Fact: There’s not a whole lot better than a kitchen party, except perhaps one that also doubles as a fundraiser for a dance show I’ve been working on…! Shannon Litzenberger is throwing this shindig and I can promise a James Brown dance party (inspired by our daily 2pm dance parties while we were working on HOMEbody in Saskatchewan this January!)

There’ll also be a silent auction…and one of my brunch maps will be auctioned off with 8+ gift certificates to different brunch spots around town – how rad is that?!

More info here!

Sylvie Bouchard and Brendan Wyatt. Photo: Joseph Michael Photography

Choreographers: Susie Burpee, Denise Fujiwara, Louis-Martin Charest, and Sylvie Bouchard/Louis Laberge-Côté
Performers: Brendan Wyatt, Sylvie Bouchard and Christian Laurin
Director and Dramaturge: Marie-Josée Chartier
Projections: Ayelen Liberona
Costumes & Set Design: Cheryl Lalonde
Music & Sound Design: Thomas Ryder Payne
Lighting design: Kimberly Purtell
Writers: Marie-Josée Chartier, Christian Laurin, Adam Paolozza, and Lindsay Zier-Vogel
Text editor: Lindsay Zier-Vogel

I am over the moon. I have been awarded this month’s Awesome Foundation Grant for this year’s incarnation of The Love Lettering Project. More about it soon (with a fancy new website on its way!) but a quick preview: this year YOU can write the love letters (and deliver them out into the world)!!

I’ll supply the airmail envelopes, pretty paper, pens and you can reflect on the things you love about our fair city of Toronto and write love letters to those things and places at a series of events in the summer.

I (along with a group of intrepid love lettering volunteers) will photograph and document these art pieces and words and post them on the love lettering website. You can then take their airmail-enveloped love letters out to the very places you love and wrote about to leave for others to discover.

LOVE! AWESOME!

A huge and enormous thank you to the trustees of Toronto chapter of The Awesome Foundation for their paper-bag-of-money-sized thumbs up. I am honoured. And thrilled.

Christa, Susan and me in the foreground circa 2003 / Photo by Rhya Tamasauskas

I have these two incredible friends, Susan and Christa. I met Susan a million years ago in dance school, where we took it upon ourselves to educate Whistler snowboarders about the wonders of contemporary dance. I met Christa through Susan just before the snowboarding education project, and then again when I arrived in Vancouver, mystified by how much it rained, and more mystified that the skirt I had sewn out of pillowcases was see-through from the rainy bike ride over. Sigh, so long ago…

I have known these brilliantly creative and driven women for over a decade (!) and this year, we are celebrating the first anniversary of our strange and magical editing collective, the Virtual Editing Group, more affectionately known as the Veggie Vag (more on the nomenclature here…!)

They are my own personal cheerleading team, astute editors, creative comrades and dear friends. They pick me up and dust me off when I need it, tell me to put my big girl pants on when I need it and hold my heart for me when it’s too heavy to carry myself. And they edit the shit out of my grants. God bless their track changes!!

We’ve even hired (and by hired, I might mean collectively imagined!) an assistant – Dane, who knows exactly when you need an almond milk latte, and just how to pour the perfect amount of go-get-em-tiger scotch. He makes sure grants go out on time. He’s a miracle worker, that Dane. (And he’s on twitter…!!)

Susan has written the most wonderful Ode to the Ladies of the VV. It made me teary and pee my pants laughing. It is the most wonderful collaborative creation, keeping us tight despite the too many kilometres and busy-ness that creeps in.

Three cheers to dear friends and fiercely creative souls. Kindred spirits indeed!

Long live the VV!

And to launch this lovely little (it’s wee!) creation, I’ll be reading some of my poems at The Victory Cafe ~ 581 Markham St. Toronto on Sunday, April 22, 2012! Things kick off around 5:30. C’mon by!!

I love words. And I love embroidering. So when my favourite almost-four-year-old started writing his name for the first time, I knew I had to commemorate the event.

