PuSh Play Podcast Episode 42 Transcript: Habitat: The Hermes Metaphor

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. Today’s episode highlights multidisciplinary practice and the process of coming out of one’s shell.

00:18
I’m speaking with Bettina Szabo, the lead artist behind Habitat, which is being presented at the PuSh Festival, January 28th and 29th, 2025. Born in Uruguay, Bettina Szabo is a dancer and choreographer living in Montreal since 2007.

00:34
As a dancer, she is interested in collaborative processes based on somatic explorations, and as a choreographer, her creations are interdisciplinary and marked by profound collaboration with music and visual arts.

00:47
Here is my conversation with Bettina. I just want to start by acknowledging the context from which I’m speaking to you. I am on the stolen ancestral and traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples, so the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil -Waututh.

01:06
I’m a settler on these lands, and part of my commitment as a settler here is to engage in ongoing learning about what that means. And that looks like different things each day. Today, that looks like reflecting on Indigenous alternatives to climate risk assessment, and that is something that is supported by the Yellowhead Institute, which is just an incredible resource, educational resource.

01:32
So currently, I’ve just been reflecting on the exclusion of local and traditional knowledge and sustainable management practices with regard to climate assessment. And also, how this contributes to a view of climate change that’s linear and a lack of engagement in shaping what future generations will inherit.

01:55
And I know that you are currently somewhere. different from where you’re usually based. Can you share a bit about where your relationship to your place? Absolutely. So right now in Paris, I have two homes I live here, but also in Tuchague.

02:16
So Tuchague is a city land also known as Montreal or Mounyan and Nabi -Chawee, and it’s an island that is traditionally a land for exchange for many First Nations and is guarded by the Kanyinkeha people, also known as Mohawk.

02:36
My relationship to the situation is quite weird because I didn’t learn about the situation and the oppression that the First Nations live in Canada until after five years living in Canada. And yes, I am being accomplished through this settling, which is very uncomfortable because it’s wasn’t something we knew before immigrating.

03:03
So yeah, it’s really, it’s quite a hard situation to be perpetuating depression in such a passive aggressive way. But yes, so I try to be a Malay as much as I can. So I’m very glad to let you know that the name of Montreal is actually I’m going to jump right into talking about habitat.

03:27
So in the visual symphony of deep sea bioluminescence, an entrancing interaction with a seemingly sentient structure draws us into a hypnotic meditation on the search for home. And this structure is called Hermes or Hermes, Hermes, and this is the sculpture that you dance with in habitat.

03:50
Can you talk about, can you talk about it and the relevance of its metaphor for you? Of course. So Hermes has been my partner for the past six years. This sculpture was created by the wonderful Shasanda Rasp, who is a visual artist from Quebec.

04:10
She’s not from Tijage. And yeah, like we met in 2016, she actually had exhibit a video of the sculpture movement while we were both studying at Concordia University. And through a production class, I tried to imitate it to make a costume.

04:32
And out of that exploration, the interest was very high. And also like I really liked the very first prototype I did, trying to not copy the sculpture. But yeah, somehow it gave me the courage to reach out to her and ask her if she would like to collaborate.

04:48
We had never spoken to each other. So it was quite took a lot of courage to be honest. And I happened to contact her apparently in the moment that she was looking for a dancer to make the sculpture move.

05:02
So she took around one year to build Hermes. It’s made out of Abaca fiber. She actually did the paper by hand, cut it and assembled the sculpture that the one that it weren’t going to be dancing a push is made of 800 paper cones and they all articulate.

05:22
And yeah, it took for making that iteration, it took around five months of work between making the paper, cutting and assembling the sculpture. And what drew you to the sculpture when you first thought, why did you want to reach out to her?

05:38
Well, I found it super hypnotic. It was like in slow motion. It really looked like a pot of fish moving around and it was wonderful. It was really beautiful. And at the time of Studio 303, there was a, there was a platform called Metamorphose where they invited visual artists.

05:57
of the costume makers to collaborate with performing artists. So I proposed to her that we apply and we got in and that’s how we started working. And I did have my very first vacation to Cuba and I saw handmade crafts and I was like, oh, that’s the excuse because I was like, what am I going to use as an excuse to get in relationship with this sculpture, other than it’s just wonderful.

