Oh how good it is to be back in the theatre seeing dance in all its glory! Happy Friday!

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!

October 21, 22 and 23, DanceHouse is thrilled to offer live dance once again with powerhouse Canadian company RUBBERBAND! In Ever So Slightly, choreographer Victor Quijada marshals the forces of ten extraordinary performers and live music from composer/DJ Jasper Gahunia and violinist William Lamoureux to take apart the mechanisms of compliance and control with surgical precision.

Taking cues from the score, the performers move through a series of chain reactions, mixing combustible elements of capoeira and b-boy style. Quijada works in collaborative fashion with the dancers, allowing for both organic eruption and more intimate interactions. One moment, they are inmates in an asylum, the next, street dance warriors in boiler-suited conformity. As the dystopic contests of aggression and violence ramp up, jumpsuits become shrouds, blinding the collective to each other. The potential for genuine atrocity hangs in the air.

But all is not lost. Stripped to its bare essence, Ever So Slightly’s febrile tendrils of stubborn compassion persist, offering a path towards genuine resistance and liberation. At the Vancouver Playhouse, 8pm. Tix

Many of us have been enjoying watching some fantastic international dance in the comfort of our living rooms, perhaps with a glass of wine and a couple of friends! You can still do that until October 11, with the Digidance streaming of Companhia de Dança Deborah Colker in Dog Without Feathers (Cão Sem Plumas). Based on the poem Cão Sem Plumas (“dog without feathers”) by Brazilian writer João Cabral de  Melo Neto and enhanced by the striking images of filmmaker Cláudio  Assis, this show portrays on stage the course of the Capibaribe River, where the natural habitat and the local population are threatened. Performed by 14 dancers of astonishing physicality, the choreography interweaves classical, contemporary, popular and ritual dances, set against black and white projections captured during a journey where the dance company immersed itself in the world of the Capibaribe, its mangroves and its inhabitants. Tix

Friday – Saturday October 15-16, Co.ERASGA presents Offering, a collection of solo works, performed by seven of Vancouver’s finest and diverse dancers, aspires to honour the living practice of dance and dancing and the challenges of keeping this art-form alive during the ongoing pandemic crisis and isolation. Choreographed by Alvin Erasga Tolentino, the works are performed by dancers Joshua Ongcol, Olivia Shaffer, Marc Arboleda, Antonio Somera, Alison Denham, Marissa Wong, and Tolentino himself. At the Anvil Centre Theatre, New Westminster. Fri and Sat 8 pm, Sun 2pm. Tix