Family, Tradition, Sufjan Stevens… and that Awkward Dance Party
guest Choreographer, Freya Sargent’s Creative Vision for 'Fruitcake Weather’
Bare Bait Dance’s Fruitcake Weather is a joyful and creative way to kick off the holiday season, mixing a festive flair with an eclectic showcase of dance. This year’s winter show, directed by Joy French, invites the audience to celebrate the complexities of the season with playful, family-friendly choreography by an exciting roster of choreographers: Toree Wilson, Hannah Dusek, Amber Moon Peterson, Tiki Preston, Freya Sargent, Lia Wong, and French herself.
We’re checking in with Choreographer Freya Sargent, BBD Company Alumni and Campaigns Advisor at The Nature Conservancy, about her piece exploring holiday traditions, the complex bonds of family, and the joys of dance.
Freya Sargent: My piece definitely leans toward the Christmas theme, and I'd say it's a family get-together around the holidays. There's a matriarch and various female family members who are participating in family traditions. And with that we see the joy and connection, but also the sadness, loneliness, and hardship that also might show up. The piece is set around Christmas, but I'm hoping that it has the broader themes that come with family gatherings that anyone can relate to, whether they celebrate Christmas or not.
Us: Ah I see, the nuances between family members and the baggage that sometimes comes with that.
Freya Sargent: Yeah, I was kind of interested in the experience of going home as an adult - you've matured past your childhood self, but sometimes, when you're around all of your loved ones, those old dynamics come up again. Those expectations of “This is going to be the perfect thing when we get together, and we're going to do all our traditions, and everybody's going to love it, damn it.”
Us: I think that resonates with every holiday and family tradition. Everybody's going to love it, damn it!
Freya Sargent: Right?! Parts of that are really fun and wonderful, but some are not.
Us: And how does that tie into using Sufjan Stevens' music?
Freya Sargent: Sufjan Stevens is a weird and wonderful musical genius, in my opinion, and it turns out that he's produced over a hundred Christmas songs!
I’ve found that I have a really hard time with my creative process if I don't have a starting point. If the world is my oyster, it's almost paralyzing. So, I thought it would be fun to give myself a creative constraint to use only his music as a creative jumping-off point. I’m just delighted by his Christmas music!
Us: Besides the creative structures of using Sufjan Stevens’ music, how did the dancers contribute to your creative process?
Freya Sargent: Well, I can't create without them.
I came into the process with creative direction or scenes, including Christmas poems or structured improvisation, and then I layered my scene ideas on top of them.
The process was very much a back-and-forth.
There’s this magic that happens when we get to co-create the piece live together. We end up with material and a piece that none of us would have been able to make in isolation.
Us: Yes, absolutely. Is there anything that was a surprise, an example of something you never would have thought of on your own?
Freya Sargent: In one rehearsal, I noticed a pattern happening across all the dancers, who were doing these funny little, fist-bumpy, cheerleader party moves. And I thought, “I wonder what would happen if we just selected all of those little movements that had a similar quality to them?” So we strung those together and created a weird, fidgety, tiny dance party. And it’s become a central anchor of the piece.
Do you know that awful, embarrassing dance party intro in the show The Perfect Couple? This is my Christmas version of that.
Fruitcake Weather is presented as part of our 2024|2025 season at the Westside Theater, November 30 - December 8, 2024.