Ep. 32 - Find Your Place and Transcend It (2018)

PuSh Play

Gabrielle Martin chats with performance artist Ralph Escamillan.

Show Notes

Gabrielle and Ralph discuss:

• How did you come to know about PuSh and get a commission for Hinky Punk?

• How do you elevate the performer into the visually iconic?

• What is Hinky Punk?

• How do you embody aspects of queerness in one performer?

• How do you work with restriction?

• What role can costume play?

• What is the value of ballroom culture in other artistic practices?

• How do you find your place in society like you find your category in ballroom—and then transcend it?

• Does the collective community ethos of ballroom translate into your other work?

• What does it mean to have a true open door with the community?

• What is the cultural context and significance of PuSh?

• How do we continue building bridges between the different artistic communities?

About Ralph Escamillan

Ralph Escamillan is a queer, Canadian-Filipinx performance artist, teacher and community leader based on the unceded territories of the xwməθkwəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh, Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh Nations - on so called Vancouver, BC.

Starting at age 14, Ralph trained first in Breakdancing then explored a multitude of other street dance styles such as HipHop, Popping, House, Waacking and Locking. His passion for dance expanded to include training in Vogue, Ballroom, Ballet, Modern, Jazz and was a graduate of Contemporary Training Program Modus Operandi in 2015.

Ralph has worked/toured with Vancouver companies: Company 605, Co. Erasga Dance, Kinesis Dance Somatheatro, Out Innerspace Theatre, Wen Wei Dance, Mascall Dance, apprenticed with Kidd Pivot in (2014) and and was a guest dancer with Ballet BC (2020).

In the commercial industry, he’s worked with choreographers including AJ Aakomon, Luther Brown, Kenny Ortega, Tucker Barkely and Mandy Moore as well as artists Victoria Duffield and Zendaya Coleman, and was a guest dancer for Janet Jackson’s “Unbreakable” tour in 2015.

With his company FakeKnot he creates work that strives to understand the complexities of identity using sound, costume, technology and the body. Ralph is currently premiered his all philippine cast work inspired by the queen of Philippine textile Piña in Vancouver May 4-6 2023 (Co-Presentation with SFU Woodward’s Cultural Programs and The Dance Centre).

Ralph ‘Posh’ Gvasalia Basquiat has been in the Ballroom Scene since 2014, founding his own Kiki House of Gvasalia in Vancouver and joined the Mainstream House of Basquiat in 2021. The founder and Artistic/Executive Director of the non-profit organization VanVogueJam, Ralph shares his passion for Vogue/Ballroom culture at his weekly pay-what-you-can classes and vogue balls, acting as a beacon for the queer dance/culture in Western Canada.

Ralph was recently awarded the Inaugural Miriam Adams Bursary fund at the DCD Hall Of Fame in October 2022 in Toronto, aswell as the Inaugural RBC Emerging Artist Award at the 2023 Governor General Performing Arts Awards in Ottawa.

Land Acknowledgement

This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver.

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Show Transcript

Gabrielle Martin 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, and in this special series of Push Play, we're revisiting the legacy of Push and talking to creators who have helped shape 20 years of innovative, dynamic, and audacious festival programming.

Gabrielle Martin 00:23 Today's episode features Ralph Eschimulen and is anchored around the 2018 Push Festival. Ralph, aka Posh, Visalia, Basquiat, is a queer, Canadian, Philippine ex -performance artist, choreographer, and teacher based in Vancouver.

Gabrielle Martin 00:40 As the Artistic Director of Fake Knot, he develops collaborative performance works that have been presented both nationally and internationally. His work questions notions of identity, tradition, and clothing, and the influence of pop culture in a globalizing world.

Gabrielle Martin 00:54 Ralph is a recipient of the inaugural Miriam Adams Bursary Fund at the DZD Hall of Fame in October 22 in Toronto, as well as the Inaugural National Arts Centre RBC Emerging Artist Award at the 2023 Governor General Performing Arts Awards in Ottawa.

Gabrielle Martin 01:11 Here's my conversation with Ralph. I have been acknowledged that we are here on this stolen traditional and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish peoples, the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil -Waututh.

Gabrielle Martin 01:25 I am unbelievably privileged to be on this land. And we're downtown, we're close to your offices.

Ralph Escamillan 01:33 and new offices, and also close to where I used to grew up. I actually grew up in downtown Vancouver. I went to school at Lord Roberts Elementary and came to secondary, grew up in Chinatown. So this is, I'm a Vancouver kid, for real.

