MascallDance
Privilege At Home
Photo credits: Darryl Ahye
MascallDance
Jennifer Mascall's perspective is driven by curiosity, which leads often to surprising places. After 50 years of creation, she feels she has only just begun her path as an artist. Recently, we have pivoted to focus on climate, and view the audience as collaborators. Our most influential teachers this year were dance artists, particle physicists, Indigenous Elders, Rabbis, and climate scientists. MascallDance is a creation, production, and education endeavor with 30+ seasons of works; many with extensive touring lives. “Our ability to survive for so long has come from our comfort with grassroots, low budget, guerrilla-style invention” -Jennifer Mascall, Artistic Director. Annually we offer residencies, intensives, and workshops based on where our own body of knowledge meets the interests of participants. MascallDance is looking to build relationships with presenters now for three projects with a focus on The Impossible has Already Happened, touring winter 2023.
Privilege At Home
A dancer and a concert pianist pull up to your front door and present you a five-minute dance accompanied by Beethoven’s Waldstein Concerto played for you live on the back of a pick-up truck. Privilege at Home came about in direct response to COVID. Live performance and neighbourhoods - what better antidote to COVID isolation fatigue? Visiting several places a night, with audiences of 3-95 people, it was our most successful show of the pandemic and was able to impact people and their bubbles across the city. The experience is fully COVID regulation safe. No cords. No bathrooms. No contact whatsoever required. It all takes place outdoors in the place of your choosing, and we had as good an experience presenting at patio-restaurants as we did in private back yards. Privilege at home is a travelling short form presentation of our longer exploration Privilege, premiering 2023.
Photo credits: Darryl Ahye
Performance History of Privilege At Home
Privilege at Home Premiere run: Week of June 27-July 5, 2021 (during the heat dome); Presenter: MascallDance; Venue: Outside of homes; Locations: West Vancouver, North Vancouver City & District; Vancouver: West End, Mt Pleasant, East Van, False Creek, Point Grey, UBC.
Project Details
Project created by: Instigator: Jennifer Mascall
Key Collaborators: Inspiration COVID and Ludwig Van Beethoven.
Performing Collaborators: Ralph Escamillan, Alexa Mardon, Erica Mitsuhashi, Eowynn Enquist, Marisa Gold.
To date, we’ve worked with well-known classical pianist Rachel Kiyo Isaawa (Founder of Vancouver’s Queer Arts Festival). It’s also possible to work with a pianist in your location.
Audience: General Audience / Children / Family
Length in minutes: Dance Running Time: 5 minutes Length of Visit (location dependent): 20 minutes. Up to 3 performances are undertaken as a unit.
Space required: Built for outdoor performance at people’s homes, fully COVID-regulation safe. No Marley. Require vehicle access to location.
Preparation required: N/A
General technical requirements: We bring a stand-up piano. When we arrive in town, it requires tuning. For performances after dark, a handheld floodlight is operated by a technician/driver.
Availabilities: Spring 2023 (April-June); Summer 2023 (July-Aug), Spring 2024 (April-June), Summer 2024 (July-Aug)
Please note that we limit booking of Privilege at Home to warm weather.
Number of performers on tour: Minimum 3
Number of support staff on tour: 2
Community Engagement Activities
Privilege at Home IS the outreach activity - a neighbourhood-friendly event for all kinds of people. We perform for individuals or groups in any outdoor home setting accessible to us. Rather than turning situations away, we come up with inventive solutions to make Privilege at Home possible. Some choose entirely contact-free viewing by window or porch. Others are eager to interact; we can book up to 20 minutes following the performance for conversation and get-to-know-you’s. Those who invite us to dance at their house spread the word. Neighbours and passers-by turn up to watch. "I was amazed at the ingenious idea of creating a highly mobile performing troupe by mounting a piano on a truck. It shows that creativity and artistic work can still thrive and be brought to people's doorsteps even amidst a global pandemic. I greatly enjoyed MascallDance's performance and look forward to another!" Edgar Liao “We couldn’t get over how lit up we were by the experience, amid Covid isolation. It brimmed with beauty, good spirits, greenspace, and music, wonder on the neighbourhood kids’ faces, and big grins on ours.” Blake Johnson MascallDance has yet to encounter a single unsuccessful performance of Privilege at Home.
We welcome relationships with presenters. We are interested in active engagement with the community and where it intersects with art, in particular, relation to climate change. We enjoyed collaborating with festivals, breweries, and private events. We’ve offered panel discussions on a wide range of topics; workshops leading young people into new ways of working with music and responding to ideas provoked by Homes and Privilege. Beethoven sparks engagement with how - and if - the neo-enlightenment period in art applies and affects art and climate change now. At our fingertips are many possibilities for connections. Privilege at Home cast members are fierce, gentle, ethical, and political. Each is a creator in their own right - poets, mask-makers, costume designers, musicians, dancers, singers, actors, choreographers, directors, craft makers.
Contact: MascallDance, operations@mascalldance.ca
Agent/Manager: Tobias Macfarlane, production@mascalldance.ca
Website: mascalldance.ca
Instagram: mascalldance