Minds in Motion with Alina Sotskova

by Shanny Rann

Minds in Motion blends physically rigorous contemporary dance with images of human form in Renaissance art. This work is about a personal renaissance – it’s a story of emerging from molds created by others and searching for connection. The dancers use the visual metaphor of a person coming to life inside a sculpture and their struggle to break free. Trying to reconnect to self and others after a period of time of feeling numb and disconnected is difficult. It is a struggle that is familiar to many people. This work is about the experience of this struggle: about trying to move forward despite uncertainty; about how hard it is to let go of old habits, even when the person desperately wants to let them go. This work is also about the moments that make this difficult journey worthwhile – moments of breaking through the old molds and constraints, moments of freedom and meaningful connection.

SR: Alina, you have an interesting background as an artist, psychologist, and philosopher. How do you bridge those worlds?

AS: Voirelia is a nexus where they all meet. I founded Voirelia five years ago, out of the desire to have this interdisciplinary, welcoming platform where these three passions of mine can essentially live together and interact, where people who share my energy and passion for these different areas of inquiry can come together.

It's the perfect intersection because any work that I have done with Voireila, in the past and present, has a strong focus on the psychological experience, on understanding different layers and depths of human experience, and on co-constructing, cocreating the experience in order to better make sense of it. Dance is the language for expressing that. Dance creation is a big piece of Voireila. Sharing this passion is essential for the understanding of the moving body, the art form of dance—what it can say, what it can mean, integrating that with these psychological and philosophical questions that I'm interested in asking about human experience. The common questions we all face and different ways we try to answer questions about life or questions about ourselves.

SR: Can you talk about your journey into dance—what brought you into dance and what made you stay in dance?

AS: I started dancing very young. It's one of my first memories of growing up. I grew up in Crimea, Ukraine. I started dancing at the age of four until I moved away as an adolescent. When immigrating to Canada, the immigration process and a number of other family-related things were so challenging that dance was basically not at all a priority. It was gone from my life completely. I was adapting, trying to improve my English, trying to adjust to school, and trying to figure out a career. I went into the areas of psychology and philosophy for my undergraduate degree. By the time I went into my master’s for clinical psychology, it had been so many years of missing dance. I felt like a part of me was gone and it was still very painful. I decided to start re-engaging with dance, taking recreational classes without any expectations. I was lucky enough to have positive and uplifting teachers in those classes. Once I was back in the environment, the switch turned right on. I had forgotten how great dance can be, and how much I love it. At that point, I didn't have professional goals yet for dance. I just kept diving into it, taking more classes, and doing pointe in my mid-20s. Gradually I transitioned to taking more advanced and professional classes and workshops, seeking out mentorships and creating my own training program, consisting of ballet and contemporary dance. That's how I ended up where I am now.

SR: Thanks for sharing your story. It’s inspiring for people to hear because it takes a lot of courage to come back to something that once was very dear to you and to allow it to grow again. You are a testament to how even into our adult years, it's never too late to harness, to cultivate our love for dance. I'm an immigrant myself and I know how survival takes precedence over interest. For many years too, I drifted apart from dance, and I'm slowly finding my way back as well. How did you find your way to your latest work?

AS: It started in mid-2020 during the pandemic with an accidental find of a book that inspired me, titled How to think like Leonardo da Vinci by Michael Gelb. The book is about the principles that guided Da Vinci in his thinking. A lot of them transcended time such as endless curiosity, openness to experience, and appreciation of not just the mental or the physical, but the integration of both—how they are interconnected and equally important.

It was refreshing for me psychologically and emotionally, like a little mini-renaissance or revival. I had drifted away from those principles due to the pandemic and other personal stressors that I was going through. I felt very numb. The book was revitalizing, and I wanted to work on the ideas immediately through dance. It was the inspiration behind Minds in Motion.

SR: Minds in Motion… what an interesting title. How did the name come about?

