2019
Five channel video installation
6’ 30”

Choreography:
Emmalena Fredriksson

Dance:
Matthew Wyllie and Aiden Cass

Rehearsal is a five-channel video installation that captures a five-act rehearsal featuring two contemporary dancers, choreographed in collaboration with Vancouver-based choreographer Emmalena Fredriksson. This work interprets a musical piece Bertolt Brecht composed for his early play, Mann Ist Mann, performed in Berlin between 1924 and 1926. Brecht’s play humorously explores themes of war, human fungibility, and the erosion of identity through brainwashing and propaganda.

In Rehearsal, the dancers’ movements echo these themes, embodying the repetitive, mechanistic loss of self inherent in Brecht’s critique. The multi-channel setup amplifies the fragmented and cyclical nature of the performance, mirroring the dissolution of individuality within systems of power. Through this reinterpretation, Rehearsal becomes a meditation on identity under duress, exposing the fragile boundaries between autonomy and control in the face of ideological influence.

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