Ep. 21 - Breakthroughs (2007)

PuSh Play

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 remember ten small stages. I left in 2006, but before then I have vivid memories, and I think we're going to get there, but I have a vivid memory of watching Crystal Pite performing in an alien helmet in the early 2000s on a small stage.

Gabrielle Martin 04:28

It is like an image that stays with me to this day. That's how cool you are.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 04:35

doing it. Well we were just there in that space at that time. Like just a very creative space and thinking outside the box and that you could do really interesting partnerships with people and this was like in those early years it was a satellite show that we didn't have any money to actually do any marketing back then.

Gabrielle Martin 05:02

So, enmeshed in your community. YA-

Julie-Anne Saroyan 05:05

Yeah, and it was actually the push festival who raised our trajectory and just went, we went like kaplui with our lineups around the block. Like who had lineups around the block? Because we didn't have a ticketing system.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 05:24

We had cash at the door, I don't know if you remember, and nobody could get pre -tickets. So you had to line up. We had people lining up. Because of the push festival, like we exponentially grew. So our very first show was at Crush Lounge right beside the dance center.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 05:48

And the very first show that we had for push, Emily Molnar, was dancing in that show. And she, who then, yeah.

Gabrielle Martin 05:59

at that time when I was before she was with Ballet BC. She's gone on.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 06:03

think she was a dancer with Ballet BC at that time and then she went on to become the artistic director of Ballet BC and from there now she's in the at Netherlands Dance Theatre and it's just awesome I think that was the real job of dance's for a small stage at that time to bring artists together and be this hot house of Vancouver Dance.

Gabrielle Martin 06:32

because so maybe you could just share with us what the format was small stages oh yeah it's really and what was it and what was that first idea how did that start how did you say okay we're gonna do this first one

Julie-Anne Saroyan 06:44

Well the series started in Toronto actually with Laura Taller. I was a baby stage manager just out of York University and stage managing by that time. And a dancer at that time. And a dancer and a terrible choreographer.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 06:59

Terrible choreographer. Honestly. Yes. I knew what to do. I just really couldn't do it well. So we find something else to do in dance. So that was what stage management was to me. And by that time, Laura Taller was doing the show in Toronto.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 07:24

And then stopped it after about a few years. I moved to Vancouver. And with a friend, Dei Hellesik, we started small stage in 2002. And it just grew and grew and grew it seems. What the intention was, was to follow that same format that Laura Taller had in Toronto, which was, and we developed it a little bit more here.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 07:47

So it was actually eight artists. It was really small, but we tried to invite all our friends. And at the time it included Chrissy Rockbottom was Crystal Pite's alias name. At the time she just moved back from Frankfurt.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 08:07

Corey Caulfield was in it. Holy Body Tattoo, Dana and Noam were in it in that first year because we just thought it was, we paid everybody 50 bucks, I think, and they all showed up and we were.

Gabrielle Martin 08:21

because these are artists that, yes, it was earlier in their careers and their careers of all.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 08:27

Yeah, yeah.

Gabrielle Martin 08:29

they were they were professionals they weren't I don't know would you call them emerging at that time I would say they were already like mid -career or were they

Julie-Anne Saroyan 08:36

Oh it's really interesting though because I never thought of them as like I thought they were at that time I think they were more established yeah yeah like they were quite established artists at that time like

Gabrielle Martin 08:49

Yeah. Like they were- Yeah, it wasn't an emerging art technique. No, it wasn't an emerging. Because, you know, often the shorter form, it's assumed that, oh, emerging artists have to work in the short form, and then you become more established, and then you work in long form.

Gabrielle Martin 09:02

It's so exciting, I think, for artists. It's just a different form. So it's really exciting for any stage of their career. And I think this was really exciting to be able to see these artists that, like, I already was aware that Crystal was somebody at that point.

Gabrielle Martin 09:16

You know? And if these people were more engaged in an intimate space. Yeah.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 09:20

was what was really important that we were showcasing professionals doing things like they were trying out things sometimes like Crystal used to pick out little sections of things she was working on at the time and like it was in a cabaret format so it wasn't as serious as it was maybe when she put the piece into a longer format she could test things out it was a test kitchen right at that time but then also people used it as a jumping -off point for dancing on the edge they would do a longer piece like it grounded people maybe at a certain place in creation certain point where you get you do need to test things out well that's Norman's fault I'm gonna get so I so Norman actually and I you know the first push fat first push show we had as I said Emily maulnar in it which was she was not known at the time and I think it's really important to note that the second show had Margie Gillis in it right

Gabrielle Martin 10:37

to the next stage, to the extent that you were telling me she was wearing her hair with Oh my god!

Julie-Anne Saroyan 10:42

I want you to know that in those early days, I ran the lights and the sound, cause that's what you do, right? And, and she said to me, Julianne, if my hair gets caught in the lights, when I do my big flick of my hair at the end and her hair's what?

Julie-Anne Saroyan 11:02

Like, I'm just going to say it's like 10 feet long, but it's not, but it's like.

