March 9-12, 2022
Scotiabank Dance Centre
Presented by The Dance Centre and Vancouver International Dance Festival
I am thrilled to welcome Daina Ashbee back to Vancouver, and that by partnering with Vancouver International Dance Festival we can once again bring cutting edge work by internationally-acclaimed dance artists. Daina has in a relatively short period of time captured the attention of the world with her unique and brave voice, conquering international stages like a storm. I trust that her distinct poetics, visceral and atmospheric at the same time and resonating with a sense of ritual, and also a celebration of resilience and fortitude, will touch each of you in different ways and prompt new conversations about what contemporary dance is and how it reflects the world. The work may even provoke some unease but that too is part of life and leads to decisions to impact change, be it to reconsider how we collectively violate mother earth and how we react to what is happening around us globally. Daina is at times described as an extreme choreographer – pushing boundaries, expanding the force of the body and its impact on stage and on audiences. She is never shy to stand up for her beliefs. In immersing yourself into the show trust your inner feelings, be open to challenge, allow yourself to accept the “awkward” as that also takes us to discover beauty in the most unexpected places. For this is what contemporary dance and art is: leading us to walk away with a new, different, experience; helping us to discover our inner selves; and finding that the seeking, the questioning which is often the most fruitful of our experiences.
Mirna Zagar
Executive Director
The Dance Centre
Welcome to the 22nd edition of the Vancouver International Dance Festival.
We begin by acknowledging that the 2022 VIDF takes place on the unceded ancestral territory of the Coast Salish Peoples, including the territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations and we thank them for sharing their land with us.
The 2022 VIDF offers 29 in-person performances, 6 livestreamed performances, and 1 hybrid in-person/livestreamed performance. All 13 performances that take place in KW Studios/Woodward’s Atrium and the 8 livestreamed performances are free/by donation. Please visit our website, vidf.ca, to learn about the exciting shows that make up this year’s festival.
Dance is an ephemeral art form that has a profound and lasting impact. We produce the VIDF as a labour of love for the art of contemporary dance. We started this festival 22 years ago without any funding support, but now receive grants from the City of Vancouver, Province of BC, British Columbia Arts Council, Department of Canadian Heritage, and the Canada Council for the Arts. We are also thankful for the generous support from individual donors who enable us to produce this festival. Please join these individual angels in supporting the VIDF by buying a ticket to a show and bringing a friend or additionally donating when attending our free in-person and livestreamed shows. We hope to see your beautiful faces and feel your warm hearts at the 2022 VIDF.
Yours in dance,
Barbara Bourget and Jay Hirabayashi
Producers, Vancouver International Dance Festival
J’ai pleuré avec les chiens (Time, Creation, Destruction)
Credits
Choreographer: Daina Ashbee
Rehearsal Director: Gabriel Nieto (Nomad of the South)
Performers: Angélica Morga, Irene Martínez, Ralph Escamillan, Elise Vanderborght and Benjamin Kamino
Mentor: Benoît LaChambre
Lighting Design: Vito Walter
Musical compilation: Sean MacPherson, Daina Ashbee, Gabriel Nieto
Photo by Stephanie Paillet
Co-Production Partners
KVS Brussels Stadstheater (BE), Festival TransAmériques – FTA (CA), Agora de la danse (CA), Rencontres Chorégraphiques Internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis (FR), BIT Teatergarasjen (NO), National Arts Centre (CA)
Residency Partners
KVS Brussels Stadstheater (BE), Harbourfront Centre (CA), Montpellier Danse (FR)
Funding Partners
Developed with support from the National Art Centre’s National Creation Fund, Canada Council for the Arts, Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec
About the work
J’ai pleuré avec les chiens (Time, Creation, Destruction 2021) is Daina Ashbee’s first group piece. Created before and during the pandemic, it went through the setbacks of that course and took shape again in 2021. The piece is marked by an incisive and sober precision, poetics of explosion and trance to which the choreographer has accustomed us.
Several naked bodies. Female bodies, male bodies, crossed by various states and chants. Attempts at reconciliation, pilings on all fours, lines of flight.
From the rupture emerges the connection. From the sounds produced by the bodies emerge the movements which, in turn, generate rumblings, yelps, tears, calls.
Far from illustrating, representing, the performers embody, transmit like channels of flesh. Myriads lived histories crystallize to shape the corporealities that are present.
