Sanctum (1991)
We’re in 1991 now, with Peggy living and working in Toronto under the moniker Peggy Baker | Solo Dance, the precursor to today’s company, Peggy Baker Dance Projects, creating her first collaboration with composer and musician - and now her husband! - Ahmed Hassan.
“Sanctum holds a very significant place in my creative life. It marks new commitments: to Ahmed Hassan and his daughter Shireefa; to Toronto; and to a mindful and devoted practice as a solo dancer. Sanctum proposes artistic practice as spiritual practice, and delineates a tightly circumscribed space for each performer: the dancer standing in a rectangle of light marked at the corners with short dowels; the musician, cross-legged on a carpet, his instruments arrayed within reach. Even as I describe this, I feel myself falling into the measured tempo of ritual, within which each gesture and sound arrives with purpose and immediacy.
During the creation of Sanctum I had vivid memories of being in the presence of Martha Graham as an aspiring dancer – one in which she dared us students to declare, “I am a dancer, now,” and another in which she offered my name to me anew by inscribing in a book about her work, “For Peggy Baker, best wishes for her life and work, Martha Graham”. I felt the indelible influence of her technique in the shapes and dynamics of the choreography. I felt myself as a dancer whose work arises through the echoes and imprints of legacy as well as through the complexities and details of a unique life.“ - PB
Peggy gifted Sanctum to Nova Bhattacharya and Helen Jones as part of her Choreographer’s Trust project in 2002/03. Read more about the Choreographer’s Trust here.
For insight into Ahmed Hassan’s work as a composer, watch this 1986 video of Blue Snake, commissioned by the National Ballet of Canada from Robert Desrosiers, Ahmed Hassan and John Lang.
