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Last Wednesday, the Winnipeg Trails Association hosted a Plain Bicycle Pick-Up Party for their Plain Bicycle Project at the Forks. The project saw the arrival of 200 Dutch Omafiets or Grandma Bikes painstakingly sourced and transported from the Netherlands. Leigh Anne Parry, one of the leaders of the project, says, “We are really excited not just to see people get their bicycles, but to catch a glimpse of the future of transportation in Winnipeg. We just need the infrastructure on the big streets so we can go everywhere, have a conversation while riding bikes, and feel safe doing it, just like the Dutch. This vision is about recognizing how our environment impacts our individual collective sense of dignity.”

This past weekend a group of performers with disabilities took the stage at the Asper Centre for Theatre & Film as part of Lame Is… A Disability Cabaret.

The production was presented by Sick + Twisted Theatre with Debbie Patterson, one of the founders of Shakespeare in the Ruins and an artistic associate at the Prairie Theatre Exchange. Last year, Debbie played Richard in Shakespeare in the Ruins. It was the first time a professional Canadian production featured a disabled actor in that role. Debbie says, “There just aren’t enough disabled actors working in Canada. I want to do what I can to develop more more performers with disabilities.”

Each performer created their own vignette, receiving mentoring from a theatre professional.

Debbie says, “I didn’t want to make a show about how hard it is when you’re disabled and how people should feel sorry for us. The intention of this is to do a professional production that gives the audience an understanding of who they are through the exploration of who we are with our disabilities, to find the universal truths of the human condition that are most evident when you have to negotiate with your vulnerabilities on a daily basis. We use our disabilities as super powers that allow us to explore aspects of the human condition that most would rather recoil from or hide from.”

It’s late March and I’m easing down the steps to PLEASURE(S), the third underground show thrown by The Enemy. Midnight has yet to strike, and the party is still sparse. Young Zaire is DJing, one or two people are dancing for themselves, a few small groups are clustered near the walls, chatting, drinking, and smoking. I crouch with my back pressed against the cement wall and begin to pull out my camera gear. I can feel the room stiffen just a bit. Folks have come here to have a good time, they weren’t planning on being photographed.

But as the night progresses, that changes. I begin chatting with people, approaching them slowly with my camera raised and gaging their reaction. A breaking competition starts up, and people are making videos with their phones and cheering on the breakers. The atmosphere loosens and the pitch rises as the night rolls on. Now folks are flagging me down and mugging for the camera. Bottles of malt liquor are passed around the increasingly crowded room. Various performers take the stage, billed on the digital flyer as “Special Fucking Guests,” and the crowd pushes in close.

By the time I head out to meet a few friends, it’s nearing two and the party’s still going strong with a second breaking battle. I walk out into the cold night air, pushing through a small crowd chatting and smoking outside the doors. I continue down the sidewalk. “It was nice to meet you! Have a good night!” a few voices call after me.

A month later, I sit down to talk with The Enemy about the PLEASURE(S) parties.

Last Saturday's Androginie Ball was hosted by Prairie Sky & The Horrors of Lady Frances and Queer and Trans People of Colour (QTPOC) with involvement from Like That @ Sunshine House. Check QTPOC's website for more of their pride events, like the First Friday After Party at The Tallest Poppy and Ladies Night Black Party at Forth. LGBTQ* refugees can email QTPOC at qpoc204@gmail.com to be put on the guest list for free entry.

It’s seven o’clock in the evening on April 29th, and I’m photographing the third iteration of Zorya Arrow’s performance “This Disposition.”

Sixth months ago, Zorya performed the piece for the first time at the Rachel Browne Theatre as part of the Young Lungs Research Series. In the hour she performed, her partner, Scott Leroux, died suddenly, a fact she did not learn until a phone call from Scott’s sister interrupted the small after party she was throwing at her studio.

The events of that night shaped the evolution of the piece. Before Scott passed, Zorya had already lined up a residency in Vancouver, which would include a second performance of “This Disposition.” Now, that performance was scheduled on the three-month anniversary of Scott’s death.

Looking back, Zorya says of the Vancouver performance, “I thought I could just not go, because I felt like I couldn’t. Or I could go and see what I could do — not put pressure on myself.”

Tonight, Zorya’s performing “This Disposition” for the third time, and although a few elements from that first night at the Rachel Browne Theatre remain, tonight’s performance is quite different. For the first three hours, two videos play on loop in the small Poolside Gallery on the second floor of the ArtSpace building. The first is a series of short interviews with the people who were at the after party with Zorya the night she got the phone call. In the video, she starts by explaining that these interviews are a way of documenting that night as accurately as possible. 

Intercut with these conversations, Zorya records herself making the imitation ashes she’ll be using in her performance. Sitting on the floor of the home she shares with friends, she adds ingredients, comments on the texture and colour, mixes intently, and explains each step to the camera.

Crouched with my camera at Poolside, I watch people laugh as Zorya’s friend comments on how good the cheese was at the after party, cry as another friend recounts the sounds she overheard while Zorya was learning the news over the phone. A number of the audience members knew Scott well, and they console each other: sitting close, rubbing backs, holding hands. 

Shortly after ten, Zorya performs. She arranges the crowd along the perimeter of a square marked with tape on the floor. The room is cramped, and her mentor, D-Anne Kuby, has to help direct people to fill in the space. Then Zorya brings out her items for performance — a stationary bike, a cream-coloured slip, and two mason jars, containing the ashes she made in the preceding video. She lays down the slip and removes the red button-up she’s been wearing, spreading it out on the floor. Then she pours the imitation human remains into the shirt. She carries the jars away, takes off her shoes, puts on the slip and lays down in the centre of the square.

She begins a series of movements on the floor, speaks to us, to Scott, has a conversation almost with herself. She moves to the stationary bike, peddling slowly at first, singing Cher’s “Believe.” Her voice grows stronger, more determined, she pedals faster, whips her hair around, singing at the top of her lungs now.

As she slows the pedals on the bike, her friend Sarah brings her an orange, and Zorya begins to walk around the square, peeling the orange, eating some chunks and offering others to audience members. The orange eaten, its peel strewn in pieces across the floor, Zorya moves back to the ashes. She puts her feet in them, moves in them, steps away and flaps out the shirt, streaming the fine powder diagonally across the square. She slides her arms back into the shirt and buttons it up, then begins moving on the floor again, this time dancing in the ashes. 

Finally, she gets up, saying simply and almost with a shrug, “That’s it.”

The room has grown hot, the doors open, people mill about, eating the oranges set out at the entrance, hugging each other, laughing and chatting. I pack up my gear, pause to eat an orange, and ride my bike home, fingers still sticky with the juice of it.

A week later, I visit Zorya in her home to talk more about “This Disposition.”

Wandering through what feels like a maze of rooms, I make my way the basement of the Knox United Church on instruction from the building’s caretaker. Upon reaching the community kitchen, I’m greeted by a small flurry of Filipino women labouring over large trays of lumpia. They roll pats of ground pork into crepe paper casings, the deposit them into neat rows. Jess had some car trouble and she and Cora are running just a few minutes behind, so I wait next to a stack of chairs and tables in the kind of low-ceilinged banquet hall you find in the basement of just about every old church.

Jess and Cora arrive, just a little out of breath, and we exchange greetings. They lead me through to a back corner in the kitchen and begin pulling loaves from a paper bag sharpied with an Enneagram and the words “This is the life we've chosen.” Jess tells me it’s something they say to each other a lot, especially when things go wrong - say, when a car won’t start for example.