Tiotia:ke / Mooniyang / Montréal

Interdisciplinairy / Sound / Dance

English with French subtitles

webcast from June 12th-19th

Presented in the MAI gallery from April 19-22, 2023, Because You Never Asked will be available as a webcast from June 12th-19th, 2023.

Because You Never Asked is a dreamlike realm where historical fact meets auto-fictional storytelling in a multilayered, intergenerational experience. Based on discussions between musician, composer, and record producer Roger White and his grandmother, Marianna Clark (née Goldmann), about her experiences fleeing Nazi Germany and arriving in the UK as a refugee, the piece combines texts mined from diaries and letters that Marianna wrote in her late teens and early 20s with the recordings of her speaking in her 90s. The story unfolds simultaneously on two different timelines, merging past and present, to explore how memories are constructed and reconstructed over time. Because You Never Asked is an archive of complex family history. One that is innocently painful, naïvely complex, and beautifully tragic.

With Helen Simard’s choreography, performed by David Albert-Toth, Marie Lévêque, Brianna Lombardo, and Maxine Segalowitz.

Co-produced by MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels) and We All Fall Down Interdisciplinary Creations.