Ep. 21 - Breakthroughs (2007)

NOTE: Due to technical difficulties, the audio quality for this episode is not at the usual standard for PuSh Play.

Gabrielle chats with Julie-anne Saroyan, co-founder, artistic director and creative producer of Vancouver’s Small Stage, which broke through in the early PuSh Festivals.

Show Notes

Gabrielle Martin and Julie-anne discuss: 

• The origin of Small Stage

• The first few PuSh Festivals and how Small Stage suddenly found a wide audience

• Beginning as a stage manager

• The role of experimentation and the cabaret format

• What it means to be a “Test Kitchen” in performance and production

• How to mix genre and style in dance

• How the formula of Small Stage has evolved and been tinkered with over the years

• Evolution is curation: how Julie-anne has fostered other artists

• The can-do attitude of the PuSh Festival

About Julie-anne Saroyan and Small Stage

The beating heart at the core of Small Stage is the co-founder, artistic director and creative producer, Julie-anne Saroyan.

A visionary leader with a keen eye for emerging talent,  her spirit resides at the core of what has made Small Stage an iconic presence for over 20 years.

Saroyan’s artistic practice includes dance, stage and production management, lighting and costume design and digital software, media and design thinking.

More than 20 years after launching, Small Stage has evolved beyond a singular focus on dance to embrace a broader world of performance, visual arts and music and bring it to the public through non-traditional venues.

Small Stage productions blend live and digital platforms to create powerful and innovative mixed-reality performances in the public realm. The work is centred around reducing barriers and elevating dance, music, and performing arts to become more accessible to a broader audience. Simultaneously, Small Stage equips artists with opportunities to extend their reach beyond the limitations of a physical venue by embracing technology and innovation.

Saroyan’s work is recognized for fostering the growth of emerging dance artists and musicians and growing audiences with works in both live and digital realms. She continues investigating new technologies and digital strategies to tell stories and bring people as close to art as possible.

In 2001, Saroyan co-founded Movement Enterprises (MovEnt) and launched the long-running series Dances for a Small Stage in Vancouver. Dances for a Small Stage shows each featured a curated set of 5-7 minute dance performances that showcase a wide variety of styles and genres of dance, presented in non-traditional venues and beer halls better known for punk rock shows than sophisticated modern dance performances. 

This innovative approach exposed new audiences to all forms of dance, including Contemporary, Ballet, Urban, Tap, Flamenco, Bhaṅgṛā, Indian Classical, Chinese and Japanese Classical and Contemporary, Scottish Highland, Burlesque and many others. The unique and compelling series was an instant classic, producing over fifty instalments over 20 years in Vancouver, including three shows in Ottawa at the National Arts Centre. 

Since launching in 2001, Julie-anne has been the engine that drives the company forward. Her passion for dance and the arts and her deep knowledge of history and culture combine with her ability to coordinate, organize, and inspire others to rally for her cause.

Beyond Dances for a Small Stage, Saroyan has worked with a variety of dance artists and companies, including Ballet BC, Margie Gillis, Emily Molnar and Crystal Pite/Kidd Pivot, whom she toured with Internationally for more than ten years.  She also was on Faculty at Simon Fraser University from 2005-2007 as the Production/Stage Management Instructor in the School for the Contemporary Arts.

Saroyan has also worked extensively in Corporate Special Events, creating and producing large-scale awards shows and team-building events in Vancouver and internationally, including Barcelona, Malta & Phoenix and Hawaii.  Clients include BP International Engineering Conferences, Nike, Visa International and Buckingham Palace.

In 2014, Saroyan mentored under Farooq Chaudhry in London, UK.  His ideas and concepts surrounding the role of the cultural entrepreneur in the dance world are fundamental to Saroyan’s approach.

Saroyan holds a BFA in Dance and Technical Theatre from York University in Toronto and trained at The Banff Centre in 1993 for Dance Stage Management, Executive Lab at Vantage Point in 2015 and New Fundamentals: Leadership for the Creative Ecology at The Banff Centre in 2016.  

She is well known for her ability to build capacity for the arts through cross-sectoral collaborations, strategic partnerships, and mutually beneficial alliances.

Her work in the dance sector includes incubating new choreographic work and developing promising artists through uniquely designed workshops, mentorships, and hands-on residencies.  

Julie-anne challenges artists to push boundaries and explore new styles and movements. Their dedication and passion are a continual source of inspiration for Saroyan.

Land Acknowledgement

This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver.

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Show Transcript

Gabrielle Martin 00:02

Hello and welcome to Push Play, a Push Festival podcast featuring conversations with artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form. I'm Gabrielle Martin, Push's Director of Programming, and in this special series of Push Play, we're revisiting the legacy of Push and talking to creators who've helped shape 20 years of innovative, dynamic, and audacious festival programming.

Gabrielle Martin 00:22

Today's episode for the 2007 Push Festival highlights dances for a small stage in conversation with Julianne Sarian. The beating heart at the core of small stage is the co -founder, artistic director, and creative producer, Julianne Sarian.

Gabrielle Martin 00:36

A visionary leader with a keen eye for emerging talent, her spirit resides at the core of what has made small stage an iconic presence for over 20 years. Sarian's artistic practice includes dance, stage and production management, lighting, and costume design, and digital software, media, and design thinking.

Gabrielle Martin 00:54

More than 20 years after launching, small stage has evolved beyond a singular focus on dance to embrace a broader world of performance, visual arts, and music, and bring it to the public through non -traditional venues.

Gabrielle Martin 01:05

Here's my conversation with Julianne.

Gabrielle Martin 01:10

I'll just frame where we are and give some context to where we're having this conversation today. We are out in the streets of downtown and so -called Vancouver, which is on the stolen and ancestral traditional territories of the post Salish peoples, the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil -Waututh.

Gabrielle Martin 01:29

And Julianne, you have your relationship with this land as a settler.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 01:34

Yes, I'm so thankful to be on this land. I came to Vancouver in 1994, and prior to that, I was a settler in Ontario. My heritage is Armenian, which is sort of a hidden Middle Eastern culture wrapped up in its own genocide.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 01:59

So I really, once I moved to Vancouver, I really feel the connection with the people here much differently than where I grew up as a settler. So I'm very thankful to live in the west coast, on the coast, in the Coast Salish Nation.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 02:15

Thank you.

Gabrielle Martin 02:16

We're going to be going back in time to the early days of small stages and the very beginning of Push because dances for a small stage was part of Push in the very first Push Festival in 2005, then again in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011, and 2012.

Gabrielle Martin 02:38

That's a long time. That's a real relationship. It's a long ride, yeah. It's really part of the identity of Push in those early years. So yeah, can you just tell me about how the relationship with Push started and how you started to collaborate?

Julie-Anne Saroyan 02:55

I think in those early days, I came through stage management to production management, and that's where I met Norman. And Norman was such a person of great vision, and he had this vision, and it was called the Push Festival.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 03:12

And we met at different places around the world at different festivals, including Eftaya in Montreal. And what were you doing there at this time? I was stage managing for Crystal, Crystal Pite at the time, and that's how we would meet up.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 03:30

I was playing at festivals, and he was doing research and development for the Push Festival. And I remember specifically one night in Montreal, him saying, I think I'm almost ready to put out the first Push Festival.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 03:49

And I said, well, I've been doing dance, we've been doing dances for a small stage for like, at that point, probably like four years. Okay.

Gabrielle Martin 04:02

It was a very early...

Julie-Anne Saroyan 04:02

Yeah, we our first show is in 2020 2002 okay in May

Gabrielle Martin 04:10

I