Take the Cake (2017)
In collaboration with Maxwell Stephens
Colour print on vinyl wall-covering, 24 LED wall-washer lights, 120 min. light choreography
Wall: 600cm high x 2000 cm long
12th story (the Beacon) of the Decidedly Jazz Danceworks Centre
Calgary, AB

Commissioned by Decidedly Jazz Danceworks, Take the Cake is a permanent public mural over 20 meters in length that fills the light-box crowning DJD’s new building in the heart of Calgary’s Beltline. The mural is a representation of dancers’ shadows rendered in bright colours. At night, these high chroma figures are animated by an accompanying multi-coloured LED light choreography, making it appear as though the figures are in movement, dancing across the top of the building.

The Cakewalk is an historical dance form and an early antecedent of jazz dance. It was invented in the 1850s by chattel slaves parodying the Minuet ball dance popular at parties of white plantation owners. In an original Cakewalk, dancers would parade in pairs in a grand march with an exaggerated grace that was often comedic – the couple judged to be the winners would “take the cake.” The Cakewalk contributed to the development of musical theatre, ragtime, jazz, and contemporary competitive dance forms like Breakdance, Voguing and Freestyle battles.

The imagery for Take the Cake was gathered by working with DJD’s Artistic Director Kimberley Cooper and the DJD dancers to create a contemporary Cakewalk. The dancers’ shadows – cast on the wall of the studio with multi-coloured lights— were filmed and translated into the silhouettes that have become the mural’s figures. These silhouettes are expressive bodies without labels, freed from their specific identifying traits like gender, race and class.

Take the Cake welcomes visitors to DJD by inviting them to consider the rich and diverse histories of movement forms, and echoes the activity of pedestrians at street level in a celebration of community and collaboration.


Documentation by Noel Bégin