06:20
I like the honesty of excuse. It was really like, okay, how can I just say that I’m going to work with this, other than like, this is just cool. It was really, and also like, I really like to do work that has a subject that has a story behind.

06:41
So like, it was very important for me. There wasn’t just an anesthetic exploration, let’s say. So it all started with the hermit crab. And at the time, the Pacific Ocean had just started to increase the temperature.

06:58
And there were massive deaths of fish in the coast of Chile. I grew up by the ocean. And one of the things that I did as I get with my parents was volunteer in a, gosh, I’m having a blank with the names, in a rescue, in a refuge for sea animals.

07:23
So seeing this massive deaths of fish and whales was really heartbreaking for me. And we were just starting to talk about bioplastics and their effects on animals and like us eating them and all this stuff.

07:40
This was back in 2016, 15. Anyway, so that was the very first inspiration and reason why to get into the sculpture with it. But yeah, it was later on, but then like the other immigration discourse came in.

08:00
It was much later. But yeah, the sculpture the right now like the metaphor that it represents for me is more Canada and like its opportunities and like it’s more about like the idealized place of migration because yeah obviously I think that like anyone that immigrates anywhere has idealized the hosting place like this.

08:22
Nothing that can actually prepare you to actually migrating and you choose it because you think it’s better and it’s definitely something that is better than your situation and that it is idealized. So yeah when I did that costume people were like oh like I had made a lot of origami paper cones and put them on a pair of pantyhose.

08:49
I made a hole to make a head and make a sweater and I got some lights from Dolorama. and I didn’t know they changed color and it was great because like I just put in a friend was like just move slowly close all the lights put just that and people were like oh my god look like Aurora Morales on glaciers and I was like so yeah that’s one of the big images that do come back today on the piece but this idea of coming from South America from a country has no snow the glacier and Canada did seem logical to me as a as a relation yeah and hermit crabs they don’t have their own shell is that what’s unique about that yeah yeah so they don’t have a shell and they change off shell as they grow if you look online it’s really funny you can see like um hermit crabs moving and you’ll see like a row of hermit crabs so a very big one needs to change the shell so it’s a whole bunch are lining up behind him to catch the shell that is left over is almost like Montreal on July 1st everybody’s moving yeah they don’t have a shell they are very protective they have kind of they have a tail that curls up inside the shell or whatever they find to protect their living organs and uh yeah apparently like they’re you can tear a hermit crab apart if you try to rip it off his home actually yeah you describe habitat as a multi -disciplinary solo with significant dramaturgical weight attributed to sound movement and sculpture can you speak to your trajectory with form over your career as an artist yeah so um relating a bit also to the next answer so the beginning approach was very aesthetic and then once i started working inside the sculptures when the real theme of the piece came out um uh the particular thing about working with Hermes is that I mean I decided to make a solo because I wanted to finish school having a solo and like something to present my the way I work or like what I like to do let’s say.

11:09
And also when you make a solo engineer is to put yourself in value as a great performer and then when I started exploring with Hermes it was like a giant struck to my ego because the most interesting thing was to disappear.

11:24
It was to not be there to be hiding behind the sculpture and while being inside the sculpture like I really have my head down I’m in all weird positions just to try to fit in and that just brought up the cellular memory of the first to fit in or trying things out how I could behave like entire phenomenon that was going on between me and the sculpture, this thing of having to disappear, having to be very uncomfortable,

12:02
yet it looks wonderful from outside. You know, like I will go back to Uruguay and I was like, well, I’m cleaning windows for 30 bucks an hour. And it’s like, well, but you’re playing a plane ticket. That’s wonderful.

12:15
Which I mean, yes, it was great money. I mean, it was all this weird things that that happened. So yeah, like that’s when the real theme of the piece came out. And also during that time, I when I when I studied, I actually when I moved to Canada, I went to Concordia University, then stopped Concordia, went, did an intensive training in Israel, in the north of Israel with Kibbutz -Gaton.

12:44
And then after that, I went back and did LADMI at the time, which today is the EDCM. And after I finished, I decided to go back to university to finish my degree. All this to say is that when I moved to Canada, I was English speaker.

