PROGRAM
Opening Keynote
Where We Stand
with Dalisa Pigrim (Australia) and Yvette Nolan (Canada)
This opening keynote dialogue brings in conversation two leading Indigenous thinkers: Broome-based choreographer Dalisa Pigram (Yawuru/Bardi) and playwright, director, and dramaturg Yvette Nolan (Algonquin). Dalisa and Yvette will be discussing the Indigenous dramaturgies guiding them in their work and life and will be inviting DIV audiences to consider what it might mean to (really) listen, to (truly) belong and to connect to the lands that hold our (dancing) feet.
Closing Keynote
What We Carry
with Margaret Grenier (Canada) and Charles Koroneho (New Zealand)
This closing keynote dialogue brings together Margaret Grenier (Gitxsan/Cree) of Dancers of Damelehamid and Charles Koreneho (Māori) to discuss how dance is an act of living in legacy. In the ‘unraveling’ of our understanding of who and what we are as a sector, this conversation lands in a place of Indigenous process and perception, offering us to drop deeper into the meaning of why we dance, how we carry it and how it carries us.
Action at a Distance + Tangaj Collective
BLOT – Body Line of Thought
Conceived by Vancouver’s Vanessa Goodman in collaboration with Romanian dance artist Simona Deaconescu, BLOT – Body Line of Thought is an interdisciplinary creation which explores movement in relation to the bacteria in our bodies. It aims to strip the body of social meanings and rethink it as an interconnected system.
Concept and choreography: Simona Deaconescu, Vanessa Goodman | Artistic consultant: Olivia Nițiș | Music: Monocube | Object design: Ciprian Ciuclea, Light design: Alexandros Raptis | Assistant choreographer: Georgeta Corca | Producer: Laura Trocan
Includes nudity
Filmed in Bucharest at The National Centre for Dance
Running time: 42 mins
Anouk Froidevaux
Lament for a Dying World
Anouk Froidevaux’s experimental dance film weaves together a poetic narrative, incorporating movement, voice, sound and imagery to perform a contemporary lament. The film touches on themes related to mental health and its intergenerational impact, while looking at the climate crisis.
Direction, Original performance, text & vocals: Anouk Froidevaux | Cinematography: Daniel Froidevaux | Video Editing: Milena Salazar | Sound Design: Sérgio Milhano
This project was filmed in January, 2020 at Lighthouse Park on the unceded territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Tsleil-Waututh and Musqueam Nations.
Running time: 10 minutes
Supported by Canada Council of the Arts
Co.ERASGA
Offering
Offering is a collection of solo works created by Alvin Erasga Tolentino for seven dancers, which explores movement as a form of devotion and prayer – allowing the dance to transcend with luminous energy. IOffering becomes a performance ritual, evoking a spiritual reach for universal interconnection, awareness, and healing.
Choreographer: Alvin Erasga Tolentino | Composer Emmanuel Mailly | Dancers: Alison Denham, Joshua Ongcol, Olivia Shaffer, Antonio Somera, Alvin Erasga Tolentino, Marc Arboleda and Marissa Wong.
Running time: 60 minutes
DanceWest Network Re/Centering/Margins Creative Residency
Studio Showing
Dance West Network’s 3rd annual Re/Centering/Margins Creative Residency provides opportunities and professional development for emerging dance artists of colour to create contemporary performance works. This showing and conversation will feature works in progress by Jennifer Aoki, Nick Miami Benz, and Sophie Dow.
Filmed on November 27, 2021 as part of Dance In Vancouver
Jeanette Kotowich
KWE – digital offering
Jeanette Kotowich’s work reflects Nêhiyaw/Métis cosmology within the context of contemporary dance, performance, and Indigenous futurism. KWE is the current research project being held by Jeanette in collaboration with an ensemble of dance artists and artistic designers. KWE derived from iskwêw (femme Spirit) and iskotêw (fire) – it provides a fluid container to intentionally define and amplify iskwêwak sovereignty and dismantle dominant colonial and patriarchal narratives with vulnerability, courage, and heart.
A recording of a livestream at Scotiabank Dance Centre as part of Dance In Vancouver, November 2021
Running time: 30 minutes
Kelly McInnes
Blue Space
In Blue Space, Kelly McInnes explores our intrinsic connection to water – the water that makes up our bodies and the world we inhabit. Full of startling imagery, this deeply-felt solo explores tensions be-tween the healing and the exploitation involved in our relationship to earth.