Gabrielle Martin 11:08

long enough to be concerned it's going to get caught in the lights.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 11:10

She said, grab your scissors and cut my hair.

Gabrielle Martin 11:15

We're gonna do it anyways. Yeah, we're gonna do it if you need to.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 11:19

We were, like, very, very committed to the art form at that time.

Gabrielle Martin 11:28

Um, so, you're ready with your decision as well, you're done.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 11:32

Well, what was so exciting was I think the format is really exciting because we chose eight artists always. That was the formula. Eight artists, which we then shoved an intermission in between, so you would see four people, four people.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 11:49

It was five to seven minute pieces. They weren't very, like, not long at all. I think we were able to really play with that formula because sometimes we did get those really, like, as Krystal started to gain popularity, like, we didn't realize that she was a draw.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 12:10

But we really wanted to make sure we were capturing a full, like, the full diversity of genres and styles. It was really important for me to have tap, to have bongra, to have classical dance, to have Chinese classical, Japanese classical.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 12:30

Like it was really important for me to experiment with classical and contemporary, cultural and you can mix cultural and classical, cultural and contemporary. And this is what the artistry of, or what dance artists were really doing at that time.

Gabrielle Martin 12:53

And did the vision for it evolve between 2005, the first collaboration with Push, and 2012? Oh, and I also want to ask, these were more than just once a year, right? It was just once a year with Push.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 13:06

That's right. That's right. Because at one point we realized that we should be applying for funding. And because of that we had to start doing more regular shows. So we were doing three shows a year, which was pretty significant.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 13:24

And so we were like this well oiled machine. But what happened with Push, it was we had to move venues from downtown to a larger venue. Again, Norman Armour. Thank you. We didn't know how popular we were getting.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 13:44

And until we moved to the Legion on the Drive, which is the show that you're talking about.

Gabrielle Martin 13:50

But I, okay, I've been to more than one then because I remember the Crash Lounge. I remember being in the Crash Lounge. I thought that's where I remembered seeing the alien help.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 13:59

You're right, because Crystal did two. She did one at Crush, and it was really funny, like, as you pointed out, when you do small snippets of work, different things kind of work.

Gabrielle Martin 14:13

out so so you were saying that thanks to Norman yeah thanks to Norman

Julie-Anne Saroyan 14:22

dared it blew up because uh so you're right we did we did emily molar then we did that show with margie gillis and then you're talking about yes when crystal was at crush she did an alien tap dance and then how could she and where else because that was part of our show that we were touring so i think she needed to try it out because i think yeah that was a very um but she did also an alien um song because if you're gonna do an alien tap dance you better do an alien song so but the mic we didn't that we didn't twist the the mic stand up we didn't know enough to like tighten the mic stand we were learning and so and it fell during the show and so this is when you as a performer and making mistakes and fixing the cruise mistakes or whatever is fun and you kind of play off that

Gabrielle Martin 15:30

audience too in that kind of environment where they understand that it's just all kind of, there's a lot extra live quality to it. Yeah. And you had said then that, okay, that it moved to the Legion.

Gabrielle Martin 15:43

Yeah, yeah. And oh, you were also talking about how it was a testing ground for artists and there's something that comes out, it's an opportunity to, even with the same material in a different context, you know, the impact, the effect, the dramaturgy of that can shift.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 16:00

Yeah, I think it's, that is what I think started, we started to realize what was happening with small stage is that we were having, that people were, it was a testing ground, so you could test your work with an audience at different stages of the creative development process.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 16:16

You could come back to small stage because we were having them so often, test another part, and then go and be at the Canada Dance Festival or be at Dancing on the Edge and do a longer work because of that.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 16:31

And I think that that part of the ecosystem is really important for artists, that interim step, no matter what age of artist you are. I don't know how we're defining things right now, so like what phase in your work and in your career and in your practice you are or what, like that was what's really important.

Gabrielle Martin 16:56

And so you, early on, it was clear that this was something people were excited about, artists and audiences were excited about. And then did you change the format at all over those seven years that it was at Push?

Gabrielle Martin 17:10

Or was it like, this is working, other than changing the location to allow more audience to come in, let's just kind of like keep this thing going, like we know we have something good here.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 17:19

Yeah, we stuck to our formula. We tinkered with our formula, but what we also needed to tinker with was, and our biggest change was actually tickets. And when that shift happened, it was less exciting.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 17:36

It started to be less exciting, actually. And I think it sort of started to catch on with other theaters, started to do lots of cabarets, circus started to do things in Vancouver. And I feel like it was a different, in about 2019, I shifted to be more focused outdoors, just because I wanted to tinker with a new level, although I was still using the same five to seven minute formula.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 18:14

I wanted to be outdoors and be accessible to general audiences.

Gabrielle Martin 18:19

Yeah, well there's something that is fundamentally accessible about this format, about taking dance out of a conventional theatre space, about having, you know, for a lot of people an hour -long contemporary dance.

