On May 18, Yellowknife Dance Collective will present North of 60X60 at the Northern Arts and Cultural Centre. The cast of 40 dancers will perform 60 contemporary dance pieces over the course of an hour, each 60 seconds in length. The works explore a wide variety of themes and movement styles, with up to 30 dancers onstage at one time.
With 60 different pieces in the show, the Yellowknife Dance Collective is confident that there will be something for everyone.
Tomiko Robson, director of North of 60X60 and a choreographer and dancer in the show, described the showcase as a “great smörgåsbord … of what you can do under the contemporary umbrella.”
“There’s some that are absolutely hilarious, there’s some that are very theatrical, there’s some that are very dance-y, there’s some that are very serious,” she noted. “One of our choreographers wanted to address … what’s going on in Palestine right now, so that one’s quite political and has a very sobering message.”
The performers vary in age from 15 to 69, and they have a range of different backgrounds and levels of experience with dance.
“We have professional-calibre dancers in our show.… We have people who are currently studying dance at university level.… And we also have all these wonderful adults who have taken dance at different points in their lives and are keen on performing and putting themselves out there,” said Robson. “It’s so important to show people that … you don’t have to be professionally trained and doing this full-time. Everyone can dance and everyone can perform.”
The 60×60 concept is not a new one and has been utilized by musicians and dancers around the world, but this is the Yellowknife Dance Collective’s first time taking on the format. “It just seemed like such a great format to get people excited about dancing and performing in Yellowknife again. It’s a very challenging, but also accessible, kind of format,” said Robson. “Everyone’s able to customize it to the time they have, the energy they have and what they feel is manageable.”
One of the challenges in presenting a 60×60 is creating a smooth show order, which Robson likened to “a massive jigsaw puzzle.” The goal is to keep complementary pieces together while being mindful of the dancers who are performing multiple times throughout the show.
Many of the short pieces have the potential to blossom into longer works: “It just fills our bucket up with possibilities for performances.… Everyone has a very well-rounded concept that they can expand upon,” said Fia Grogono, a dancer and choreographer who helped organize the event.
Yellowknife Dance Collective was founded in 2011 by Robson and four other members of its predecessor group, Crazy Legs Contemporary Dance. While the collective focuses on contemporary dance, its members come from a variety of backgrounds.
Preparing for North of 60X60 was a community effort, with Bella Dance Academy, the Northern Arts and Cultural Centre and Multicultural Community of Yellowknife all donating rehearsal space.
“Yellowknife is such a great community,” said Robson. “It has that small-town feel … but it’s also the hub for the territory, so we get all sorts of wonderful performers coming through with the Northern Arts and Cultural Centre.… We have the benefit of a big city, in some ways.”
Outside of North of 60X60, Grogono and Robson are currently collaborating on a piece that addresses the climate crisis, with the intention of making a short dance film. “We started working on it after we had a wildfire evacuation last summer as a way of processing climate anxiety,” said Grogono.
“The things that are happening [in the Northwest Territories] are really important for the rest of the country in terms of what’s going on with mining, what’s going on with our climate,” she added. “Dance is about conveying ideas and concepts and having them travel.… I think that the voices here are really worth listening to.”
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