Gabrielle Martin 01:47 urban experience. Yes, yes, yeah. OK, so yeah, we're just going to dive right into it. 2018 Push co -commissioned, or maybe it started earlier, you can let us know, Push co -commissioned Hinky Punk, which is a work by you through the company Fake Knot.

Gabrielle Martin 02:05 And then it was presented as part of Club Push that year in 2018. And I had the privilege of seeing it in 2021 at the Vancouver International Dance Festival. You saw the report? That's what we met. You saw it in person.

Ralph Escamillan 02:18 right you saw the little small because he did it online right he got you came in okay

Gabrielle Martin 02:30 Okay, so just take us back to the beginning of your relationship with push shredded it start have the conversation start

Ralph Escamillan 02:35 with this work specifically with HIKI PONK, correct? Or just like, what do you want to do?

Gabrielle Martin 02:39 come to know the festival and then yeah and then how did the conversation start around commissioning hinki fun

Ralph Escamillan 02:46 Yeah, truthfully, I feel like my relationship to Push when I was younger was actually quite nebulous. I was still really learning, even until my first performance with Push, I was like, what was it? Because my training didn't come entirely from contemporary or ballet first, and like that kind of dance, kind of making world, and it was more street.

Ralph Escamillan 03:08 But I think one of the first shows I saw might be, I think it was Hiroki Omeda.

Gabrielle Martin 03:14 Oh, yeah.

Ralph Escamillan 03:15 During Push, that was in maybe 2017, maybe, or even earlier. I remember that show, I think, was such a great introduction to the festival in that it was this really groundbreaking performance work and that embodied the values that Push has till today, I think, and like, in pushing.

Ralph Escamillan 03:40 You know, where performance can be and live and that show really, I think, transfixed to me even now and actually, I think, did penetrate into that first work in some capacity. And yeah, that was, I guess, my introduction.

Ralph Escamillan 03:56 And then learning more about it and seeing the breadth of programming, I think it's really exciting to think that it's still here, it's still in the city, and how much work that takes to maintain something as a behemoth as Push.

Gabrielle Martin 04:15 And we'll talk about that a little bit later, like your work with Vancouver Vogue Jam because you're, Van Vogue Jam, Van Vogue Jam, because you are artistic director of multiple companies, so you have a sense of that and, you know, but today we're gonna focus a little bit more on the fake not work.

Gabrielle Martin 04:29 So, did you approach Push with that project or did Push approach you?

Ralph Escamillan 04:33 Yeah, so how it worked, how Higgipunk worked originally was a commission for the Vancouver Art Gallery Fuse that happened, I believe, in 2016, around 2016 -2017. And they were doing like a kind of retrospective of queer art making, and Paris's Burning was one of the documentaries they featured during that, and Joy Cesario was actually the guest curator for the programming that time.

Ralph Escamillan 05:02 And she knew I was kind of into voguing, into ballroom, and commissioned me to make something in response to Paris's Burning, which is easy because it's like it's just make something about ballroom. And I had, like the initial thought, because I was so new to ballroom still that time, was like my experience of battling, of being a walker, being in competition, and me and the sound composers I was working with at the time,

Ralph Escamillan 05:33 we were both really heavily entrenched in this ballroom thing. And we wanted to build this solo that kind of showed the inner workings, or the thought process, and the fear, and the grandeur, and the extremes.

Ralph Escamillan 05:51 And doing it in the gallery, when it transposed into the gallery, we actually ended up performing with all the Andy Warhol prints. Originally the rotunda was the thought, but a way for us to get the audience enveloped into the work is also a quadraphonic soundscape.

Ralph Escamillan 06:11 And the rotunda made it really hard to do a quadraphonic sound, because it's beautiful, but sonically it's really hard to control. So we wanted just a room, and we ended up working on a 4x4 plinth, which became, actually moved forward into the premiere of the work as a way to really specify the performative space, but also elevate the performer to transform them into an iconic image, or a structure,

Ralph Escamillan 06:41 and visually, from an audience perspective, put them lower to the character.

Gabrielle Martin 06:47 Could you just talk a little bit more about, yeah, just continuing on this stream of thought? What is the word? What is in Kefunk?

Ralph Escamillan 06:55 Yeah, Hankypunk, from that point on after, as we got time to develop it and research it to like my first grant that we got, leading up to the push, the club push shows, we leaned into the iconography of, of like what that is found in queer culture.