13:02
So I was speaking English at Concordia, but there’s no thoughtful exam that prepares you to actually go into school in English. It’s really tough. Then I was in a completely Francophone environment for three years.

13:15
And then I went back to the Anglophone environment, and it was somehow more comfortable. And being in that environment and being in university, we started talking about the colonization. I mean, we weren’t talking about the colonization yet.

13:28
But I did at least became more aware of like the situation with First Nations. And but I did also became very self aware of my internal colonization, because I’m a white passing person. I’m like, well, I’m not with blonde hair, but like, I’m Caucasian.

13:47
My descendants is Italian and Eastern European. My parents are both European and born in Europe. way, like my grandparents too. But yes, we have this thing of always thinking that it’s not as good as it is in Europe.

14:06
And I had this speech when I moved to Canada, where I would say like, oh, I’m from Uruguay, but it’s the most European countries of America, what level of education is this? It’s like I had like a discourse that was basically saying, I’m white like you.

14:24
And it was at the time I was creating habitat that I realized that that’s what I was doing. And started questioning it, seeing what belonged to me, what didn’t, how to take it out, or and yes, it was the process of many years.

14:40
So regarding going back to the interdisciplinary part, I would say that at the time I also had started meeting with people in contemporary music and I had tried some live electronics. So yeah, it was like a great way of like amplifying the interpretation and well also like because of the hermit crabs and also because I’m born and raised like two blocks away from the ocean.

15:09
So like for me making it like with a sea theme to it was super natural. And yeah, like in terms of all of the other mediums, they’re all being directed. Like I’ll say that I’m artistic director of the overall thing, though Hermes was already the way it was.

15:31
There’s like the only change, there’s no artistic direction I have given regarding it. It’s only just a bit bigger, so my torso would fit. So I wouldn’t consider that artistic direction. But in terms of the music, yes, there was collaboration with the composers.

15:46
We were exploring together, doing all kinds of sounds. I was exploring all vocalizations possible. And you have an experience in exploring sound spatialization from a very young age. Yes, yes, yes, because and then because it’s a thing habitat is a project that took like six years to really like were being born.

16:12
Like the very first iteration was in 2016. Then there was the second one in 2020. And then the full piece that you guys are going to experience wasn’t premier until 2022. But in between all of that, I was able to find the right collaborators to make the vision that I wanted happen.

16:33
So it was in 2019 that I started working with the sound spatialization that is something that I knew we could do. And it was this idea of like bringing the people in this culture with me. So I was telling you before a conversation that as a kid, I got exposed to the idea of sense specialization when I was in elementary school, because my dad works with that kind of technology doing adaptation of software for visually impaired people.

17:05
So in 2019, I met a technician like a scientist that creates software for sense specialization. So then it added an extra layer onto the, not only onto the, how we use the space, but also regarding the way we conceive the composition of the work, because during with Habitat, like I have live effects that are done on my voice.

17:34
So this specialization is allowing us to specialize in different speakers, which sound comes from which side. So though I’m alone, it sounds like I’m there with a whole bunch of. friends, little other creatures.

17:50
And it really gives that we give a surround system. And yeah, the first thing we presented it was with 13 speakers. But yeah, it can go very far. So yeah, that’s with the sound specialization and then regarding the costume.

18:06
So Hermes is the sculpture is my partner, but then I also have a costume that has the lighting embedded on it. And that’s also another thing that it took years of the technology to actually catch up with what I wanted to do.

18:22
Because I now I’m able to do the auralis effect because at the beginning was just fairy lights. Then now we have special LED lights that we can program. And I can do the cues of light. So and you do all the cues yourself in Yeah, Hermes.

18:39
Yes, I have them. I have two Arduino boards on my belly. And I had to push push buttons and turn them on and off. Yeah, it was like the very first iteration, it was like a look like very pregnant crab, like I had like six different battery packs.

18:58
And now we were able to make it a lot more ergonomic and comfortable to work with. And ecological as well, too, because the amount of double A batteries I was consuming was ridiculous. So yeah, all of these things were over the years, you know, one thing came after the other and allowed me to, to push the dramaturgy further.

19:21
And this research is really embedded in your teaching practice, too, because I know that you offer workshops for, for folks of all ages, for general public, also for dance artists, which really, in my interpretation of it gives folks the tools to have creative agency and really explore with a range of different mediums.

