Assara (1995)
Though she died in 2020, Patricia Beatty will always remain a towering figure in my life. I met her in 1968 at a summer theatre school where she was teaching a daily movement class. The wisdom, sensuality and riveting immediacy of Trish’s dancing knocked me completely over. She inhabited her female body with grace and gravity. She spoke in the language of poetry - grand metaphors, invocations of the natural world, frank references to the body as the locus of desire, pleasure, intuition and creation. Up until that point I had aspired to become an actor, but from the day that I met her I understood that I had found my life’s work.
When I moved to Toronto in the fall of 1971 it was expressly to study with the company Trish co-directed, Toronto Dance Theatre. She always took my aspirations in dance absolutely to heart. Her guidance was honest and nuanced and she demonstrated through her dedication to the technique of Martha Graham that the physical practice of a dancer is an act of devotion. When, eventually, she was no longer capable of the rigours of Graham floorwork, she grieved the loss deeply. It was at this tremendously challenging time in her life that Trish suggested we once again intensify our relationship through the creation of a solo.
Trish’s highly specific and unique physicality permeated each of her dances, and it was an extraordinary experience to feel her impulses alive within my own body as I her danced her work. She was always extremely articulate about her choreographic intentions, so I’ll share her program note so that you can hear her speaking about this dance in her own voice - PB
“Assara is a revered name from the ancient scripts of the pre-Hellenic islands of Crete and Cyprus. The word means pillar and it was used in these sophisticated civilizations to invoke the power of the Goddess. I have used it as a title for this dance about the renewal of true justice because we understand the symbol of a pillar of wisdom and a pillar of strength. The wise woman, once the central inhabitant of the female figure of justice, has been sadly and dangerously lost in our time. Where we look for fairness and compassion, we now see revenge and argumentativeness. This dance is a call for the renewal of true fairness and compassion in our thinking and practice of justice – it is also a call for the return of the wise woman into our lives and communities.” - Trish Beatty
To read more about the early years of TDT under the triumvirate leadership of Patricia Beatty, David Earle, and Peter Randazzo visit Dance Collection Danse here.
credits
choreography:
Patricia Beatty
dancer:
Peggy Baker
music:
traditional Greek and Arabic music, arranged and performed by
Sophia Grigoriadis, Maryem Hassan Tollar, Rick Hyslop, Roula Said, Debashis Sinha, Ernie Tollar.
Costume design:
Denis Huneault-Joffre
Set design:
Lovell Friedmann
Lighting design:
Roelef Peter Snippe
premiere
Toronto
September 12 - 17, 1995
Winchester Street Theatre
Dancing the Goddess
subsequent presentations
Toronto
June 19, 20, 21, 1997
Betty Oliphant Theatre
Spring Rites produced by Nenagh Leigh
photography
As credited.
