New Works and The Dance Centre present a preview excerpt of Family Room by The Falling Company. Choreographed by Marissa Wong, it recreates a studio apartment through a set design of furniture and home decor. This is the foundation for a series of solos to interact with the same household objects, each object representing a relationship, dynamic, and history between...
The Dance Centre’s Discover Dance! noon hour series features Lamondance, a contemporary dance training company designed for emerging artists about to embark on a professional performing career. Drawing dancers from across Canada and overseas, Artistic Director Davi Rodrigues aims to mould ensembles of honed, expressive and fluent performers. This performance will feature a selection of works from the current repertoire.
Israeli choreographer Hillel Kogan’s award-winning duet We Love Arabs aims to dive headlong into the toughest of questions – how can we co-exist within conflict? Somewhere in Tel Aviv, a Jewish choreographer enlists an Arab dancer to help create a work that will overcome fears and carry a message of peace: but as the work progresses, power struggles ensue. With...
Israeli choreographer Hillel Kogan brings together the materials of his creations in a process that begins with improvisation. This workshop will aim to experiment with the tools he draws upon during the creative process, extracting strategies and applying to them new content that is relevant to the participants: questioning the medium itself and the artistic and social conventions surrounding spoken...
The internationally-renowned Indigenous dance company Dancers of Damelahamid brings its work to the stage for the March edition of The Dance Centre’s Discover Dance! noon hour series. Spirit and Tradition aims to layer vibrant dances, singing, drumming and projected imagery to immerse audiences in the ecosystems and culture of the Indigenous lands and waters of the Northwest Coast.
The 5th edition of Matriarchs Uprising Festival, curated by Olivia C. Davies, features a program of new works by Indigenous women artists who aim to be both nurturing and advancing the art of contemporary dance. The week includes live performances, VR screenings, masterclasses, community workshops, conversations and a film series.
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 dancers – their torsos inscribed with testimonials from the victims’ families – recount the stories of...
A world premiere from Corporeal Imago, Throe aims to explore our interdependence in an inhospitable world through an intersection of aerial acrobatics, contemporary dance and visual theatre. Created by award-winning choreographers Gabrielle Martin and Jeremiah Hughes, this new work features six performers in a world of aerial ropes as they cling to what remains in the throes of survival. While Throe hopes to...
glint is a triple bill with new works by Erika Mitsuhashi, Francesca Frewer and Alexa Mardon. Each piece is in a different stage of completion, and invites the audience into a unique context for experiencing the work. Mitsuhashi’s work-in-progress, on the cosmic shore, is multi-media installation for human and non-human performers. Frewer’s new solo, When I Think It Has Yet...
Justin Calvadores, Marco Esccer, Eliza Regenyi, Sarah U and Sarah Wong share and discuss new works in progress in an informal studio showing. 12 Minutes Max aims to foster experimentation and the development of new dance works, along with critical feedback and community dialogue.
Flamenco trio Calle Verde - dancers/choreographers Maria Avila and Michelle Harding and guitarist Peter Mole - explores what happens when light becomes an integral fourth member of the group. Focusing on experimentation, play and process, their aim is to share their learnings and present excerpts of work in progress in this informal showing. Supported through The Dance Centre’s DanceLab interdisciplinary research program.
The fourth edition of Matriarchs Uprising Festival, curated by Olivia C. Davies (Anishinaabe), features Indigenous women sharing stories of transformation through dance. The program presents new contemporary Indigenous dance through live performances, dance films, masterclasses, community workshops and artist conversations. Presented by O.Dela Arts in partnership with The Dance Centre, DanceHouse, Dance West Network, Talking Stick Festival, Training Society of Vancouver, Dumb...
Designed to allow participants to familiarize themselves with the work of Montreal’s Mélanie Demers, this workshop seeks to be an immersion in the MAYDAY universe. Its aim is to provide tools to explore the questions and intuitions that permeate the company’s repertoire, retracing the path that leads from the quivering of an idea to the deployment of a reality. Body work, heart work, voice...
An award-winning choreographer and multidisciplinary artist based in Montreal, Mélanie Demers dives into the political and the poetic with works which aim to fuse dance, theatre, literature and music with explosive effect. La Goddam Voie Lactée is her response to the harshness of the world: a pagan mass, both celebration and challenge, inspired by the constant mourning that marks our current age....
The January edition of The Dance Centre’s Discover Dance! series features the reconnection of music and contemporary dance by Ne. Sans Opera & Dance and artistic director Idan Cohen. Accompanied by pianist/conductor Leslie Dala, this program features the counter-tenor Shane Hanson and Ne. Sans dancers, who will share excerpts of recent works to music by Handel, Bach and Philip Glass.
Livona Ellis performs her solo Unmoved, a response to the idea of overcoming the limitations we place on ourselves. Rebecca Margolick’s solo Bunker draws on themes of memory and the shared history of previous generations of women. The program also includes two solos revived last season specially for them: Peter Bingham’s 1997 Woman Walking (away), danced by Ellis, and Allen Kaeja’s Trace Elements (2000) performed by...
This aerial dance workshop will focus on the foundational techniques required to dance in the air using aerial rope. Tailored to dancers, it will focus on techniques for efficiency, how to weave your body around the rope, locks and keys, proper inversion technique, and creative ways to ascend. Offered by Dance Centre Artist-in-Residence company Corporeal Imago, this workshop is taught...
Restless Productions is in an early phase of research/creation for a new interdisciplinary work. Their collaborative process involves sound/movement, brown paper (and the sound and movement of brown paper), architecturally informed spatial design, and digital projection. They are exploring contingency, possibility and implication through several disciplines, in an installation-like format.
Open Stage features a program of exciting and varied dance works by Anya Saugstad and artists Lamondance, Linda Hayes, Rachel Maddock and Tomoyo Yamada. Open Stage is a new program initiated by The Dance Centre, offering the opportunity for dance artists to present short works in an uncurated, shared performance.