19:42
So yeah, these workshops are really integrated into your practice. and which is a work that you describe as cultural mediation. And can you define what cultural mediation means in the context of your work and your key experiences, why this is important to you?

19:58
Well, I think that the word cultural mediation, I use it just because it’s a literal translation as to what we say in French. But yeah, I think like, so regarding workshops in general, like the transdisciplinary workshops that I give is more of like just there, go and try it.

20:17
Which is something that I didn’t at the beginning. And then I was like, ah, I’m kind of half making it. And then finally we have this thing going on and it’s actually working. So it’s more about like there to try and to touch other.

20:31
substances they’ll say, other mediums, because even if it’s not yourself that is going to take care of that medium, it’s important for me it’s super important to know the very basics so I can have a better level of conversation with my collaborators and find the right collaborator for the work I need to do.

20:50
With the workshops that I do with Habitat, it’s just I literally do what I did for that costume in university. So it all started with fairy lights from Dolorama, cooking paper, and Origami is then a pair of pantyhose.

21:09
So it’s just like to bring it down to earth, like right now it sounds like a very complex multidisciplinary technology, Arduino is this that well it started really with fairy lights and pantyhose and cooking paper.

21:22
Like it’s bringing it down to earth and make it and demystifying the artistic process. And this is something that you speak about in the context of Petre -Cordance’s vision and Petre -Cordance being your company, which is to democratize art by combining different art forms and investigating socially engaged subjects.

21:45
So we’ll look at your in the context of your new work Cunha, which is based on the phenomenon of internalized misogyny of women. Can you talk about that relationship between form and subject matter in your wider practice?

21:59
Yeah, so I’m very happy to have found some kind of like recipe or practice. Yeah, you can give it which earning me, but like I cannot have like a little protocol that I have developed that I called moving subconscious.

22:17
With moving subconscious, I’ve been able to help myself embody theoretical concepts. So I used a meditation process, scanning the body with lots of detail, also on the side of my elementary job at the time was massage therapy.

22:47
So, and I’m a big nerd about anatomy, I love anatomy. So like this meditations really go through a very thorough body scanning, and then I bring in the information of the subject that we’re gonna work.

23:00
So in the case of Cunha, this piece was like after many years of reflection and realizing like internal dialogues that I have regarding judging myself or other women and coming from a very patriarchal country to then being in Canada and being like, oh, I don’t have to insult this thing that badly of this lady has a very short skirt because she’s not putting herself in danger or anything like that.

23:25
Or like where did that came from? Because anyways, she looks great. Thank you. So like, who am I to judge? Anyway, so all of this came up. So what happened with Cunha, for example, it will go. So I decided to subdivide a piece in the different life stages of women.

23:45
I did a survey while I was in school because for me, the planting of this internalized misogyny starts in childhood. It’s when the very first time when you’re taught to not do something because you’re a girl, because you’re putting yourself in danger.

24:07
In my case, it was you kind of climb up trees because you’re a girl. So we’re like, I couldn’t, and especially it was because I was wearing a skirt. So I couldn’t go up the trees and all that, right?

24:19
And so I did a big survey asking people what they couldn’t do as a girl when they were kids. And if they had a piece of advisors that they could erase of their life, where would it be? And the answers were super rich.

24:35
So moving subconscious is a method that is helping me combine theoretical concepts, ideas, or memories, and embed them on the body. So in the case of Cunha with my ancestors, for example, we did explorations of administration.

24:53
I had done lots of research. I found drawings of menstruating uteruses online. So we discussed about it, like the pains, whatever we had. We found drawings that we could have a relation regarding their period.

25:11
So then after that, after a good three -hour discussion and how periods are viewed in society, et cetera, I invite them to do the meditation process. And they’re invited to choose themselves and memory that is related to that.

