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Ottawa’s new film features music for deaf people

LYNN SAXBERG POSTMEDIA NEWS

OTTAWA - Music isn’t usually created with deaf people in mind.

But one Ottawa group is targeting the hearing-impaired demographic with an multidisciplinary project that combines music, dance and American sign language.

Speaking Vibrations was formed a couple of years ago by contemporary dancer Jordan Samonas, ASL poet Joanne Bryan, who is deaf, and tap dancer Carmelle Cachero. To put together a concert for Ottawa’s Uproar festival in 2019, they invited musician King Kimbit to collaborate.

The hip hop poet, educator and community activist was intrigued.

“For me as a musician, I’m always looking to find as many ways as possible to reach more people. This is one of them,” King said in an interview. (The daughter of Vietnamese refugees who came to Ottawa in the 1980s, her given name is Thu Anh Nguyen.)

“Rather than adding interpretation so that deaf people can understand a piece that’s already created, our mandate is to create content that’s centred on deaf folks. They’re not an afterthought,” she said.

After the Uproar performance, Ottawa theatre artist Jacqui du Toit stepped up to provide creative direction, effectively becoming the fifth member of the group. They received funding to create a show that was to be staged at Origin, the arts and community centre co-owned by du Toit, but the COVID-19 pandemic scuttled performance plans.

Instead, the show was professionally shot at the Great Canadian Theatre Company and edited into a 30-minute film that premieres online Friday. It will be available to stream until May 14. (To get the link, purchase a $5 ticket or pay what you can at eventbrite.ca) A Speaking Vibrations concert is centred on the combined rhythms of spoken-word lyrics, dance and ASL poetry. For the in-person show, the group provided vibrating vests to some audience members, which connected wirelessly to stage microphones and transmitted vibrations that could be sensed by the wearers.

Although vests aren’t an option for the film, the medium lends itself to the use of captions and other visual elements to make it accessible, while the choreography draws from modern dance, tap and stepping.

“A lot of the film is silent, with the focus on the ASL,” King explained. “The music here comes from the rhythm and the movement, and the way sound could look. It’s basically using your body to make a rhythm.”

With the group still in the early stages of their creative development, they welcome feedback, especially from the deaf community.

“We want to find out if this thing is really doing what we want it to do,” King said. “We want to build a bridge between music and deaf folk.”

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2021-05-08T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-05-08T07:00:00.0000000Z

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