The process of creating J’ai pleuré ave les chiens (Time, Creation, Destruction) began with the exploration of a sensation: seeking solace in the embrace of your dog, howling with this companion. This process evolved into a dive into canine body states. What has emerged from it does not oscillate between animal and human, bodily and spiritual, feminine and masculine, nature and culture, suffering and care, anchoring and air. No, dichotomies and dualisms are of no concern to Ashbee. The notion of essence does not appeal to her either: She sees the world as a web of potentialities where everything can coexist, well beyond binary.
J’ai pleuré avec les chiens (Time, Creation, Destruction) shapes a ritual of cohabitation and dissolution. A constellation of possibilities that escapes confinement in a category, a genre, a territory, circumscribed affiliations. Everything is transitory, fleeting. Experiencing the room by leaving its reading grid and its categories in the cloakroom opens the way to another sensorial experience: that of a space where people and things can continuously transform. This is not a temporary disturbance, but a reconfiguration of the sensible. In this, Ashbee’s work is anti-colonial. The colonial and capitalist relationship to the world is not only material – territories and bodies are to be conquered, classified, possessed and exploited – but also cognitive and sensitive: the colonial perspective considers the arts, knowledge and, in general, this which makes up the world as commodities to be acquired and categorized. J’ai pleuré avec les chiens (Time, Creation, Destruction) is a rejection of the ways of knowing, creating and feeling marked by colonialism.
[Translated from original French text by Nayla Naoufal]
Daina Ashbee
Daina Ashbee is an artist, performer and choreographer based in Canada, known for her radical works at the edge of dance and performance. At the young age of 26, she had already won two awards for her choreographies. She was a double prizewinner at the Prix de la danse de Montréal, winning both the Prix du CALQ for Best Choreography of 2015-2016 for her choreographic installation When the Ice Melts, Will We Drink the Water?, and the Prix Découverte de la danse, presented by Agora de la danse and Tangente, for Unrelated (her first choreography). Daina was named by the prestigious German TANZ magazine as one of 30 promising artists for the year 2017 and named one of 25 to watch by the American publication DANCE in 2018. In 2019, she won a New York Dance and Performance Award, a Bessie, for Outstanding Choreographer. In 2020 Daina received a fellowship award from Springboard Danse Montreal.
In 2021, at the age of 30, she had two separate retrospectives of her performance artworks; one in Montpellier, France and the second in Montreal, Canada. Recognized as one of the most promising young choreographers of the next generation, since 2015 her work has been presented over 100 times in 15 countries and over 33 different cities. Her work has been presented in some of the most prestigious festivals (The Venice Biennale, Oktoberdans, the Munich Dance Biennale, Montpellier Danse) and stages of the world (Canada, France, Spain, Belgium, Norway, Finland, Greenland, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and Mexico).
In 2020 she relocated to Gabriola Island, British Columbia where she re-sources her creative and energetic practices close to the rain forest on the west coast of Canada while she is not touring or creating abroad. She continues to tour regularly in Europe, Canada and the United States. In 2020 two new pieces were released: a male solo, Laborious Song and a group piece, J’ai pleuré avec les chiens (later renamed TIME, CREATION, DESTRUCTION).
Daina has also started another group piece My Tale on a Fish’s body which will premiere in 2023. In 2021 Daina presented 5 of her original works at Montpellier Dance Festival: Unrelated (2014), Pour (2016), When the ice melts, will we drink the water? (2016), Serpentine (2017) and Laborious Song (2020). Daina presented 4 of her original works at Usine-C titled Daina Ashbee Retrospective which featured Unrelated, Pour, When the ice melts, will we drink the water? and Laborious Song in October 2021.
She is also a teacher of movement, choreography and therapeutic practices. She has taught at the Venice Biennale College in Venice, Italy, as a guest at The University of Stavanger, Norway and at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia USA. Daina presented her workshops at Nulty Bod/ZeroPoint Festival in Prague, in Guadalajara, Mexico, across Canada and especially in Montreal, Quebec, for the past 13 years. In 2022 she will teach in Costa Rica and across Canada.
THE DANCE CENTRE
Executive Director Mirna Zagar; Programming Coordinator Raquel Alvaro; Associate Producer Linda Blankstein; Member Services/Outreach Coordinator Nazanin Oghanian; Director of Marketing Heather Bray; Digital Marketing Coordinator Lindsay Curtis; Venue and Operations Manager Simran Ghesani; Lead Technician Chengyan Boon; Accountant Elyn Dobbs; Dance Central Editor Shanny Rann
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Jason Wrobleski (Chair); Andrea Reid (Vice-Chair); Annelie Vistica (Treasurer); Tin Gamboa (Secretary); Judith Garay; Linda Gordon; Arash Khakpour; Rosario Kolstee; Anndraya Luui, Katia Oteman; Zahra Shahab
The Dance Centre is grateful for the generous support of The Choreographer’s Circle, Anndraya Luui and the BC Arts Renaissance Fund.