Ralph Escamillan 07:12 These images are these like superhuman characters that exist that kind of define a lot of queerness. How we communicate in queerness is like, is through these icons, through these names, through these, these brands of people.

Ralph Escamillan 07:30 Yeah, so the solo really became this idea of embodying these hyper mask and hyper feminine figures found in the media. And I think someone, and it being a solo, and my fluidity in my own gender, I think really lends itself to that transformation within like the hour of time, and working with restriction to, which is something that I carry on in my work now is like, how, and which I think is an extension of being a queer person of color,

Ralph Escamillan 08:04 feeling the boundaries that you're able to take up. But also making use of that and what does that mean to not seeing it as like a negative, but also more like acknowledging the parameters and what can you do with them.

Ralph Escamillan 08:21 I find that like the four by four cube, we really exhausted the capacity of what that cube could do.

Gabrielle Martin 08:28 And I really appreciate having seen Paris as burning this, at least the seed of it being in response to that, and I think that that's really important, that framing, and literal framing, and then a reference to the social parameters, specifically for queer folks of color.

Ralph Escamillan 08:50 And then the introduction of some video, new media design, projection design with Schmerich was really exciting because I wanted to incorporate more images into the work that I couldn't do just with the body.

Ralph Escamillan 09:04 Not saying that the body can't do that, but at that time I was really ambitious and I wanted projection, I wanted a hologram. And we ended up buying this like crazy like pepper scram from like Belgium or something that, and then I got this set design made by Underground Circuit.

Ralph Escamillan 09:23 Wait, Underground Circuit is Peter. So I was kind of leaning into like some circuit stuff. All of this work, like this piece came at the end of my graduation of coming from Out of Modus. So I had a lot of like big ideas and I look at the piece now and like it's beautiful.

Ralph Escamillan 09:41 It's really crazy that we did so much. It's insane.

Gabrielle Martin 09:45 Incredible like debut. I mean, I know that you've been performing before but would you say that this is kind of like your Dave you choreographic work Yes, I would say yeah

Ralph Escamillan 09:53 Yeah, for sure. This was the debut of the work I did with Fake Knot, and it foreshadowed the work that I do now, I think, still, and it was really an accumulation of all these ideas and all these experiences I've already had as a performing artist, as working with other people, but also my aspirations of where I think performance can transform into.

Ralph Escamillan 10:14 I'm learning now that I'm like, wow, that was so ambitious to also do it at the Fox, because this wasn't even a main stage show in a way. This is really meant to be, because Club Push historically has been this like, oh, it's a show.

Ralph Escamillan 10:27 Just come in and do your thing. Of course, with varying degrees, but...

Gabrielle Martin 10:33 because it's a bar.

Ralph Escamillan 10:35 So after there's all the like the bigger shows too like later in the evening and That I really took the opportunity of like getting extra grant funding on top of that to build this like pretty big show in a way Was pretty wild and I think even Joyce I remember was like surprised It was like so I didn't think you were gonna do all that And I think that's always like my hope is like you almost like surpass the expectation.

Ralph Escamillan 11:00 Yeah And like and it was genuine is really of interest and I think early on to this idea of costume played a role because I love the color blue and the blue sequin costume became the motif of the whole work and I worked with like a costumer and local customer at the time and say I want these sequins and But we couldn't afford like all the beautiful finishing So like the inside of the costume like like sharp sequins like I have a scar and it's first week years performing this piece just from like the sequins and I know but it was so beautiful and like and then also the ability this what sequins are able to do in the history of sequins But with glamour and like pomp and and like camp just lent itself Additionally to the concept of the work and then also how we use light to transform it to just like basic LED colors like you can change the blue like it just shifts so much and Yeah,

Ralph Escamillan 11:53 it was this idea like how do you pull that one thread? Like how do we keep pulling pulling pulling from that one idea of iconography of the image? Yeah, I'm still super excited and proud of it And I don't think if I were ever to redo it now it would I would want to remount it in someone else Because it's such a hard work

Gabrielle Martin 12:14 Um, an hour solo

Ralph Escamillan 12:16 So on a little cube, on a four foot high, four foot cube. It's pretty insane. Like it's like.

Gabrielle Martin 12:22 Your face is covered.

