Montreal-based dancer Cai Glover and interdisciplinary artist Pierre-Olivier Beaulac-Bouchard bring disorder – exploring how ideas of order figure into their d/Deaf experiences – to the Odd Meridian’s Morrow from Sept. 25–28. Glover hopes the performance showcases a recognizable, unique signature to d/Deaf arts.

“Dance creation and art have not always been a place for d/Deaf people to inhabit, not without difficulties and impossibilities,” he shares. “The fact that we are two d/Deaf artists creating dance and art – I hope there’s a singularity recognizable in it that we can come to appreciate.”

Exploring two characters

The upcoming Morrow performance will be disorder’s third iteration. The first one – a 10-minute performance – was held in Montréal; the second at Edmonton’s Sound Off Festival, which showcases Canada’s Deaf performing arts.

“I wanted to create two different characters,” Glover shares. “I had this idea to see if I could convey both different ways that I hear: from my implant and from my hearing aid.”

While examining the difference between these two sound qualities, Glover created two characters: the “empath” and the “sympath.” The latter represents how hearing aids amplify sound – a ”sympathetic, compassionate” experience he sees as creating a common understanding.

“The implant is an empathetic way of hearing: it’s trying to emulate real sounds, but it’s not,” he shares of the other character. “It’s built out of 22 electrodes, and my brain has to interpret these electronic pulses and translate it into real sound.”

For Glover, the sound experience provided by his implant is similar to empathy: it requires understanding what another individual is going through.

“I was looking at how these two qualities are very different from each other and how can I inhabit them in my body,” he shares. “That was the first disorder I was trying to convey.”

The idea of “disorder” also relates to Glover’s feeling of being in-between the hearing and the d/Deaf worlds. The dancer lost his hearing at the age of eight.

The title also refers to the disorder arising from society’s desire to create order. Glover shares how Beaulac-Bouchard prefers to not wear a hearing implant – opting to communicate in sign language instead.

“The implant in both cases was meant to be a piece of technology that provides order,” Glover adds. “We had these two instances where order becomes disorder just because of [people] not being able to see what is needed, wanted or necessary.”

The in-between space

His collaboration with Beaulac-Bouchard started from disorder’s first iteration. Glover wrote English poems to accompany the first performance. Beaulac-Bouchard translated these poems into American Sign Language on stage.

The artists then reconnected, where Beaulac-Bouchard shared his experience navigating familial expectations of normalcy. Glover combined their experiences into the second iteration of disorder – a 30-minute-long piece.

“I wanted with [Beaulac-Bouchard’s] story to start with sign language, and then go from sign to English, and then English to dance,” he shares of the second staging. “We reversed the order of translation through these languages and then created a whole section [with Beaulac-Bouchard’s] story: his experience with the implants.”

For the third version, Glover invited Beaulac-Bouchard as well as three other d/Deaf artists to another creative workshop. His goal was to begin from “a d/Deaf cultural point of view” and explore the art form in new ways.

“That was then responsible for two new duet sections,” Glover shares of the upcoming Vancouver performance. “This newest version of disorder is the 40-minute version that represents these three different phases of creation.”

Anusha Kamesh, disorder’s composer, was provided with the two dancers’ audiograms. The idea is to recreate their soundscape for the audience. Beaulac-Bouchard’s dance section will also be accompanied by a “meta-scoring”: a recording of his own voice and breathing during that section.

“As we move through literal language – English, American Sign Language, Quebecois Sign Language – and dance language, I’m hoping the audience can start to appreciate that between language place,” Glover adds. “That non-verbal place we can get to in the arts that is still communicating something very, very powerful and real about human experience.”

disorder closes the Odd Meridian’s summer series, Bring Your Own Body. Local dance artist Ziyian Kwan is the artistic producer of the series. For more information, see www.oddmeridian.ca/byobody-cai.html.