Gabrielle Martin 18:29

It's too, it's very difficult. Yeah, so yeah, that kind of, that context.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 18:37

And that's the audience we were getting more of, like we were getting more of a general audience who knew that they had, they were, there was a smorgasbord concept. Like the menu concept where you would go, oh, if you didn't like that piece, you know, maybe you don't like Bhutto or something that you, you know, five minute, five minutes.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 19:01

And sometimes we, we converted people like, I didn't think I liked Bhutto, but now I do because I saw so -and -so. And that was really another layer to the show as well.

Gabrielle Martin 19:15

And so now you're thinking about bringing it back indoors post.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 19:19

Yeah, I'm gonna do that thing called the turnaround and I think that that is the job and the role of Small Stage right now. But that we need something that's going to help bring artists and communities together, audiences.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 19:38

I mean one of the things was that I could go around to the tables in that casual format and talk to people and so that is really exciting to get little snippets of how to watch shows and stuff.

Gabrielle Martin 19:54

You know, there's the benefits of outdoor work that push doesn't really benefit from because of the time of year, but yeah, you can just have people who walk up and stumble upon a work. But then also the indoor context is like, yeah, as you're mentioning, people are contained and held in that space.

Gabrielle Martin 20:08

And so maybe there's more opportunity or it kind of encourages more, yeah, in that small stages lounge cabaret environment, more conversation, more, yeah, experiencing from start to finish and having them.

Gabrielle Martin 20:23

Exactly.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 20:27

So yes, I'm really excited to, we just got announced at STIR Magazine this morning, we are bringing back small stage in July.

Gabrielle Martin 20:42

25.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 20:43

No, in a month.

Gabrielle Martin 20:45

Amazing.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 20:49

But to be continued, I think it's, yeah, yeah. And I think that now I can, with all this, you know, really exciting stuff, like I was doing my four year grant and had to look back and this is perfect timing and, and went, wow, we did all that hot house, like stuff.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 21:11

And it really is time to do that again. And, and to bring the community together. So I now, the evolution is curation. So I've curated all women of multi -generations and diverse backgrounds, and I'm really excited.

Gabrielle Martin 21:32

I'm really excited to and it's just I so appreciate it's been a nice to go back down memory lane also because I have my own really strong memories from some of the early ones. Oh yeah you

Julie-Anne Saroyan 21:48

You remembered that bubble head, didn't you? Yeah. You know, that bubble head was a real problem on tour. Ah! Crystal almost passed out so many times and that's what we were workshopping in those early shows.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 22:01

It was really about- We had to drill holes in that thing. Can she last?

Gabrielle Martin 22:05

Yes! And if you're gonna pass that one soon, it seems like a safer environment than you are.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 22:09

it closer to the edge of the stage so you I can pull you off

Gabrielle Martin 22:16

but it seems like so much of what you're talking about has this like kind of this exciting raw kind of a bit like punk rock just kind of like let's make this happen which i think is the ethos of the early push it was this like grand and total adventure of like let's just do this as a community yeah can we do this yes we can yeah and and so

Julie-Anne Saroyan 22:40

And we were punk rock at the time. I think that's a great way to put it, because we wore like a lot of black and we like smoked. And that was really tenacity and pure like we can do this. Yeah. And Norman really led that charge.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 23:03

Like we can do this and we did. And that was so exciting.

Gabrielle Martin 23:08

And so, you know, you've already kind of spoke to the cultural context of Bush and its significance for Small Stage. I guess that's really what we've just been talking about. And that that collaboration brought in some other non -dance audiences.

Gabrielle Martin 23:24

Yeah.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 23:25

It really, when I say we jumped, I think it's fair to say, I was just thinking about this last night, the first time we were in push, that was the first time that we'd ever had our ad in a brochure, that the distribution was 10 ,000 people.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 23:46

And we'd never done marketing before. And so then this show was lined up out the street and we were sold out at one point and people were yelling at us and we just didn't know that that could happen.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 24:02

And Norman said, you have a problem. And we said, we're going to fix it for next year. Yeah, I think that, you know, the the sheer tenacity at the time was was a lot.

Gabrielle Martin 24:18

Thanks.

Julie-Anne Saroyan 24:19

Thank you so much, Julianne. You! I'm so excited about your programming and what you're going to do in this 20th year of push and where the ball is going to go!

Ben Charland 24:34

That was a special episode of Push Play, in honor of our 20th Push International Performing Arts Festival, which will run from January 23rd to February 9th, 2025. Push Play is produced by myself, Ben Charland, and Tricia Knowles.

Ben Charland 24:50

A new episode of our 20th Festival series with Gabriel Martin will be released every Tuesday, wherever you get your podcasts. To stay up to date on Push 20 and the 2025 Festival, visit pushfestival .ca and follow us on social media at pushfestival.

Ben Charland 25:09

And if you've enjoyed this episode, please spread the word and take a moment to leave a review. Thanks for watching!