Choreography and performance: Kelly McInnes
Includes nudity
Running time: 30 minutes
Mahaila Patterson-O’Brien
Mid-Light: A Translucent Memory
Mahaila Patterson O-Brien’s choreography revolves around form and abstract gestures through the use of unison, repetition, and complex patterns. Danced by Eowynn Enquist and Isak Enquist, this work is a score-based re-imagining of a piece initially made for film and stage – an attempt to grasp an idea that is endlessly shifting into new forms.
Choreography: Mahaila Patterson-O’Brien Performance: Eowynn Enquist, Isak Enquist
Running time: 30 minutes
MascallDance
Lurch
Lurch (working title) explores a body and an inanimate object. The inanimate object: a large sculpture by BC artist Alan Storey, originally commissioned by MascallDance in 2010. The bodies: five dancers, who bring diverse dance roots to the project, from ballet and contact improvisation to drag, street, contemporary dance, and vogue; and four commissioned choreographers.
Choreography: Sarah Chase, Justine Chambers, Ame Henderson, Jennifer Mascall | Sculpture: Alan Storey | Performers: Chris Wright, Benjamin Kamino, Ralph Escamillan, Nick Benz, and Bennet Tracz | Production Management: Tobias Macfarlane
Running time: 60 minutes
Sierra Tasi Baker
K’ayáchten – A Poem on Belonging
A process based piece developed for the Cultch’s and Urban Ink Van’s 2020 Transform Cabaret directed by Hot Brown Honey’s Lisa Faalafi with the intention of uplifting Indigenous artists and voices. Lisa encouraged the group to co-collaborate to develop multiple new pieces and this piece was a collaboration with Kimmortal, a queer non-binary Fillipinx Musician and visual artist who produced the soundtrack to this spoken word piece “On Belonging” that Sierra wrote in response to the question: “What does it mean to belong so completely to this land?”
Sierra Tasi Baker
X̱ wex̱ wiy úsem – to tell a story; tell a legend
A storytelling based piece acknowledging Sierra’s mixed Indigenous North West Coast and Coast Salish heritage that revolves around three Legends her father, Wade Baker, Halikium/Mintledus, told her growing up. The widely known Coastal Legend of Raven Steals the Sun, the Kwakwaka’wakw Legend of Dzunuḵ wa, the Wild Woman of the Woods and the Coast Salish legend of Grizzly and Bear. Sierra rooted this work in an understanding of Coastal material culture and worked with three designers to bring each Supernatural being to life. Sierra wanted to specifically address idea’s of spectacle, temporalization, and stereotype and experimented with the use of contemporary dance as a method of possible protection for these sacred stories when shared in public spaces.
Sponsored by First People’s Cultural Council (FPCC) | soundtrack by violist Thomas Beckman | videography by Hemstock Films | choreography support by Susan Heimsoth.
Tasha Faye Evans
Cedar Woman: The Prayer
The Prayer is as an invitation into the live performance of Cedar Woman. It was created to offer a brief insight into this work while remaining respectful sharing Cedar Woman’s mask on a digital platform.
At the core of me, is you. The first seed that planted and grew and grew and grew. I am your prayers. I am all of your dreams wrapped into me. I am your every fall and rise and fall and rise
again and again. When I fight and lose and fight and lose it is your voice that sings and then
mine and my daughter’s after me. We are a legacy. Coast Salish women.
Cedar Women.
Cedar Woman is a prayer amongst a long line of prayers. It is a tribute to a legacy of strong and resilient Coast Salish women spanning all the way back to a tree. Cedar Woman: The Prayer is part of a new contemporary dance about protecting what we know from the depth of our soul to be sacred.
Filmed in the beautiful anncestral territories of the Quw’utsun, Ts’uubaa-asatx, Penelakut, Halalt, Lyackson, Stz’uminus, Malahat, Pacheedhat and Dididaht Peoples.
Film by Tasha Faye Evans | filmed by Yasuhiro Okada | creative and technical support Jeanette Kotowich, Teri Snelgrove
Funding acknowledgements The Dance Centre | Canada Council for the Arts | BC Arts Council
Running time: 5 minutes
The Biting School
Orangutang
Orangutang (Malay for ‘the man of the forest’) is a provocative new solo choreographed and performed by Arash Khakpour.
Performer/Choreographer: Arash Khakpour | Creative Consultant: Raïna von Waldenburg | Dramaturg: Aryo Khakpour | Set Designer: Hamidreza Jadid | Costume Designer: Elika Mojtabaei | Composer: Alex Mah | Lighting Designer: Jonathan Kim | Producing Stage Manager: Amanda Parafina | Photographer: Luciana D’Anunciação
Includes mature content and strong language