AS: Minds in Motion is a nod to Leonardo da Vinci. In one of his notes, he wrote how he tried to capture the motions of the mind of the person who was sitting for a portrait, not just portraying his form, but his inner experience as well. It is interesting that he used “motion of the mind”, not state of mind, because it implies something that is flowing and not static. Capturing the complexity of the mind takes great skill as an artist. Whether you are a writer, painter, or dancer, it takes so much to capture.

SR: Would you say you are trying to capture motions of the mind through dance?

AS: For sure, psychological realism is important to me as an artist. I am interested in dance I am interested in dance as a tool to try to capture the uncapturable, something that's not only deep and complex, but also something that's constantly changing, especially how it changes as you observe it.

SR: Now we're entering into quantum physics.

AS: (Chuckling) That's right, my husband has a degree in physics! One of Voireila’s earliest works was about particle physics. It was a collaboration with quantum and particle physicists to explore the observer effect.

SR: I have seen snippets of your work and found the movements to be flowing, perhaps coming from a place that is deep within. Would you like to talk about the process of your choreography?

AS: Minds in Motion has evolved in the last year during the residency at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts. Nicolas Ventura and Margarida Macieira are the dancers, and Idan Cohen is the artistic advisor. We've all poured a lot of different layers into the piece and created different sections through experimentation. They contributed a lot of ideas, questions, and feedback and are willing to go with me on this journey of exploring the idea of the personal renaissance through the physical narrative of dance.

We worked with a visual metaphor ofsculptures coming to life, waking up to beingsurrounded by something that's not moving, wanting to break out against it and reach for the reward that awaits on the other side. We explored the limits of freedom to move from a seed of our own interest, to see what fits well with movements within the capacity of our bodies. It was an extremely collaborative and involved process.

Dancers Nicolas Ventura and Margarida Macieira in Minds in Motion

© Carol Gandra

I am interested in dance I am interested in dance as a tool to try to capture the uncapturable, something that's not only deep and complex, but also something that's constantly changing...

SR: What are your dreams for this project?

AS: We are planning to premiere Minds in Motion at the Shadbolt Centre in the spring of 2023 and possibly work on a film adaptation as well. I would love to share the ideas behind this work and the questions it invites with a wider audience. I'm also looking forward to working with bigger casts and adding other perspectives on how the idea of personal renaissance is interpreted. The richest part of choreographing is collaborating with artists. We have created a lot of movement vocabulary for this piece. Using it choreographically as a new artistic opportunity for myself, to see what I can do with it to create a more powerful and immersive artistic experience for the audience—that's what I'm dreaming about.

SR: How does the concept of renaissance apply to your work or even your own life experience?

AS: For there to be a renaissance, first, there has to be an experience of loss, decline, disconnection from oneself, or a feeling of being stuck. Moments like these happen to people many times throughout their lifetimes in different ways. It is a common experience, rather than a unique experience, but we might not always conceptualize it, or understand it as such. I think it's impossible to go through life always being emotionally attuned, or always being perfectly in sync with values because things change. These moments are inevitable and are what make us human, but they can be scary and lonely. Certainly, the pandemic had a lot of those elements. For me, suddenly being disconnected from colleagues, from how it feels to be dancing in the studio, from the physical touch with people, was extremely difficult. A renaissance breaks the stuckness and allows you to feel emotions again, to move towards values that one has been disconnected from. This book was one of those cracks that broke the stuckness for me and helped me to have an emotional experience. It gave me hope for reconnection.

SR: I find it interesting you haven't mentioned healing, even in the context of loss, but you use the term renaissance. Do you see them both as the same thing?

AS: I don't think they are, but they overlap like a Venn diagram. My artistic work does not have a goal of healing. That's not the purpose of it. For me, that's a process I do somewhere else in a different way. Moments of revival are stark, interesting, exciting, surprising and they come out of nowhere; whereas healing, whatever that might mean, does not happen in a moment. It is a process that takes a long time. Even from that moment of revival, something else needs to happen for the healing process to unfold.

