The 12th biennial Dance In Vancouver opens with a day of free events, including a keynote address, site-specific works by Kinesis Dance somatheatro and Mardon + Mitsuhashi, and Lee Su-Feh/battery opera’s Dance Machine – a kinetic bamboo sculpture that can be transformed by the movement of the bodies within it.
The DIV Lounge is open 7-11pm: cash bar and entertainment.
Scroll down for full details.
Photos: Kinesis Dance somatheatro/Sally Buck; Lee Su-Feh/Trung Dung Nguyen; Tour/Alexa Mardon; Company 605/David Cooper
4.30-5.45pm Welcome + Discussion: Vancouver – A City of Dance
Faris Family Studio, Level 1
In this moderated panel discussion, DIV curator Dieter Jaenicke, Dance Centre Executive Director Mirna Zagar, and guests examine Vancouver’s distinctive dance scene. Curators and presenters often note that the professional community is comprised of diverse voices which deploy an approach to movement practice which is different to other areas of Canada. How has history and place determined current ways of working? If artists here think and work differently, can this be related to funding, infrastructure, geographical isolation, or other factors? How does work generated here express political and cultural content, compared to elsewhere?
6-6.45pm Keynote: Sierra Tasi Baker
Faris Family Studio, Level 1
Sierra Tasi Baker is an award-winning Squamish Nation, Coast Salish, Kwakwaka’wakw, Tlingit, Haida & Hungarian designer, community consultant, entrepreneur, artist, and storyteller. Her work focuses on furthering Indigenous design and research methodologies whilst focusing on daylighting hidden histories and reconciliatory narratives. Sierra has a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Design from the University of British Columbia and a Master’s in Sustainable Urbanism from University College London (UK).
7-10.30pm Lee Su-Feh/battery opera Dance Machine
Jarislowsky Studio, Level 3
Dance Machine is a kinetic sculpture – 64 pieces of bamboo suspended from a central copper disk – that can be transformed into multiple configurations by the movement of the bodies within it. Drop in to rest, play and explore. Conceived by Lee Su-Feh and designed by Jesse Garlick, the Dance Machine is co-produced with Festival Trans-Amériques. (Continues nightly to November 23.)
7.15pm
Kinesis Dance somatheatro AGAINST
Birmingham Studio, Level 3
Greek-Canadian choreographer Paras Terezakis’ Against is the culmination of a two-year site-specific choreographic research project, a multi-disciplinary work that combines dance, theatre, soundscape and live-video feed.
7.30pm, 9.30pm Mardon + Mitsuhashi TOUR
DIV Lounge, Level 7
In Alexa Mardon and Erika Mitsuhashi’s TOUR, performers act as tour guides, leading an audience through the space and making short stops on the way to share their “instantaneous expertise” on the history of objects, their surroundings as well as their own bodies and personal histories. TOUR brings attention to the discomfort that comes along with witnessing facts and reality treated with irreverence. How do the institutions we inhabit every day impose their realities and histories upon us? How might we gesture towards other ways of inhabiting them?
Capacity is limited, advanced booking strongly advised. Register
________________________
Thursday-Saturday November 21-23
Lee Su-Feh/battery opera + Company 605
Drop in to experiment with Lee Su-Feh’s Dance Machine (6.30-11pm) or visit Looping, Company 605’s installation built upon concepts from their ensemble work Loop, Lull before or after a show (6.30-8pm, 9-10.30pm). A rotating cast of fifteen performers will trade in and out of a repeating improvised looping score. A practice of continuously tracking and responding to change, in themselves and in relation to one another, Looping is a complex test of endurance and capacity for adaptation. Doors remain open. Drop in and stay as long as you wish.
The DIV Lounge is open 6.30-11pm.