Chaconne de Paeton, 2007

Originally exhibited at the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery (Waterloo, ON) in 2005 and curated by Virginia Eichhorn, this work toured to the MacKenzie Art Gallery and the Surrey Art Gallery in 2007 in "Mobile Structures: Dialogues Between Ceramics and Architecture in Canadian Art, curated by Timothy Long.

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Based on the notion that choreography might function somewhat like a path, I was simultaneously drawn to the codified and orderly structure of Baroque dance notation, and to visual parallels found in period landscape architecture. Chaconne de Paeton was first choreographed and performed by Guillaume-Louis Pecour (France: 1653-1729) and notated by Raoul-Auger Feuillet (France: 1660-1710), who was the first to publish a system of dance notation in 1700. The dancer projected in the upper background is Daniel Gariépy of La belle danse Baroque Dance Company (Toronto).

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In his catalogue essay, Timothy Long wrote: "... in our environmental crisis which has been precipitated by a progressive loss of differentiation between culture and nature, we will repeat the scapegoating that previous generations have used to maintain social control or find a genuinely non-violent solution. As we walk the landscape maze, we travel towared the raised image of Phaeton, the victim/victimizer, a ghostly dancer who instructs us in the steps by which colonizers have trammeled the earth, first in crossing from Europe to America, and now in filling the atmosphere with carbon dioxide emissions."

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