, be who they are and not just to have that show up in the way that they perform, but in the way that that fuels the creation itself.

Josh Martin 21:35

So I don't know, I think it has a lot to do with our practice being changed and transformed or has evolved because of our relationship with community and specifically this one in Vancouver about like how do we participate in the community, the dance community, the performing arts community here where it's not necessarily about this product, like it's not necessarily about this vision for the piece that's going to go out and tour,

Josh Martin 22:03

but it's about like how are we together and the more that we've valued our place inside of that community, the more that that kind of infiltrates into the way we make stuff.

Gabrielle Martin 22:17

What's your perspective on the culture of context of person and significance to the city?

Josh Martin 22:22

I think, I mean, I landed in, I came to Vancouver in 2006 from Alberta, but I didn't really land here because I had kind of bounced around a bit, but I landed here around 2008, I think. But I do remember when I started seeing Push Festival, and keep in mind that I was younger and very much in like, harbour dance, street dance, commercial dance stuff, I wasn't in contemporary performance, I wasn't into that.

Josh Martin 22:53

I remember sort of coming into it at the same time that we were sort of figuring out who we are, what sort of dance we want to make or pursue. I remember going to certain performances in 2010 or 11, maybe even earlier, and it was like the out there stuff, you know, like for me, as a young creator, I was like, who are these people, like where does this work come from, and where can I get more, essentially?

Josh Martin 23:26

Because it was the experimental festival, it was the off -the -wall stuff, it was the things that felt from far away brought here, and so for me, Push Festival, like I remember seeing like the work Jerk, I don't know what year that was, 2000 years.

Gabrielle Martin 23:50

I don't know, I do remember, I think it's an eart for one of the years, one of the poster images.

Josh Martin 23:56

Right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And being like, OK, it was the type of piece. And there was, inside of push programming, the type of pieces that kind of stuck with you a little bit or made you kind of have a bunch of questions afterwards that were questioning the act of performance or questioning the act of creating shows.

Josh Martin 24:22

And how are people doing this? In what ways are they going about that? I think it became this event known in the city or the identity of being that outlet for all of these sort of questions about what experiences are out there or what other ways of making or sharing are out there.

Josh Martin 24:45

Yeah, it's been significant for us because it felt like it's been this exposure piece that being in Vancouver, I don't think we get a lot of that. It's kind of important. It's sort of crucial to feel like we can put ourselves in relationship to the rest of the world this way.

Josh Martin 25:08

It's not that other people aren't doing international work. It's just that it felt like, OK, but this is really pulling in such a diversity of ideas or a diversity of work that's happening out there that I'm like, OK, now I can kind of situate myself or situate Vancouver as a result of having that all sort of align and be in one place.

Josh Martin 25:29

So every year, the programming has always had these pieces where you're like, so glad I saw that, because now I know that that exists. And it just kind of feels, even in ways that are subconscious, I think it fuels how we think about ourselves as a community or how I think about myself as a maker in relationship to everything else.

Ben Charland 25:55

That was a special episode of Push Play in honor of our 20th Push International Performing Arts Festival, which will run from January 23rd to February 9th, 2025. Push Play is produced by myself, Ben Charland, and Tricia Knowles.

Ben Charland 26:12

A new episode of our 20th Festival series with Gabriel Martin will be released every Tuesday wherever you get your podcasts. To stay up to date on Push 20 and the 2025 Festival, visit pushfestival .ca and follow us on social media at Push Festival.

Ben Charland 26:31

And if you've enjoyed this episode, please spread the word and take a moment to leave a review.