THE CORPORATE LEADER’S CIRCLE
Alexander Holburn Beaudin + Lang LLP – Ingrid M. Tsui, Partner; The Holiday Inn and Suites Vancouver Downtown – Angela van den Byllaard, Sales Manager; Jarislowsky, Fraser Limited – Beau Howes
THE CHOREOGRAPHER’S CIRCLE
Impresario: Charles and Eve Chang Foundation; Anndraya Luui
Choreographer Anonymous; Anonymous; Beau Howes and Genieve Burley; Tony Giacinti (in memory of Lola MacLaughlin); Stephen Jarislowski; Anne Hildebrandt
Artistic Director Linda Blankstein; Marnie Carter; Joyce Ozier; Yosef Wosk, OBC; Moh Faris; Pamela Goossen; David Matte
Principal Dancer David Cousins; James Felter; Ken Gracie and Philip Waddell; McGrane – Pearson Endowment Fund; Jean Orr; Janet and Ron Stern; Don and Jane Shumka; Mike and Kathy Gallagher
Dance Artist: Anonymous; Anonymous; Ken Alexander; Santa Aloi; Rosario Ancer; Mary and Herb Auerbach; Gary R. Bell; Andrew and Andrea Benzel; Trent Berry; Noel Best and Barbara Shuman; Matthew Breech and Shino Watanabe; Richard Cavell and Peter Dickinson; Amanda Collinge; Norm and Dorothy Cross; Count and Countess Enrico and Aline Dobrzensky; Jason Dubois and Clayton Baraniuk; Nicola Follows; Judith Garay; Peter Harmon; Karim and Christina Jandali; Linda Johnston; Emily Klukas; Amy Millar; Kathy Scalzo; Kemo Schedlosky and Mark Gatha; Betty Scheltgen; Ingrid Tsui and Matthew Heemskerk; Annelie and Dan Vistica; Denis Walz; Michael Welters; Mirna Zagar; May Wyman and Susan Mertens; Jason Wrobleski
THE ARTIST’S CIRCLE
Linda Aristizabal; Brent Belsher; Denis Blais and Paras Terezakis; Val Brandt; Deborah Dragon; Sheila Evani and Jeffery Ramkellawan; Lorna Froidevaux; Megan Halkett; Lynn B. Johnston; Lorita Leung – The Lorita Leung Dance Association; Barry McKinnon; Dubravko Pajalic; Dr. Mary Robertson; Frank Salisbury; Selma Savage
The Dance Centre acknowledges that it is located on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the xwməθkwəy’əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl’ílwəta?/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. It is an honour and a privilege for us to be guests in their lands. We are grateful.
The operations of The Dance Centre are supported by the Government of Canada, Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of British Columbia, the BC Arts Council, and the City of Vancouver.
The VDC Dance Centre Society is a registered charity no. BN 11925 8754 RR0001
VANCOUVER INTERNATIONAL DANCE FESTIVAL
Co-producers Jay Hirabayashi and Barbara Bourget; Festival Manager Khaliun Altan; Production Manager Terry Podealuk; KW Studios Technical Director Gabriel Raminhos; Web & Graphic Designer Aaron Smith; Photographer/Videographer Chris Randle; Digital Marketing Coordinator Khaliun Altan; Bookkeeper/Admin Assistant Sugar Otgo
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
President: Henry Wong; Vice President: Leslie Stark; Secretary/Treasurer: Tuan Luu; Member at Large: Judith Garay, Tessa Perkins Deneault, Kazuho Yamamoto
We are grateful for the support of the Province of British Columbia, British Columbia Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, City of Vancouver, Vancouver Civic Theatres, our media sponsor, STIR, our hotel sponsors, the Holiday Inn Vancouver Downtown and Suites, and the Rosedale on Robson Hotel and Suites, and the Boards of the VIDF and Kokoro Dance for their ongoing support. We would also like to acknowledge our generous donors and our many volunteers without whom we would not be able to do the festival. And of course, we thank you, our audience, for attending this evening’s performance.
The Vancouver International Dance Festival is a member of the CanDance Network of Dance Presenters.
Vancouver International Dance Festival | 236–111 Hastings Street West |Vancouver, BC, Canada, V6B 1H4
Telephone: 604.662.7441 | Box office: 604.662.4966
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