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!

Oh happy, happy days – so much LIVE dance to experience! Have a great week!

You still have time tonight and tomorrow, Friday and Saturday October 22 and 23, to catch Montreal based RUBBERBAND in their work titled 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. If this will be your first time back in the theatre since the shut-down, Ever So Slightly is a great place to start!

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.

And to make the evening even more enjoyable, join host Kaija Pepper in the Speaking of Dance Post-Show Talk (Friday night only). Check out more on the history of the company and the artists involved, and for tickets go here. At the Vancouver Playhouse, 8 pm.

If you are reading this early on Friday, October 22, at 3:30 pm today join Justine Chambers for an artist talk at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery. The Belkin is hosting a series of artist talks as part of the research cluster Ars Scientia and in conjunction with the exhibition “Drift: Art and Dark Matter”. Ars Scientia is a tripartite partnership between UBC’s Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute (SBQMI), the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Belkin that has sought to foster knowledge exchange across the arts, sciences and their pedagogies by pairing artists and scientists in a six-month residency to explore the potential for academic art-science collaborations. Artists Justine A. Chambers, Josephine Lee, Khan Lee and Kelly Lycan have been partnered with physicists Rysa Greenwood, Alannah Hallas, Daniel Korchinski, Kirk Madison, Sarah Morris and Luke Reynolds to identify areas of collaborative research in pursuit of both scientific and artistic aims, which will culminate in a symposium set to take place in November 2021 where collaborative findings will be shared. This event is FREE but space is limited. To ensure a spot for the in person event, please RSVP to belkin.rsvp@ubc.ca with your name, number attending, and event name. The talk will also be shared live on Facebook. For more info

This coming Sunday, October 24, join Co.Erasga Dance and New Works at VOICES of the DANCERS: A community arts dialogue and presentation event about work, process, resilience in the time of a pandemic, featuring the cast of Co.Erasga’s Offering. This conversation is an in-person continuation of the video series “Voices of the Dancers” which was filmed during the creation process of Offering in 2020, where dancers shared how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected and changed their artistic practice. You can view the video series here, and find more information about the event here. At the Roundhouse Community Centre, 3 pm. FREE!

Finally in-person again, EDAM presents its Fall Choreographic Series with new dance works by choreographers Peter Bingham, Kelly McInnes & Marissa Wong, opening on October 27, Come witness a beautiful bounty of performers as they collaborate and dance the visions of three Choreographers to life.

Peter Bingham continues to develop scored group improvisations directing performers Anne Cooper, Francesca Frewer, Hayley Gawthrop, Arash Khakpour, Alex Mah, Diego Romero, Olivia Shaffer and Antonio Somera Jr.

Gathering together dance artists who each have a unique somatic, therapeutic practice Kelly McInnes invites and directs an inquiry into unfolding expressions of health through embodied presence, felt-sense awareness and co-regulation. The resulting performance, experiment meets meditation, Arriving out of silence, is an improvised score created in collaboration with performers Natalie Tin Yin Gan, Josh Ongcol, Roxanne Nesbitt and outside eye Elissa Hanson.

Marissa Wong‘s new creation, Family Room, is a study on our family structures using home decor and furnishings to represent relationship, dynamic, and history between family members. This series of solos (in collaboration with artists Justin Calvadores, Stéphanie Cyr, Tamar Tabori, and Shana Wolfe) marks the first creation for Marissa as Artistic Director of The Falling Company. Check out the website for all the dates and to buy tickets. At EDAM studio, 303 East 8th Ave, 8 pm

On Thursday October 28, join the Dance Centre’s Discover Dance! series in a presentation by Arno Kamolika. Born in Dhaka, Bangladesh and trained in Bangladesh, India and Canada, choreographer and dancer Kamolika specializes in the classical Indian style of bharatanatyam. This beautiful and expressive form draws on poetry, music, mythology and spirituality, exploring stories and emotions through intricate movements and percussive rhythms. The program will feature narrative and non-narrative-based dances, ranging from traditional solos to vibrant contemporary pieces inspired by Bengali literature and culture, with live music by Curtis Andrews (Mridangam), Shankhanaad Mallick (vocals) and Sharanjeet Singh Mand (Sitar). At the Scotia Bank Dance Centre, noon. Tix

Friday October 29 and Saturday October 30, the Vancouver International Dance Festival  is thrilled to bring back Alonzo King LINES Ballet back in a double-bill of compelling contemporary movement with The Personal Element and Azoth. Check out more about the works and buy your tickets here. At the Vancouver Playhouse, 8 pm.