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!
February 17 – 23 (online, link available for 7 days.) We know that February still seems a long way off, but don’t miss out on tickets for the DanceHouse presentation of the online Canadian premiere of Body and Soul, choreographed by Vancouver’s own Crystal Pite, and performed by the Paris Opera Ballet. Check out a preview here.
A work in three distinct parts, Body and Soul articulates Pite’s ongoing fascination with conflict, connectedness and the embodiment of the human spirit. The performance begins with voice-over text that describes, in purely physical terms, a scene of conflict between two individuals.
As the performance progresses, the script’s meaning morphs and deepens with each iteration: conflict creates a vital, compelling tension between individuals, between groups, between species. The company’s mastery as an ensemble is evident in Pite’s complex choreographic swarms; individual dancers are virtuosic in breathtaking solos and duets. The dancers evoke scenes of epic protest, profound personal struggle, and collective survival. Body and Soul is a portrait of the human condition that is timeless, vast and heartbreakingly intimate.
And in order to learn more about the creative process that led to the making of the work, before the performance, listen to the 15-minute pre-recorded exclusive interview with Crystal Pite and the Kidd Pivot creative team, all of whom contributed artistically to the creation of Body and Soul: Owen Belton (Composer), Eric Beauchesne (Assistant to the Choreographer), Nancy Bryant (Costume Designer), Jay Gower Taylor (Set Designer), Jermaine Spivey (Assistant to the Choreographer) and Tom Visser (Lighting Designer). Tickets
January 25 – February 1 (online) Join Shay Kuebler and Danny Nielsen in a Dance Centre studio showing of Figure Eights, highlighting the classic performing arts format of the duet. The work looks to reference the influence and impact of the past, seeing that this history is rooted in us and how we can move forward today. Figure Eights continues a 6-year history of collaboration between tap artist Danny Nielsen and contemporary artist Shay Kuebler, which continues to explore the connection and integration of percussive and non-percussive dance forms. The two artists bring forward their diverse interests in music, comedy, theatre and dance to find a classic form of entertainment with a unique contemporary voice. Shay and Danny will share work in progress and talk about their research. Tickets are on a sliding scale.
January 28 and 29 (online), join Vanessa Goodman and Caroline Shaw in Graveyards and Gardens, where the two artists construct an entire album before your eyes in this live-streamed experiential performance, which features a fusion of dance and music so unique as to be revelatory. With this work, Goodman and Shaw offer many pleasures, but two are of special note. Firstly, there is the chance to see a visual and sonic album emerge before one’s eyes: what these two artists make will live on, and this live-streamed genesis is, among other things, a powerful display of the creative process. The second pleasure is a unique, revelatory melding of movement and sound. In Graveyards and Gardens, what is heard and what is seen do not merely complement each other, as they might in a more conventional dance performance; instead, they are fused in such a way as to make their effects seem indistinguishable. Tix
Thursday January 28, 1pm (online) the Vancouver Art Gallery presents Art Connects | Performance: Justine A. Chambers. Semi-precious: semaphore is a new iteration of Chambers’ ongoing work-in-progress titled Semi-precious. The project considers the possibilities of the multiple and the potential to build upon collective aspirations through reiterated actions. Developed in collaboration with fourth-year students of Ryerson University’s dance program, the performance will consider wider questions of how we can develop frameworks, or inhabit already existing structures and systems, that allow for our collective desires to unfold. A discussion with Chambers will take place after the performance. Register here
February 2-6 (Durational livestream) February 5, 2 pm (Performance livestream), join Erika Mitsuhashi in Making it up: The meeting. Where are the dances right now and how do these dances want to behave/exist/interface in a digital plane? Mitsuhashi asks these questions through an experimental livestream experience, Making It Up: The Meeting. Playfully using a livestream video feed and DIY-sonography, Erika reveals an imaginative microcosm: a world built in isolation, where a sacred meeting ensues between a cosmic vibrant-being and their assigned flesh-being on Earth. This is complemented by Being(s) in plain site, a collection of visual and text-based reflections – part-photo essay, part-blog. Read the blog here and watch the performance here. Livestreams presented as part of PushOFF 2021: Speculative Futures.
Sunday February 7, 3.30-5.30pm (online) join an experimental conversation series facilitated by P. Megan Andrews, with guest conversationalists Jeanette Kotowich, Kevin Fraser and Pam Tzeng. #3: re/engaging differently: considering our ethics of practice in creative process and performance (reconvened). How are you practicing? What are the forces and relations that activate your practice? What frames reveal or conceal your work? How are you engaging your ethics of practice with respect to current contexts? How do these shifting contexts both collapse and expand possibility for your work? As part of her disorientation project, Dance Centre Associate Artist and scholar P. Megan Andrews invites participants to a series of experimental conversations to explore these questions in relation to various themes together with invited guests. Listen and/or contribute as you choose. To register
Tuesday, Feb 9, 7:00pm (online, free) the Rotary Centre for the Arts (Kelowna) presents Body Parts Online Circle Discussion & Performance with Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg. Circle Discussion: A small group of local female-identifying and non-binary people are invited to gather online and/or physically distanced to talk, listen, share our experiences around body image. This discussion is an opportunity to witness and reflect on our lived experiences common and unique. Performance: Body Parts is a solo performance by veteran artist Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg in which she tries to perform her show but gets comically sidetracked by her own body issues and the absurdity of performing virtually. Something has gone terribly wrong! Part stand-up comedy, part Greek tragedy, part performance art, part contemporary dance, this solo is the result of the ever-changing nature of creating art during a global pandemic and our inability to talk about our bodies. To register