Ralph Escamillan 12:23 covered all the motifs are still in my work now it's like it's funny it just transformed

Gabrielle Martin 12:29 That's what I was going to ask you about. So that was 2018. We, I mean, it was a little sneak peek, but we are collaborating with Dan Vogue Jam, where Push is going to co -produce the winning ball for 2025 Push, which we're very excited about.

Gabrielle Martin 12:43 And so, but also, you know, you've continued to create work with Bake Not. You have a curatorial practice. Can you just talk about that moment with Hinky Punk, premiering it at the Fox Cabaret to now, where, how your artistic practices go?

Ralph Escamillan 12:59 Yeah. What's exciting, I mean, what's cool is like tracking that time too with Push, with like, with HinkyPunk, was that's when I started teaching classes in the city, the free buy donation. That's kind of when DBJ started, it's 2017, 2017 -ish.

Ralph Escamillan 13:13 And we, in tandem with the classes, the community also has grown so much since that time. And for me, one way that I've articulated, at least through the funding bodies, and people that don't really understand what ballroom is, is that in my kind of practice of wanting to show the value of ballroom culture in other artistic spaces, is that like, it has its own codes, it has its own forms of curation and artistic practice that parallel,

Ralph Escamillan 13:47 if not even go over a lot of the Eurocentric art practices that we know today. And in the idea of how its way of making is not only individual, but it truly is like a community practice, which I think is a really, especially at a time now where I think a lot of people are longing connection and forms of community.

Ralph Escamillan 14:16 I'm really inspired and happy to be a part of a community that is actually community -based first, focus first, but because of that, the art that comes out of it through the balls and what's put on the runway is just so much more invested in every way.

Ralph Escamillan 14:37 There's so much care and wanting to constructively one -up themselves and one -up each other, which I think it's like...

Gabrielle Martin 14:48 Do you find that to be true across ballroom, in ballroom culture, nationally, internationally? Do you tour internationally with this work and with this practice? Or would you say that's particular to Vancouver?

Ralph Escamillan 15:03 I think it's ingrained in the ballroom culture in general, right? Because I guess the history of ballroom, of course, is coming from the Black, Latinx, the trans -queer communities of Harlem, and the ballroom, these balls are a space for people to really explore and become things that they're not allowed to yet in society.

Ralph Escamillan 15:23 And what I think is exciting is that now that tool of the faking is becoming realized. These people that are dressing up to look like executive realness are actually CEOs of huge companies, or people that are making best -dressed garments, or are actually designing for celebrities now, like the transition, and that social shift, and that tool that you learn about, I think the most important skill you come out of ballroom is,

Ralph Escamillan 15:55 how do you find your place in society and understand it to a point where you transcend what it can be? And in ballroom, it's like finding your category. How can you find your category, make moments in it, and transcend it, and push it forward, which I think is so cool and exciting, and it creates a sense of past -present.

Ralph Escamillan 16:20 We have to acknowledge the past, too, and we honor that through shouting them out through being inspired by them bringing them forward. There's all this intergenerational knowledge that is shared, because our experiences and how we exchange in ballroom is through the balls, is through showing what we put on the floor.

Ralph Escamillan 16:38 That's how we shout out. And it's through participating. It's not just writing or building within your own practice. It's like you have to put it forward in order for it to be remembered, to be physicalized, to be valued.

Ralph Escamillan 16:56 This idea of being seen becomes so important.

Gabrielle Martin 17:00 And it seems like the creative process is often also done in community and collaboration. I mean, I know traditionally in contemporary dance practice, like there's a lot of choreographers who are working in their studio by themselves, but my sense, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that there's a lot of ideas being workshopped in the collective.

Ralph Escamillan 17:23 Yeah, collectively, but all the time. And what I was saying recently, we just had a ball in the city recently, and I feel like, and it's a similar in street dance, the work is a continual one. So every time you walk on a ball, you're adding to your story, you're adding to your narrative.

Ralph Escamillan 17:42 And so people will remember what you did the ball before, the ball before that, and if you're able to build that storyline, like the idea of it is a continuing it, and how do you continue to build upon it.

Ralph Escamillan 17:53 And so it's almost like a continuous work. Like, so it's not just like a piece, every ball is like a piece, but your whole career in ballroom is a performance. It's a whole performance, which has been really cool to be able to encapsulate.

Gabrielle Martin 18:09 And would you say that also for your work with Fake Knot, that there are themes that you're exploring through every piece? Also, you're speaking about community and you've been really central in establishing this ballroom community in Vancouver, or at least facilitating it.

