WHAT SHE HOLDS

WHAT SHE HOLDS

What She Holds gently explores my experiences and sensation of mothering young children: love, isolation, fear, brain fog, deep connection and deep fatigue, a shifting sense of self, an elastic sense of time, a desire for space. The movement research was developed in collaboration with Poet (and parent) Lindsay Zier-Vogel, whose words and reflections resonate within my body and in this work. A few of Lindsay’s poems, generated from our research together, are available to read on my website: kateholden.ca
Motherhood is not something that can be generalized and I don’t assume a universal experience of parenting. There are challenges and privilege both seen and unseen and I recognize my own privilege in my experience. My hope in sharing these images, is that you might think about parents, your own, yourself or strangers with a little curiosity and a little less assumption. These shades and colours of human experience are worth looking at.

KATE HOLDEN

Award winning dance artist, Kate Holden, has had the pleasure of interpreting the works of many esteemed Canadian choreographers, with performances across North America, France, Britain, Holland, and Singapore. She spent five seasons as a company member of Dancemakers under the direction of Michael Trent and was a dancer with the Danny Grossman Dance Company for two seasons. Kate spent many years working closely with mentor Peggy Baker and was Associate Artist with Peggy Baker Dance Projects from 2019 to 2023. Kate received her formal training at The School of Toronto Dance Theatre and spent many years in Tkaronto engaged in the dance community as an interpreter, rehearsal director, teacher, creator, and producer.
Kate’s practice as a dance artist is influenced by her work as a Craniosacral Therapist and Reflexologist and her curiosity for finding ease and pleasure in an expansive moving body. Kate lives in Mi’kma’ki/Nova Scotia where she plays, learns and works by the Pijinuiskaq (LaHave River).

JOSHUA VAN TASSEL

Joshua Van Tassel is a Juno and ECMA winning drummer, producer, and composer. He works and records with some of Canada’s best song writers such as Donovan Woods,Bahamas, Great Lake Swimmers, Rose Cousins, Serena Ryder, David Myles and many more. His compositions for Theatre and Dance include collaborations with Peggy Baker, Melanie Demers, Kate Holden, Throwdown Collective and Andrea Nann/Dreamwalker Dance, and has been recognized with multiple Dora Mavor Moore Nominations. He currently resides on the south shore of Nova Scotia where he operates Dream Date Studio, a creative space for recording, sound and VST design, and writing.

LINDSAY ZIER – VOGEL

Lindsay Zier-Vogel is a Toronto-based author, grant writer, educator and the founder of the internationally-acclaimed Love Lettering Project. After studying dance at the School of Toronto Dance Theatre, Lindsay received her BA in English and then her Masters in English and Creative Writing from the University of Toronto. She works with the dance community as a poetic dramaturge and script writer for Canadian choreographers, including Kate Holden, Heidi Strauss, Shannon Litzenberger, Yvonne Ng, Sylvie Bouchard, and Jessica Runge. Lindsay is the author of the acclaimed debut novel Letters to Amelia, and her first picture book, Dear Street was a Junior Library Guild pick, a Canadian Children’s Book Centre book of the year, and was nominated for a Forest of Reading Blue Spruce Award (Canada), and a Magnolia Book Award (Mississippi). Her second novel, The Fun Times Brigade is out in May 2025.

Selected Poetry by Lindsay Zier-Vogel
Developed during the research for “What She Holds”

A boulder

Her midwife told her to reach down
to touch her baby
and she did as she was told
because she was desperate to be good at this thing
she knew she was failing at.
She wanted a gold star,
she wanted to be told
she was doing everything right.

But it was hard,
too hard, this skull
that was a stone,
and she wished between contractions
that she had said no,
that she had not confirmed
that this was indeed impossible,
this impatient boulder
pretending to be a baby.

The hallway

The hallway is long in the middle of the night,
longer than it is in the afternoon
or in the morning
when the light falls from the window
in a rectangle, clear and bright.

In the middle of the night,
the hallway is forever,
time slipping over the floorboards
and sliding over the railing.

Time makes no sense in the hallway
in the middle of the night,
her limbs loose with sleep,
and the ache of milk draws
one foot in front of the other—
an exhausted tightrope.

How to avoid thinking about tomorrow

Have a baby with a fever
hot and asleep on your chest,
threatening to burn the house down.

Left right

She sways now
when she waits to cross the street,
when she is in line at the grocery store,
when she talks to her mom on the phone,
shifting left, right,
keeping the baby that is no longer
strapped to her chest,
asleep.

Knots

He knots his rage
in angry knuckles,
curling himself as tight as a fist
behind the stools in the kitchen,
under the dining room table,
in the corner of his room, under his desk,
making himself as small as he was
when he arrived,
before his limbs knew
how to take up space.

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