Welcome to the Friday Round-Up, a place for the Vancouver community of dancers and dance lovers to come together and share what is going on in the local dance community. In this new world in which we find ourselves, it is now more important than ever to find ways to connect and share all the many new and innovative ways in which we create, communicate and relate in the world of dance. So if you have something you would like to share with the Friday Round-Up, please send it to debora@dancehouse.ca. We look forward to hearing from you!
December 3 to December 17 (online), two generations of Canadian contemporary dance artists come together in a program of vibrant solo works helmed by Mary-Louise Albert, titled Solo Dances/Past into Present. Albert has revived three solos she commissioned from leading Canadian choreographers, for a new generation of outstanding female performers. Joyful, yearning, vivacious, and dramatic, these eclectic, beautifully crafted solos encompass a world of emotions. Albert herself returns to the stage at the age of 65 for the premiere of phase one of a new solo work commissioned from Serge Bennathan. Ticket buyers will receive a link via email, and may watch at any time between December 3-17. For more info and to buy tickets
Beginning December 6, Raven Spirit Dance is offering an online Indigenous Ground Dance Training Intensive. These 5 unique master classes focus on Indigenous creative process, choreography, and grounding artistic expression in traditional/contemporary Indigenous dance forms. Creative processes will be instigated; methodology and dance technique will be shared. It is an opportunity to engage through movement and inspiration, to arrive deep into our own bodies and our lands, and to share this across the world. The intensive will be led by a faculty of experienced artists from across the Pacific Ocean (Australia and Aotearoa) and Turtle Island. For more information and to register.
Premiering Tuesday December 8, 5pm, Virginia Duivenvoorden | VD/CM Productions presents Hearts of Cloth. The work follows an artist’s journey from confinement through chaos to calm. The process takes dance and art that was created at home during the pandemic, inside the (Covid) safe shelter of the studio and theatre. The resulting digital performance incorporates an emergent process of experimentation with video and art installation. FREE online here
Until Thursday December 10 (online), Fujima Sayū – Artistic Director of Vancouver’s TomoeArts – joins forces with Nishikawa Kayo, Artistic Director of Burnaby’s Satsuki-kai, and dancers from both companies for an illuminating online presentation of nihon buyoh, or Japanese classical and traditional dance. Ranging from theatrical kabuki to joyful folk-derived pieces and shin-buyoh or ‘new’ dances to popular music, they share some of the styles of nihon buyoh, its rich history and culture, and its distinctive tradition of training, with knowledge handed down from teacher to disciple.
Saturday, December 5, 5 to 7 pm PST (online), presented by TomoeArts, join Rosario Ancer, Margaret Grenier, Colleen Lanki, Lesley Telford and Sujit Vaidya in Redefining the Contemporary: a roundtable discussion about the traditional & contemporary in dance.
In Spring 2018, as one of her Artist-in-Residence activities at the Dance Centre, TomoeArts’ artistic director Colleen Lanki organized an in-camera discussion with an amazing group of artists. Each of these artists works in a form of dance that uses a specific physical language and has a lineage of transmission which marks that form as “traditional,” yet each artist creates “contemporary” performances incorporating those forms. The discussion was so rich, they decided they would expand it and share it with more people. The invitation to join the discussion is open to anyone connected to the performing arts : audiences, artists, educators, researchers, funders, critics, students, administrators. Some questions to be addressed include:
How is the “contemporary” expressed and perceived in a dance form normally labelled as “traditional” or “classical”? Can we expand those perceptions and if so how? Do we need new vocabulary for a different way to frame our work? How can curation and programming expand to include more dance forms (particularly those not immediately labelled “Western”or (big C) “Contemporary” dance? For more information and to register go here.
Many of us in Vancouver dance community (and beyond) know Kaija Pepper, so we are excited to announce the launch of her new book Falling into Flight: A Memoir of Life and Dance on Wednesday, December 9, 4 pm PST (online), with host Philip Szporer. Check out a great review of the book by CBC books here.
Between December 14 and 21, FakeKnot (Ralph Escamillan) invites you to their studio showing of whip, supported through The Dance Centre’s DanceLab interdisciplinary research program. whip is a duet performed entirely in leather hoods, leaving performers blind for the duration of the performance. Inspired by the virtuosic head-whip motion found in a multitude of dance forms, the duality of the leather being both soft/hard is revealed through the work. Bodies explore images of consent through a range of physical touch, with the support of interactive new media light and originally composed sound design. This online showing will share excerpts of work in progress and a conversation with the artists moderated by Lee Su-Feh. This is event is free, but registration is required