Gabrielle Martin 18:25 Does that community ethos, communal ethos, ethos of collectivity, does that also translate into your work with Fake Knot?

Ralph Escamillan 18:35 Yeah, wholeheartedly, yes, I think. More so now, I think I'm understanding it more now. Because I thought that they had to be separate. Because I don't see that want of... I think there's efforts of people wanting to build community and contemporary practice in the contemporary community, but it just hits a wall, because how esoteric contemporary practice can be.

Ralph Escamillan 18:56 And it's like, I don't know, girl. But I'm just like, oh, actually, it's not about just the practice, but it's also the environments we make for people to be together, which I think I'm learning is actually community.

Ralph Escamillan 19:10 To me, it's not just about the sharing practice. So even, say for P &Y, my most recent work I did with Pineapple Fiber, building, having the fiesta piece in the beginning of the show, and having exhibits and webinar, auxiliary programming as ways to connect to the work, I feel like we found a little small community through there.

Ralph Escamillan 19:31 And that was maybe a starting point of, oh, how can I involve, not just community, but also the educational piece into the practice, into my work. And I feel with my newer work, which is about ballroom as well, My House, which is very, very new, which is kind of like a coming back to ballroom through Fake Knot, and almost like an extension of the work that we did with Hinky Punk, actually, I would say.

Ralph Escamillan 19:57 I'm really questioning, how do we bring ballroom community into practice? And I think I'm proposing is like, including it opening the doors for rehearsal from the beginning of the process. And what does that mean to have an open door kind of policy for people from the community to come observe and watch and learn and or question and have dialogue?

Ralph Escamillan 20:22 Because for me, bringing ballroom into on the stage, and maybe any forms that aren't meant to be on there, or weren't originally made to be on stage, what does it mean to bring our culture there? What does it mean to bring our community there?

Ralph Escamillan 20:35 And also understanding that it's gonna be, it's different. We can't just put a ball on a stage. Like, when we're with Push, that's not what we're gonna be doing. What's happening is like, Push is supporting the ability of putting a ball together.

Ralph Escamillan 20:49 It's like, the ball is in a piece, is what I'm trying to explain. And I think which is a very, it's a hard, I guess I'm learning from some artists and presenters in the country. Like, there is this like, not inability, but it's hard to understand what a ball is because the way we see work is like fixed in some sense.

Ralph Escamillan 21:15 I feel there's a fixedness. Whereas ballroom is so like random and like gorilla -like. And it is actually steeped with so much other threads that connect to it, politically and, I mean, politically, even within the scene, like politically and, but yeah, sorry, tangent.

Gabrielle Martin 21:37 Yeah, no, I mean I think that that is something that Push has valued from early days, you know, work that is not necessarily conventional piece there. And there are a lot of sit -downs, theater works, but like I think fundamentally there's an interest and an excitement to Push form, to play with form, and to honor like different types of artistic experience within the festival.

Ralph Escamillan 22:06 What I would add, though, maybe just to lean into what does make it curatorial, like what makes a ball a curatorial place is, I guess, whenever anyone's putting a ball together, there's always a theme or a concept or an idea, and all the different categories have different effects or costume proposals that are really prompts for people that are walking to explore.

Ralph Escamillan 22:33 So I think there's curation in that practice. There's also curation in the panel, the judges that you bring in, and also curation in the programming that's surrounding it. So the workshop series that surrounds it, or like a potluck or like a barbecue, you know, like they're, and so that's how I've been framing what curation means to me in context of ballroom and which I'm excited to explore with a push,

Ralph Escamillan 22:58 like how does that, how does it change when we have a festival that has this reputation of pushing, you know.

Gabrielle Martin 23:06 Stay tuned. Stay tuned. And so, you have this artistic practice in ballroom. What does fake knots serve you? Or how does it serve you in regard to what your artistic needs are? Why create work outside of the context of ballroom?

Ralph Escamillan 23:31 Oh my gosh. It's interesting, I think, so originally Fake Knot really was, I want to find a moniker for my work where it wasn't my name first, it wasn't about the Ralph. I mean ironically all work is about autobiographical, so it's like I didn't know that until I guess later after.

