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dance by Ben D'Andrea Not only, but also the abc's of Mascall's Choreography dances in her new work as "stories drawn from an alphabet" of poses, she was careful to avoid the assump tion that her dances are narratives. She's particularly inter ested in the emo tional connotations of movement. Each dance pose. she said, is "like a pré cis of an entire emotional state." Mascall doesn't, however, sit on her ideas. She takes them directly to the dance floor to see what happens. That's where I saw the dance spring into being. collaboration, and she places an enor mous amount of trust in her dancers. Responding to the uncertainty expressed by another one of her dancers late in the rehearsal, she sug gested: "If there's a totally new impulse, put it in there." Although primarily non-narrative and expressive, Mascall's work does grapple with ideas, but in surprising and unexpected ways. She's inter ested in exploring how dance reveals the unchanging movement "vocabu lary" of the body. The ancient city of Pompeii is a reference point for this concept. The people of Pompeii were "frozen" in time, some while fleeing the hot ash of Vesuvius, others while simply per forming domestic chores. Preserved through nearly Iwo centuries, their poses and gestures raise the question of the dependence between move ment and stillness, a question Mascall wants to build into her latest work. Attempting to extend the bound aries of how we think about dance is certainly a recurring feature of Mascall's career. And perhaps this isn't surprising, given that she began choreographing in the mid-1970s when the Ontario Arts Council first gave a boost to the usually high-risk venture of experimental dance by funding individual dance-makers. In 1974, the Toronto-born Mascall had just become one of the first to gradu ate from York University's then-new dance program, and she immediately took advantage of the climate that favoured ambitious dancerchoreographers. After graduating, Mascall contin ued her training with Merce Cunningham. Martha Graham and Douglas Dunn. She has performed her own work all over Europe and across Canada. In 1981, she won two major awards for choreography: the Ann O'Connor Award at the Not only. but also Choreographer:Jennife Mascall Dancer: Tonja Livingsto Photo: Melanie janisse 5, > Cs 8 Dance critics have been trying to label the work of Vancouver choreog rapher Jennifer Mascall for nearly 20 years. But if her newest program of dance, Not only, but also, proves any thing. it's that the convenient labels don't stick. That's because, for Mascall, dance is more like a ques tion than an anss er--more like an exploration than the end of a journey. Last November, I watched Mascall's new dance work taking shape in the studio space of an old West End church, home of the Mascall Dance company since it started in 1989. During a break in the rehearsal, Mascall talked about her work-in-progress. It consists, she explained, of an "alphabet" of over 100 poses. Different sets of these poses are linked in each of the dances--including solos--that make up Not only, but also. Each dance is an "anthology" of poses. Although Mascall described the As defined by Mascall, the dancers' main obligation is to "fol low the thread" of the emotion linking one pose or step in the dance to the next. The technique her dancer use to link poses is clearly a major concern. After one of the com pany's five dancers rehearsed her solo, Mascall reminded her that her arms are the "pumps" needed to shift from one pose to the next. It also became clear during the course of the rehearsal that Mascall favours a flexible approach. No two dancers, she pointed out, move in precisely the same way. "Different dancers will interpret the poses dif ferently" because their bodies are different. It follows that the dancers themselves should determine, for example, the length of a perfor mance, and indeed, Mascall told one of her soloists, "There's no timing obligation at all." For Mascall, choreographing is a