Image: Anne Wessels and Andrea Nann, artists/researchers (Gloria Mok).
The Getting Better Part: Gesture Experiments in Stroke and Story
Pure Research 33 – Anne Wessels
Research focus
Five years after Anne Wessels had a stroke, she found herself curious about how movement, gesture, and physical objects could help an audience understand the effects of stroke. In collaboration with dancer and choreographer Andrea Nann, Artistic Director of Dreamwalker Dance, Anne will be using an embodied practice to explore gesture and movement, as well as various objects ranging from paraffin wax to flashing lights that explore different sensations associated with stroke including hand numbness, sneezing, and double vision.
Collaborators and credits
Anne Wessels, with Dreamwalker Dance’s Andrea Nann, Nightswimming’s Brian Quirt, Gloria Mok and Associate Dramaturg Nathaniel Hanula-James, as well as Tarragon Theatre’s Mike Payette and Myekah Payne.
Pure Research Toronto 2023 is a partnership with Tarragon Theatre. All studio sessions were hosted in Tarragon Theatre’s Extraspace, January 18-20, 2023 with technician David Mallette.
Research Notes
Research statement from Anne:
When beginning to conceive this research project, Anne asked herself how working with gesture, movement and stillness might create a vocabulary from which to build a narrative of stroke. Using this physical vocabulary, in what ways might the developing narrative move beyond, ‘I was well, I got sick, I am now well again’?
To jump start this vocabulary building, Anne approached choreographer Andrea Nann, who offered the Conscious Bodies Practice that she developed as Artistic Director of Dreamwalker Dance.
Parallel to this work was a regular series of conversations with the Nightswimming dramaturgs that refined the original questions Anne posed in her application to Pure Research and surfaced valuable new ones. At one point, Andrea asked, what were the moments of grace in the stroke experience? Brian asked, how might the working processes of a stroke-informed body be different?
From this foundation, the team will use three days of studio time in the Tarragon’s Extraspace to make inquiries through physical experimentation into what vocabularies become possible by working intensively together.
Research Video
Final Report