Ralph Escamillan 23:53 So yeah, I guess I can't really take the work away from the person who makes it, but I think for me it still becomes a container for the multiplicity of ideas that I have that transcend not just ballroom but also like contemporary ideas and what I'm learning though is like BBJ and Fake Knot, like they are, like they have this like interesting relationship like that can overlap and like cross through,

Ralph Escamillan 24:22 but I like being able to delineate my practice into two separate kind of world, I mean many, many, many hats and I feel it helps me create boundaries for a creative process, but they definitely feed into each other and I think what I'm learning with Fake Knot is that at this moment it's been a container to explore like textile and fabric and clothing as ways to create choreographic narrative and I don't think I yet,

Ralph Escamillan 24:53 I understand how that overlaps with my ballroom persona, but I'm still interested in seeing how I can contain it on a staged space and I also understand the value of me taking up those kind of spaces still through Fake Knot.

Ralph Escamillan 25:11 So yeah, maybe there's a world where they'll like become one. No, they don't need to, I like thank you for sharing.

Gabrielle Martin 25:18 And so, we're very honored that the Van Woon Jam has honored us with the opportunity to present the Winter Ball with you, because it is going to be an iconic moment, I think, within the history of the festival, and it's our 20th anniversary, and it's a special festival.

Gabrielle Martin 25:36 And so, yeah, I'm wondering if you could reflect on why you're interested in that partnership. What is the cultural context of push in your eyes, and the significance of push, either within the city, or with regard to the work that you're doing?

Ralph Escamillan 25:51 Well, for me, I think what's exciting about Push is one, the audience that it brings. And I think it has a cult following of people that want to see weird and new stuff. And I feel like even though we've been doing ballroom in this city for the last eight years now, people still don't know about ballroom.

Ralph Escamillan 26:17 And I'm hoping that this ball with Push becomes an opportunity for people to learn more about what ballroom is, more than just the Vogue Madonna video or Paris is Burning or what we see in mass media, but actually see the complexities and the value of it.

Ralph Escamillan 26:35 And I think aligning it with Push gives that opportunity. And it also takes up some space that I think Push is wanting to offer, and it's part of the ship that Push is wanting to see, I think, is how do we include these communities that are already making art somewhere else.

Ralph Escamillan 26:54 It's really just like, here's the space to do it. Here's the resources to do it, which I think is the conversation we want when it comes to forms of reconciliation and also forms of building trust back to these communities that maybe would never watch a Push show because they never thought that they were allowed to or they knew what to expect.

Ralph Escamillan 27:14 So for me, I think my whole practice that transcends everything that I do is really like, how can I continue building bridges between the different artistic worlds and not just Vancouver, but within the country and hopefully further out into the world?

Ralph Escamillan 27:31 Because I think once we value more of each other's practices, the stronger a community we can become, and the more informed we can be, and excited, and passionate, and supportive. So I think that's what I've noticed in my whole career and still now is this like, it's like closing off.

Ralph Escamillan 27:57 And I think a lot of it closes off because people are afraid. People are scared. But I really offer people to go outside, just go outside and see what's out there in the world and be curious, not just like in your own practice, but in other people's practices with respect, with respect.

Ralph Escamillan 28:19 And find those connections. So I think those connections, at least for me as someone who does like wonderful Manko now, finding all these new connections, it's so inspiring and excites me and keeps me passionate and keeps me wanting to learn more about my body and what dance means to me and why I even perform.

Ralph Escamillan 28:38 It keeps me pumped. So I hope to share that with other people, that there is value in putting yourself in a place of risk or challenge.

Gabrielle Martin 28:50 I love hearing you speak about this because that speaks to me and what I feel excited about with regard to push and the space it occupies and what it can be possible with regard to just creating a sense of impossibility, challenging our assumptions of challenging how we see the world and therefore also how we understand ourselves with the world, whether it's as individuals, as artists.

Gabrielle Martin 29:21 Thanks so much, Ralph. I'm so excited for 2025 and beyond.

Ralph Escamillan 29:26 No, it's not that far away.

Ben Charland 29:31 That was a special episode of Push Play, in honor of our 20th Push International Performing Arts Festival, which will run from January 23rd to February 9th, 2025. Push Play is produced by myself, Ben Charland, and Tricia Knowles.

Ben Charland 29:48 A new episode of our 20th Festival series with Gabriel Martin will be released every Tuesday, wherever you get your podcasts. To stay up to date on Push 20 and the 2025 Festival, visit pushfestival .ca and follow us on social media at Push Festival.

Ben Charland 30:24 And if you've enjoyed this video, please like, comment and subscribe!