Happy New Year and here’s to wonderful dance happenings in 2023!

DanceHouse’s offerings for their 2023 Anniversary Season – celebrating 15 years of bringing contemporary dance to Vancouver – will surely make these grey days a whole lot brighter! Starting off the year on January 17 – 21, in a co-presentation with The Cultch, Australian company Circa brings to Vancouver their poetically tender work, Sacre. In Sacre, Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, the wildly transgressive work that almost succeeded in burning down the theatre upon its premiere, erupts once more. There is a certain logic in the marriage of circus’ raw strength and Stravinsky’s brute ceremony. Rooted in ancient tradition, the circus arts are meant to both enthrall and terrify, but there is far more than simple spectacle here. Artistic Director Yaron Lifschitz gives the work a razored social edge that investigates the very nature of human experience. What does it mean to bear the weight of another body? What do we owe each other when poised on the brink of total disaster? Supported by ten acrobatic performers and Phillipe Bachman’s score, the dispossessed and the diabolical meet in a scrum of bodies, out of which emerges a ferocious new species of beauty. At its seething heart, Sacre combines carnality with ritual to manifest a cathartic union with the divine. Circa is at the forefront of the new wave of contemporary Australian circus – pioneering how extreme physicality can create powerful and moving performances. It continues to push the boundaries of the art form, blurring the lines between movement, dance, theatre and circus. Check out more info on Circa, and get your tickets here. At the Vancouver Playhouse, 8 pm

As we mentioned, DanceHouse has some fantastic programming this spring for the 2023 Anniversary Season! Following the presentations of Circa in January, in February South African Gregory Maqoma | Thuthuka Sibisi come to the Vancouver Playhouse, joined by the Vancouver Chamber Choir! March brings Bboyizm (Gatineau), and the season closes in May with another South African company, Dada Masilo! If you want to keep your seats warm, why not subscribe to all four shows – we look forward to seeing you there!

While we are on the theme of DanceHouse – amazing things for BC based emerging dancers: the Louise Bentall Award for Emerging British Columbia Choreographers! The Hawthorne Foundation and DanceHouse have joined forces to offer this $10,000 biennial Award to financially support an emerging choreographer to research, develop, or produce new work. The Award was created in memory of Louise Bentall, who passed away in 2017 and was a long serving board member of DanceHouse. Individual emerging dance artists working in all styles of dance, including collaborative and/or multidisciplinary projects, are encouraged to apply by March 15, 2023. This award is creating much excitement – check out this article in Stir, and another one in the Vancouver Sun. And for all the details on applying, please visit DanceHouse here.

January 9-29, Digidance presents Batsheva Dance Company’s (Israel) Ohad Naharin Hora – The Movie (Video-on-Demand streaming.) Hora – The Movie is Ohad Naharin’s second film. Just like in YAG – The Movie in 2020, Naharin once again transports choreography created for the stage through the lens of the camera, adapting it to create a new piece. The camera allows an intimate, tender and disturbing glimpse into a parallel universe. In this dark world, the dancers emerge from a black space to the timeless music of Isao Tomita, their bodies delineating a human-dance calligraphy, like a code that is constantly being written and erased. Naharin’s cinematic lab adds a new choreographic layer to the stage work – the movement of the camera through space. Actions carried out in the editing room like acceleration or deceleration, transitions and cuts, are given a central place and lead to the discovery and revelation of new creative expressions. Hora – The Movie is another opportunity to delve into the fascinating evolution of Naharin’s work in search of new ways to create and experience dance.  Tix

January 19-21,  in collaboration with the PuSh Festival, Dance Centre Global Connections presents Smail Kanouté/Compagnie Vivons! in Never Twenty One. Smail Kanouté is a French-Malian dancer, choreographer, filmmaker, visual artist and designer based in Paris. Echoing the hashtag #Never21 coined by the Black Lives Matter movement, Never Twenty One pays tribute to the young Black men who have been victims of gun violence in New York, Rio de Janeiro and Johannesburg – and will never reach the age of 21. Three powerful dancers – their torsos inscribed with testimonials from the victims’ families – recount the stories of broken lives, through ferociously intense movement which draws on krump, popping, contemporary dance, baile funk and pasinho. This is an urban requiem steeped in a shamanistic heritage, a subtle lamentation infused with energy, poetry and humanity. Watch a teaser of the work here. At the Scotiabank Dance Centre, 8 pm. There will be ASL interpretation and a post-show talkback at the January 21 performance. Tix

And for those of you that dance out there (don’t we all?), check out this Workshop: Hip-hop Freestyle with Salomon Mpondo-Dicka. Salomon Mpondo-Dicka aka Bidjé De Rosa was born in Toulouse, France. He has worked with Collectif (La) Horde / Arthur Harel, Cie Massala / Fouad Boussouf, Swaggers / Marion Motin or DC Vortex /Hugo “Yugson” Lumengo, and collaborates with visual artists and musicians. His work feeds on Krump, hip hop, house, and contemporary dance, and straddles the world of performing arts as well as battles and the underground. The workshop will start from the participants’ own techniques, practices and approaches to build the foundations for your own freestyle. Different aspects of freestyle hip-hop will be explored, through exercises and short basic choreographic phrases, both solo and in groups. Then, participants will experiment with how fluidity, dissociation and slowness break down into several forms to feed our vocabulary. Finally the workshop will focus on the assimilation of this new material to deliver a personal freestyle creation. For professional and emerging dancers working in all genres – hip-hop experience is not required. Saturday, January 20, 1 – 3 pm at the Scotiabank Dance Centre. Tix

Also as part of the PuSh Festival, on January 20 – 22, check out Coloured Swan 3: Harriets ReMix by Moya Michael (South Africa/Belgium). Michael’s fantastically creative opus blends music, contemporary dance, digital projection, audience interaction and wild vocal effects; the result is a futuristic meditation on time, politics and human history. Thematically, CS3 is just about as rich as can be; aesthetically, it has the variety and eye-catching flashiness of a splendid carnival. You could call the show a party for the mind–it dives to profound thematic depths with wild, hedonistic abandon. Things begin with flashing imagery, loop-y music and recorded speech. Three performers disentangle ropes and arrange them artistically, inviting audience members to participate and chat. The stage is the Mothership, and it’s traveling fast enough to collapse time, which introduces some vexing questions. Dance, darkness, glow-in-the-dark couture and a very special auction are still to come; by the show’s end, Michael and her team have tackled ethnicity, science, philosophy and much more. Check out a teaser of the work and read more about the artist here. At the Vancouver Orpheum, 7:30 and 2 pm – artist talk back on Saturday, January 21 7:30 pm Tix

Starting this Sunday, January 15 and continuing every Sunday through February 19, join Raven Spirit Dance and Nyla Carpentier in a Pow Wow Bootcamp! This class gives an introduction to the different styles of pow-wow dance and the basic steps of traditional, jingle & fancy. Both girls and boys styles will be emphasized. Veteran Pow Wow dancer with 30 years of experience, Nyla Carpentier, will guide participants through a 2-hour class. The start of the class will be a warm-up to prepare the feet for some Pow Wow dance action, followed by the Pow Wow cardio portion of the class and then a cool down with stretching. Basic steps and formations will be shown and the history and origins of dance styles will be discussed. To register