SR: You mentioned you grew up in Ukraine. Would you like to talk about the war that is happening in Ukraine?

AS: Seeing the place where I grew up being destroyed and people suffering has been a very emotional experience for me. Similarly, for a lot of people who grew up there and who have both Russian and Ukrainian heritage, it's been destabilizing and devastating. At the same time, it is not surprising, unfortunately. The Ukrainian people have been subjected to a lot of tragic oppression, physical and psychological violence, even under the Soviet Union decades ago. This is why a lot of people, if they have the privilege to, they emigrate to somewhere it's likely to be more stable. It's not easy. It's certainly why my family immigrated here out of fear of something like that happening and not being able to go anywhere.

I would encourage artists to ask themselves questions about what their responsibility is and what is possible for them to do.

I think about the trauma even from the first day of the war that will now be passed on generationally. I think about the people who will not get help for their post-traumatic stress. I think about the children whose parents have changed irrevocably, who lost their parents, who cannot get the help they need, and how they will carry the trauma into their lives and the lives of people around them.

I know 70 years from now, there will be someone in a therapy office, the third generation from this conflict, impacted by the events that are happening right now. A bit of a bleak mindset, I know but that's certainly not the only outcome. There are other much more hopeful and positive outcomes that are possible, and hopefully are happening, especially as countries are taking refugees and help has been provided by different parties and resources. But there are always going to be some people who are not reached by that help. I think it is important in continuing to maintain the effort to help with any other global conflict or local conflict, to be aware of just how much it impacts people, and how much help is needed by any community and any country to heal when it goes through something like this.

I just wish very much for the conflict to come to an end as soon as possible and for collective efforts to help rebuild the homes and lives of people who are affected.

SR: Some dancers have defected from Russia. Would you like to talk about the role of artists in a conflict situation like this?

AS: That's a hard one because I think it is a very personal matter of moral choice and responsibility. Facing that responsibility is something that I can continually be better at doing. I hope we all can try to support each other in facing and grappling with those questions, but I can definitely understand the feelings of people who have defected. I am myself embarrassed to have Russian heritage, not that it is something I could control or help. It's absolutely shameful to be associated with those actions in any way, shape, or form. I wouldn't want to be associated with them, nor would I want to support them, even if that includes living or making art or somehow benefiting from that system, but some people may not have a choice. They might feel the same way, but it might not be possible for them to leave.

It might be a great risk as an artist living in a system that is extremely oppressive and has been that way for a very long time. I'm happy for people who feel they can make the moral choice that's right for them and take a stand for their values. My heart and empathy go out to people who want to, but who can't, and to those who are trying to find a way. I would encourage artists to ask themselves questions about what their responsibility is and what is possible for them to do. That's what I would hope but it's not for me to make any prescriptions or give people advice on something like that. These are just my thoughts and wishes.

SR: Alina, it feels like we have just sat through a therapy session.

AS: I am quite comfortable engaging with very deep topics as I do talk to people about them all the time, not only as a psychologist but also to people whom I am close with and who are part of the healing process.

SR: Thank you for holding space for us to delve deep into the topics that matter not just to ourselves, but to a lot of people.

Alina is a professional dancer and choreographer. She has presented original choreography in collaboration with Victoria Dance Theatre, Dance Victoria, Flux London Dance Festival, Broken Rhythms, The Dance Centre, Addo Platform, and other festivals and organizations. In her dance practice, she uses movement to push her own boundaries of imagination and physicality, while exploring the psychological and philosophical questions she is interested in. To her artistic endeavors, Alina brings an academic, philosophical perspective, which she integrates with an embodied perspective of dance, movement, and the body. She holds a PhD in clinical psychology and her work emphasizes existential and psychodynamic psychology, which influences Alina’s framework of art and dance making. Alina is the Founder and Artistic Co-Director of Voirelia: Dance, Psychology, and Philosophy Hub (voirelia.com). Alina continues to create contemporary dance works, develop dance pedagogy, and curate interdisciplinary dance and art events.