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State of the Arts: Boca Del Lupo's How To Be explores expectations great and small

'Micro' production employs dance, comedy and theatre to investigate how we think we and others ‘should’ be

Choreographer and performer Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg noticed many of us are constantly questioning ourselves, so she set out to investigate how we think we and others “should” be with dance, theatre and comedy.

She and dancers Kate Franklin and Kimberly Stevenson will perform part of a piece in progress that’s called How To Be as part of Boca Del Lupo’s Micro Performance Series Feb. 26 to March 1 at the intimate Anderson Street Space on Granville Island.

“We’re always like should I cut my hair? How should I behave? Should I extend my vocabulary? Should I go to graduate school?” said Cheyenne Friedenberg.

“It’s a first-world problem and it’s kind of debilitating for people,” the woman who’s in her 40s continued. “We’re constantly in this state of anxiety.”

Cheyenne Friedenberg gathered Franklin, Stevenson, theatre artist Marcus Youssef, and dancers and choreographers Justine A. Chambers and Josh Martin to create the piece that she expects to complete in 18 months.

They explored ideas that include how a person should look, how much they should talk about themselves and how much they should listen, along with the feelings that arise when you hear how others think people should be.

“It’s like this big psychological experiment,” she said.

Audience members will be close to the action during the 10 performances.

“It’s almost like being on a subway car, when something odd happens, that we’re all kind of implicated because you can’t get away,” she said, adding the proximity will offer audience members a chance to see subtle movements.

“We can focus on the little shifts in the body that betray what we’re thinking, that betray emotion.”

The Anderson Street Space holds only 25 audience members, Cheyenne Friedenberg said. She’s designing the performance to allow onlookers to move as the piece progresses through the space. The more reserved can watch from the security of a chair.

Boca Del Lupo specializes in experimental theatrical productions and spectacular outdoor presentations while focusing on collaborations with international, national and regional artists. The theatre company mounts its Micro Performance Series on and near Granville Island to support the creation and development of new works in intimate and small-scale forms. Boca Del Lupo started the Micro Performance Series in 2011 and How To Be is the first production for the 2015 series.

Another excerpt, which includes Youssef, who recently returned to Vancouver from a run of the staged conversation Winners and Losers off-Broadway in New York, will be presented at the Dancing on the Edge festival at the Firehall Arts Centre in the beginning of July.

How To Be hasn’t been fully formed but Cheyenne Friedenberg has already benefited from new insights.

“We’re all kind of struggling with the same questions, which is profoundly comforting,” she said. “What if we dropped the questions and just felt how we need to be moment-to-moment?”

Tickets are $10 and there’s a talkback after the Feb. 27, 8 p.m. performance. For more information, see bocadellupo.com.

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