Despite all the artistry occurring inside the National Arts Centre, the building’s grey, concrete, and unforgiving exterior has likely inspired few spontaneous acts of expression. Canada Dance Festival collaborators Kenneth Emig and Edmund Eagan are out to change all that.







In the middle of April, when the last of the Ottawa snow had melted away, Kenneth Emig could breathe again. The myriad unknowns at play in Diffract—the series of eight performances he was preparing for the terraces of the National Arts Centre—had at last begun to reveal themselves, as did the geometric nature of his unusual stage.

A multifaceted artist who explores technology, optics, video, audio and dance, Emig is among the handful of locals performing in the 2008 Canada Dance Festival (June 7 to 15).

The festival—held every two years in Ottawa’s National Arts Centre and other venues—provides a collaborative forum for artists, audiences, presenters, educators and sponsors on the leading edge of contemporary dance in Canada. The festival is also co-producing Diffract.

But it wasn’t just the significance of the occasion that had accelerated Emig’s pulse. His artistry, you see, is all about process and improvisation: he never really knows where he’s going until he’s right on the brink.

Besides, his task was literally monumental: to create a site-specific performance stemming from a troubled relationship with one of the most rigid and unyielding structures in town: the National Arts Centre, an example of “brutalist architecture,” says Emig.

“Lately I’ve had a happier interaction with the building,” he told Guerilla in mid May. “The more I research it, the more the building keeps revealing itself. It is a complexity of understanding.”

A key discovery was the fundamental use of the hexagon as the building’s pervasive architectural leitmotif (even the NAC logo features two interwoven hexagons), which stoked Emig’s longstanding fascination with shape and space.

Look carefully around the NAC and the absolute dominance of the hexagon is impossible to miss—the shape appears everywhere, including in the concrete slabs on the terrace, the ceiling tiles and light fixtures, the benches and planters, even the railings surrounding escalators and stairwells.

Emig’s deepening interest with the building’s repetitive, almost rhythmical design moved him to attain architectural plans and create a scale model of the terraces as a learning tool for Diffract.







“I’ve been having a lot of fun,” Emig said with a grin while firing up his laptop to share images of the model.

Staged on a partially enclosed section of terrace that looks onto the Rideau Canal, the noon performances will seek answers for Emig’s questions: “How do I connect with the building? What does it tell me? What does it tell you? What does it tell the occupants?”

While the terrace stage will be dramatically altered, audiences can also witness an interior transformation. Six video cameras mounted on the terrace’s hexagonal skylight will capture live images of the performance area projected onto the corresponding walls surrounding the interior fountain that extends between the NAC’s first and second floors.







Designed by Fred Lebensold (said to be one of North America's foremost theatre designers) and opened in 1969, the NAC building has been widely praised as a twentieth century architectural landmark.

To mount a performance appropriate to the sheer size of the setting, Emig will incorporate sculptural installations, live music by Ottawa sound artist Edmund Eagan, as well as his own improvised dance movements.

Diffract is an attempt to transform the NAC environment in a way that both aligns with and contrasts existing surroundings. For instance, to create music within the sonic ambience of downtown Ottawa, Eagan will play a specially shaped metal gong, amplified with contact microphones and recorded in real time. He will also involve some inventive use of technology.

“The recordings can be selectively replayed, processed, mangled, sliced and diced via a Kyma Sound Engine controlled by a Nintendo Wii Remote,” Eagan explained.

“Sonically, we had to consider the ambient sound level. Since the sound of the city creates a noise floor level that is much higher than in a typical enclosed performance space, we had to limit the dynamic range and reverb levels of the musical materials presented."

Just like Emig’s dance, Eagan’s musical performance will be what he calls “very structured improvisation.”

“I will be reacting to what I record and play back in real time. In that way, I'll be playing with layers on top of other layers.”

As an improviser, Emig will also be playing. But how does he prepare and train for movements that are spontaneous and site-specific? While research is the foundation, appropriate physical preparation is also key.

“This is an example of brutalist architecture, strong and very present,” explained Emig. “I felt a need to be stronger to work with it.”

To that end, he began training in December with a combination of Pilates at the Pilates Space, weights, and body-mind centering with Naomi Sparrow.

“This work heightened my understanding of my body, how I move, how I sense where I am. It has provided new vocabulary I can draw upon when meeting the NAC.”

Exactly how the dancer will draw upon that vocabulary remains to be seen, but with performances rooted in research, process, and transformation, Emig and Eagan are clearly more interested in asking questions than in answering them.

Diffract performances begin at noon Saturday, June 7 and are free of charge.