The mom of said name-writing-four-year-old and I have known each other since the good ol’ days of the School of Toronto Dance Theatre – that would be 14 years ago (wha?!?) – and she’s been blogging up a storm.

Susan Kendal and Lindsay Zier-Vogel showing off the costume dolls just before the premiere of our work Edith and Eliza, part of the Series 8:08 Season Finale, May 2006. Photo: Andrea Roberts.

I had forgotten about all of our choreographic and crafty shenanigans and it was so much fun to revisit my very first piece of professional choreography (I still wear one of those dresses!) and the costume dolls she made to commemorate what would be my last piece of choreography. Oh, the memories…!

ps: don’t we look so wee in that pic?!

I am so, so excited to be a part of the newest edition of Branch magazine. It’s one incredible publication! Rhya and I collaborated on a submission – integrating poems (mine) and illustrations (hers). It was such an inspiring process and we are thrilled to bits to be included with such incredible writers and artists (including Susan Musgrave!!)

Peter Chu of Kidd Pivot in a dress rehearsal of "Dark Matters" / Photo by Christopher Duggan

I’ve seen heaps of dance in my time, but a few weeks ago, I saw one of the most incredible shows I’ve ever seen. It actually took my breath away the moment before the lights came up for intermission, and it took me at least half of intermission to get it back. And I had full body goosebumps through most of the second half. Truly stunning.

It was “Dark Matters” created by Crystal Pite, and performed by her company, Kidd Pivot Frankfurt RM.

Though I love words, dance and words are a tricky combo – there’s something so language-defying about movement. Especially movement that is as visceral and powerful as Crystal Pite’s work.

I have pages of scribblings I did in the dark during the show, but none of them really matter. For two hours, it felt like we were witnessing someone’s imagination at work.

It was masterful choreographically. It was both so highly physical and so very narrative (does it get much better than that?!?)

The set was so fully realized – and had moving parts (rare in the Canadian contemporary dance world, it seems!) I wasn’t completely sold on all of costumes (crushed velvet pants? really?) but oh, the puppet in the first act was brilliantly rendered. This non-human creature was so physically articulate.

I am still thinking about what makes an inanimate object move human-ly (the tilt of the head, the articulation of a foot, stepping), and what makes a human move like a puppet (the initiation of movement, followed by suspension, and the collapsing of the backs of the knees…)

It felt like an honour to witness that piece. Really and truly.

(And you can watch a bit of it here!)

CBC Radio One host Sook-Yin Lee and I chat love letters / Photo by Tori Allen

My love letter lovin’ is back in full swing! And CBC Radio One’s DNTO featured The Love Lettering Project this Saturday on their show about letters. It’s a wonderful clip (though man alive, I talk fast!!) with an interview with a woman who found one of last year’s love letters.

You can listen to it here (it’s about a third of the way in)…

I wrote a bunch more love poems to Toronto and host Sook-Yin Lee and I hid them around a Toronto parkette.

And now I’m dreaming up this year’s incarnation…I’ve got great hopes. Time to start making epic to-do lists (with hearts at the top of each page!)

~

A love note to Toronto streetcars:

You are always late
and I will always wait for you.

And another love note to this wonderful city I love so dearly:

Toronto, you are not the prettiest
girl at the dance, but you
sparkle from the dark corner
near the punch bowl
and I fall in love
with you
and your wide open doors.

Les brunch maps / photo courtesy of the Drake General Store

I’m positively blushing…brunch maps as a best seller? Swooooon!

From the Drake General Store blog:
When she’s not busy writing love letters, dancing or teaching, Toronto artist Lindsay Zier-Vogel creates beautifully-printed brunch maps. Complete with a checklist and button, you can guess what we spend our weekends doing! We sat down with Lindsay for a brief chat about her work + what she’d order for her perfect brunch.

Read “Lindsay Zier-Vogel’s Brunch Maps: Helping Us Eat Our Way Through Toronto” here!

Addendum: More Brunch Map lovin’ from the charming Reb Stevenson!