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The 14th biennial Dance In Vancouver is coming up November 20-24! This biennial event is the leading opportunity for presenters and curators from around the world to experience the dynamic contemporary dance of the Canadian West Coast. It’s also a great chance for audiences to see an exciting range of work by BC artists.

This edition’s guest international curator is Anthea Lewis, founder of Blulilli Projects UK, in association with Dance Umbrella (UK) – London’s International Dance Festival, and FABRIC International: here is her thoughtful and inspiring curatorial statement. More details about the event coming soon!

As a child, I used to enjoy the challenge of a dot-to-dot puzzle, an image emerging as you draw a pencil line between each dot. The numbers gradually guiding you to reveal the picture hidden within the series of scattered dots that could look random at a glance. The opportunity to curate The Dance Centre’s Dance In Vancouver (DIV) platform this year has been a similar experience full of intrigue, questioning, moments of hesitation or breakthrough and doubling back to discover alternative pathways. It has been an enriching experience to meet with the artists I connected with in this city, discovering more about the creative community that inhabits this part of the world. It’s a strange dynamic coming in as a guest curator programming people who have invested their lives in building the artistic community and their practices. My initial thought was, ‘What can I bring to this space?’. To discover somewhere you need to put yourself in it in some way, allowing the periphery to be permeable so a part of you can seep into it and some of it can inhabit a place within you.

While visiting I discovered the value in seeking the unseen or unspoken, investigating what isn’t as well as what is. The entry point was in discussion with some of the artists introduced to me by The Dance Centre, listening to their experiences and perspectives while offering an insight into who I am. Exploration around collaboration and exchange began to take place, I wanted to ‘work the dough’ of this format for presenting, to expand the framework and test the malleability of the edges. This programme is curated with the artists working, living and breathing in the city. I hope we have been able to represent a broad spectrum of the contemporary dance scene, with this attempt to create a wide-reaching platform that can show some of the nuance and range of work being explored.

I’ve been preoccupied with what exists in the in between, the distance, the time and more than just the proximity or time zones that are felt between London and Vancouver. How things are ever vibrating, shifting and in flux; the energy that resonates in an ever-nebulous landscape as we all turn over cells, pulsate and continually evolve. It felt important to place as much focus on the stages of making work, from initial concepts through to post-creation reflections and all that occurs along the way. The gems are revealed in the unexpected as well as what is presented directly in front of us and enriched by the artists at different stages of their journey.

This wouldn’t have been possible without the invested relationships nurtured by those in the community who cultivate spaces to support other artists and offer a way in with guidance, care and opportunities to experiment with their ideas. Collaborating with our partnering venues is a highlight for me, they have developed the relationship equity and trust to engage with parts of the community that are less visible. As well as all the individual artists who have agreed to be a part of this programme, I’m excited to be sharing a programme alongside Raven Spirit Dance, and in collaboration with Morrow/Odd Meridian Arts, Left of Main/plastic orchid factory, Progress Lab 1422/Company 605, Boombox/The Here for Now Collective, WhatLab/ Co.ERASGA who play an integral role in ensuring they bring others with them in the spaces they have curated.

Continuing the theme of what exists between, it’s not only the performances that bring out the essence of this dance community but the conversations, gatherings, sharing of food, and the opportunity for impromptu interactions. We have created a base at Scotiabank Dance Centre curated by a collective of artists as a space for rest, reflection, moments of activation and time to process, debrief, and decompress which is an essential part of the experience. I am grateful to all the artists and companies that accepted the invitation to be in dialogue with me and shared themselves generously as part of this programme.

I look forward to audiences bringing their energy to this process by watching, feeling and listening intently to the rhythms that exist in this collective vibrating as well as the pauses that live in between.

I acknowledge that ‘Dance in Vancouver’ is taking place on the unceded, ancestral and traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and səlil̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver.
Anthea Lewis/ Blulilli Projects

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Photos: Anthea Lewis, Freddie Opoku-Addaie, Artistic Director of Dance Umbrella (UK), and Mirna Zagar, Executive Director of The Dance Centre/TDC; Anthea Lewis/Miguel Altunaga