We hope you are staying warm this weekend – come in from the cold and check out some dance!

The ropes are barely down from the Circa show, and DanceHouse is preparing for our next presentation! February 23-25, experience Gregory Maqoma | Thuthuka Sibisi (South Africa) in Broken Chord, featuring the Vancouver Chamber Choir. From 1891-1893 a group of young African singers travelled by boat to Britain, Canada, and America. This ensemble of missionary-educated Black people, named The African Native Choir, were on a mission to raise funds for a technical school in Kimberley, South Africa. Inspired by photography from that tour and using traditional Xhosa and contemporary dance styles alongside atmospheric soundscapes, choreographer and performer Gregory Maqoma and musical director Thuthuka Sibisi weave together recorded personal accounts of the African Choir, revealing a drama of global dimensions. With a single dancer (Maqoma), four vocal soloists and an onstage a cappella chorus, Broken Chord not only reflects on an archive but triggers, critiques, and comments on urgent issues of migration, dispossession, borders, and paths of forced closure, raising important questions about the relationship between the colonized and the colonizer, and either’s complicity in shaping and shifting a South African narrative—past and present. “A work sung and danced, but above all felt, of how to relive experiences that do not belong to us and try to understand once more (and as many times as necessary) the other world, the other reality that we have in front of us.” – Bachtrack. At the Vancouver Playhouse, 8 pm. Tix

The PuSh Festival is now in full swing, and there is so much to see! You have until Saturday, January 28 to catch Juan Ignacio Tula and Marica Marinoni in LONTANO + INSTANTE. For these two dazzling shows, Juan Ignacio Tula and Marica Marinoni start with a simple concept: one human being plus a large aluminum ring called a Cyr wheel. In LONTANO, Marica spins the Cyr with her body while ducking and rising, twisting and pushing, moving in and out of the circular object. The sheer physical skill on display is a delight to witness, with the accompanying sound and light creating the feel of a sports bout: human versus object. INSTANTE has Juan spinning the Cyr as well, but this time the hula-like movements are less acrobatic and even more symbolic. Using paper cards and a sheet of foil, Juan enacts a dance of entropy, with perpetual motion and personal breakdown running in tandem. The result, as in Marica’s performance, is trancelike and meditative, yet also dynamic and thrilling. Check out a teaser of the works, and buy your tickets here. At the Scotiabank Dance Centre, 8 pm.

Also as part of the PuSh Festival, January 27 and 28 (and Jan 27-30 Online), why not check out Le Cri des Méduses, a dreamlike dance performance inspired by Géricault’s The Raft of Medusa, which depicts a jumble of intertwined bodies and has human desperation as its theme. Choreographer Alan Lake has taken the painting’s beauty and pathos and transposed it to the stage, adding his own brilliance. Nine dancers perform under an ever-shifting scenography–sometimes in pairs, sometimes individually, sometimes in a thick knot of muscle and limb that evokes Géricault’s vision. Lake’s production is entirely gestural and musical, and yet there is so much to reward our attention: there are portable wooden structures for the dancers to hang from, or against; there are, at times, sheets of translucent material that cloak undressed bodies; there are precise lighting changes, from single spotlights to fulsome illumination. The music has a dark throb and an ambient constancy, as well as intermittent percussion and string notes. Powerful, seductive and ultimately unclassifiable, Le cri des méduses is a triumph of the imagination. Find a teaser video and tickets here. At the Vancouver Playhouse, 7:30 pm

Left of PuSh is a platform for experiments-in-process by local and national artists, showing in and around the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival events. As PuSh’s unofficial “off festival”, LoP is intended to connect the hosted artists with the National and International delegation visiting Vancouver, in a relaxed setting. On Sunday January 29, check out Left of Push #1 with two works. In u go, i go, Hustle dancers Savage & Samuelle transpose their partner dance and street dance experience onto the stage. Under the guidance of mentor Deanna Peters/Mutable Subject, in the early phases of research, S&S discovers that proximity develops a current connecting bodies through resistance, creating a union with a mind of its own. In here we are: Something about working to find the middle and retracing steps. A dance by Avery Smith with Kate Franklin that tries to contain itself, but cracks open at the first chance. A dance that has lots of Kate and lots of Avery. At Left of Main, 4:30 – 5:30 pm, Pay What You Can. Foery Smithr more info and to buy tix.

On Monday, January 30 Left of Push #2 features Ileanna Cheladyn and Daisy Thompson. Holographic Heartbreak: Ileanna Cheladyn. An iridescent dancer. Tall, but not vertical. Sometimes vertical. Always slouching into the next. All posture and transformation. The angle of incidence affording perversion. Structures and surfaces of intimacy. A playlist of slow transmutations appearing. Footnotes: a work in process: Daisy Thompson. Footnotes is an entangled ball of motion, thought, and action, made up of varying threads. A group piece performed by one, it weaves together a collective of voices that make up the many spheres of Thompson’s PhD research which explores the notion of Kinesthetic Strike: a resistance dance that focuses on that what releases when we detach from a society that presents only fixed possibilities. At Left of Main, 4:30 – 5:30 pm, Pay What You Can. For more info and to buy tix.

 For dancers and teachers of dance, New Works is offering a series titled: Share Dance:In Practice Spring Conversation series. This is a series of deep dive conversations into the creative practice of teaching dance. Facilitated by a diverse group of artists and co-curated by Lisa Mariko Gelley and Carolina Bergonzoni, we look forward to gathering together – both virtually and in person – and diving into deep conversation around embodied leadership and teaching as practice. Dance teachers, and all dancing humans, are welcomed to join in. Please find more info on our website and register in advance. Registration is by donation. Conversations will take place in February, March, and April. We hope to see you there!