25:28
And through the meditation, I make them. bring back the memory, imagine like in detail how the word dresser, like what are the colors of the area where they are, like all of that, and then scan the body to see if there’s any physical reaction, if there’s any sensation that is growing from anywhere and how it’s growing, and then as we continue the process like where they write a bit, we take pauses and we go back in,

25:53
I make those sensations increase to the point of bringing them into movement, and this raw movement, then they get to do a phrase, we record it, but I’m filming everything throughout the entire thing, I have tons of hours of video to watch, yes, but then they get to choose like do like a little phrase of what they want from that, and then that becomes the base material with which I do my choreographic writing,

26:23
so for instance, once somebody was dancing with her fallopian tubes, and her hands were the ovaries, the fallopian tubes were the arms, and I saw a different image, so I was like in terms of like doing the choreographic work or like what I call the choreographic writing, it’s like I will play more with like saturation, repetition, orientation, like okay, something that was standing, it would go on the floor,

26:51
change the phrase to become something that is jumping to change a bit the dynamics, because it’s true that like with this process of creation, a lot of the stuff, because often we start on the ground, then all the material is on the ground, so I had to find a way to bring it up and change it a bit around, so my being subconscious is now something that I’ve been practicing for seven years and have been using it in different subjects and with different people,

27:20
and it has always, it still fascinates me. I find it super powerful because a lot of the time all this imagery, it doesn’t only bring like a very particular kind of movement, but also like it gives you, sometimes it gives you a crazy stability, like people are capable of doing things with their body that normally they wouldn’t, but because on the imagination it’s like okay, there’s a fallopian tube doing that,

27:45
then it works. It is a very powerful tool that brings, the interpreters are in a meditative state, and it makes it super super strong, so yes, I’m not bored of it obviously, and I really enjoy using it, yeah.

28:05
Yeah, it sounds very rich and very responsive to the people in the room as well. So I’m hearing the cohesion or the continuity in terms of process for you currently, at least in your current projects, I’m wondering if there are recurring dramaturgic elements or social thedians as well within your work, Or if the through line is really about process right now and each project is totally unique in terms of integration of form and the subject matter explored.

28:41
So, as I said, moving subconscious is a common factor for sure and also like, it becomes as well, a source of raw material also for sound and for image and the environment that we may create for a piece.

28:57
In terms of subject matters, I think that like definitely womanhood is something like this in the like the situation of women in society is something that is marking my pieces lately. I mean, for Konya, one of the tableaus is menopause, which is now turning into its own creation.

29:19
This is called Helichrist. It’s going to be an installation. And in terms of aesthetics, I would say like I. I have finally kind of like found my realm but like yeah from the beginning I like the idea of using surrealistic worlds or like what I call magical realistic worlds to talk about society because I think that we’re a lot more porous when we’re talking about like magic lens to talk about reality rather than using reality to criticize reality I think that I can bring it allows people to be more open -minded or like question things a bit further and as a South American I’ve been exposed to magical realism since I’m a kid.

30:08
I read those books since I’m very young so it’s just natural for me it’s just like intuitively what comes out so in general a lot of the times when I’m seeing this improvisations I see animals I see plants and I look into making those more obvious for other people so I guess that those are yeah definitely those in terms of if we’re talking about dramaturgy those are late motifs that I can see however I think it’s a bit early to name a lot because there’s not that many creations that I have behind me so we’ll be able to tell later yeah to be continued in a future conversation.

30:52
Wonderful thank you so much Bettina I find your process fascinating I love habitat you know it was a totally transformative or transporting experience both when I saw the work in Edinburgh a couple years ago and I’m just so thrilled that we’re finally able to bring it to Vancouver.

31:12
That was Gabrielle Martin’s conversation with Bettina Szabo of Petrikor Danse and the work Habitat which will be presented during the 20th PuSh International Performing Arts Festival taking place in Vancouver BC from January 23rd to February 9th.

31:28
Habitat will be presented at the Scotiabank Dance Center on January 28 and 29. For more information on the 2025 PuSh Festival and to discover the full lineup of more than 20 works of theater, dance, music, and multimedia performances, visit pushfestival .ca.

31:47
PuSh Play is produced by myself, Tricia Knowles, and Ben Charlin. Special thanks to Joseph Hirabayashi for the original music composition. New episodes of PuSh Play are released every Tuesday and Friday, wherever you get your podcasts.

32:00
Coming up on the next PuSh Play. So there was so much about my culture that I shut down and really like put away, you know, like never never wanted to really be too Filipino. Working on this has really been a journey of reclamation, not only of language, but of culture.