The Dance Centre and PuSh International Performing Arts Festival present
JUSTINE A. CHAMBERS
THE BRUTAL JOY
February 5-6, 2026
Scotiabank Dance Centre
We are located on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. It is an honour and a privilege for us to be guests in their lands. We are grateful.
This work is a counter-archive, an improvisation, a way to self-determine, the other citation, a collection of personal footnotes, physical anecdote as theory, a de-colonial imagining, but mostly it’s a feeling. The Brutal Joy wields the materiality of Black vernacular line dance and Black sartorial gesture (style) as physical cogitation, reverie and devotion to Black Living.
The Brutal Joy is the final utterance in what has become a series of four performances I reluctantly call “The Heirloom Suite” (Tailfeather, 2028; Archives and Heirlooms , 2022; Heirloom, 2023): These works are a counter-archive, or a way “of knowing the past in excess of the fictions of the archive.” (Christina Sharpe) These practices vitalize the archive by insisting upon and building space for individual presence. They bolster the feeling and articulation of self from within their forms and structures. These works invoke the imaginary to foster an embodied counter-archive—a reservoir for gestures, individual affective memories, and under-documented histories.
The Brutal Joy, a quartet between Mauricio Pauly (composer and musician), James Proudfoot (lighting designer), Vanessa Kwan (dramaturge) and myself is a scored improvisational performance for sound, light and dance. It is an antiphonal relational collaboration. The work posits Black dandyism and the Electric Slide as practices and mutable containers that incite self-sovereignty and affirm “Black-livingess.” (Katherine McKittrick)
Feeling and articulation imbue and adhere to social dances and garments. They “counter-act,” rewrite, and “animate over.” Our individual and collective bodies become scaffolds, memorials, and living, moving, breathing monuments from which Black histories can be re-cast through the flesh. From this inheritance of “doing,” our bodies synchronously retain the latent and invite the incipient. Our archive has been made and it is arriving right now.
Central to Black vernacular dance and music is the value that improvisation is composition allowing the archives to speak and act when and as needed. I propose that if the work and our bodies are living libraries, then we must ‘see the pages formed as forms still forming.’ (Phanuel Antwi) This performance, as a palimpsestic site, calls up the secret murmurings under my skin. It ushers in a referential conversation that is couched in ellipses… space for the unspoken or unspeakable… the unknown or unknowable… the unfixed and unfixable. It is necessarily provisional.”
-Justine A. Chambers
Concept, Choreography, & Performance Justine A. Chambers
Lighting Design & Performance James Proudfoot
Sound Design/Composition & Performance Mauricio Pauly
Dramaturgy Vanessa (VK) Kwan
Created in collaboration with Mauricio Pauly, James Proudfoot, Vanessa Kwan
Suit design and construction by Cassandra Bailey of Old Fashioned Standards
Administration/Tour Manager Kaia Shukin
Co-production The CanDance Network Creation Fund, Agora de la danse, Toronto Dance Theatre, The Dance Centre
Creative Residencies Agora de la danse, The Dance Centre
This project was made possible with the support of PERICULUM. Foundation for Contemporary Art | Fondation pour l’Art Contemporain
This project was supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.
With Gratitude: August Tyler-Hite, Diana Tyler-Moon, Paul Chambers, Thane Chambers, Angelique Wilke, Seika Boye, Tara Aisha Willis, Phanuel Antwi, Autumn Knight, Keyon Gaskin, Sidony O’Neal, Josh Hite, Kate Franklin, Josh Martin, Lisa Gelley, Vanessa Goodman, Ryan Tacata, Erin Boberg, Kimberly Phillips, Sabrina Schroeder, and Alexandra Caprara.
In loving memory of my grandmother, Delores Hutchinson (1929-2024).
Justine A. Chambers is a dance artist and educator living and working on the unceded Coast Salish territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh Nations in Vancouver, Canada. Her practice is a collaboration with her Black matrilineal heritage, and extends from this continuum and its entanglements with Western contemporary dance and visual arts practices. At the centre of her practice is a question often posed by her grandmother: “You feel me?” This question is both a declaration of one’s personal orientation, and an invitation to reorient and include what is held in our flesh. Her research attends to individual and collective embodied archives, social choreographies of the everyday, and choreography and dance as otherwise ways of being in relation.
Her work has been hosted at festivals, galleries and performance venues locally, nationally and internationally. Chambers holds a MFA in Interdisciplinary Art and is currently Assistant Professor in the Dance Area at the School for Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University and Associate Artist to The Dance Centre. Chambers is August Tyler-Hite’s mother.
James Proudfoot From Edinburgh, Scotland, where he received his initial theatre training, James has been living in Vancouver since 1993. For 12 years he was Technical Director of the Firehall Arts Centre. He lit shows for the Firehall Theatre Company and has acted as Lighting Director for Dancing on the Edge Festival for over 20 years. He was Resident Lighting Designer / Lighting Director for Ballet BC for six seasons, designing more than 20 pieces.
Specializing in dance lighting, James has contributed designs for many companies, including: NDT 2, Gibney Dance, Lola Dance, Company 605, Co. Erasga, Wen Wei Dance, Joe Ink, EDAM, The Contingency Plan, battery opera, Kinesis Dance, Ballet BC, Move: The Company, Restless Productions, Holy Body Tattoo, MACHiNE NOiSY, Anatomica, Tara Cheyenne Performance, Les Productions Figlio, Karen Jamieson, Trial & Eros, Rachel Meyer, Action at a Distance, Out Innerspace, Helen Walkley, Ballet Jazz Montréal, Justine A. Chambers, and plastic orchid factory.
Mauricio Pauly is a composer, improviser and producer of hybrid (instrumental/electronic/amplified) music. As an active cross-disciplinary collaborator, his work includes numerous projects with writers, coders, designers, choreographers and theatre-makers. His music has been featured by festivals that include Ultima Festival (Norway, 2011), Warsaw Autumn (Poland, 2013), Darmstadt International Summer Courses (Germany, 2010/12/14/16), Le Bruit de la Musique (France, 2014), Images Sonores Festival (Belgium, 2015), Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik (Austria, 2016) and Open Ears Festival (Canada 2018).
Collaborations include live-performed music and sound design for Athina Rachel Tsangari’s production of Wedekind’s LULU in a sold-out 10-show run at the 2017 Salzburg Festival, Theatre Replacement‘s Do You Mind If I Sit here? (Vancouver 2021), NiNi Dongnier’s Silent Flight (Shanghai, 2023) and his recent creation with Justine Chambers, James Proudfoot and Vanessa Kwan, The Brutal Joy (Vancouver, 2024). FREAM AD WALL, written in collaboration with programmer and 3D animator, Gabriel Montagné, was performed by Line Upon Line Percussion as a 3-show premiere in Austin, TX and toured Europe and the UK in Fall 2019.
Pauly is an Associate Professor at SFU’s School for the Contemporary Arts in Vancouver, Canada. Mauricio was born and raised in San José, Costa Rica. Since 2017, his home and studio are in Vancouver, Canada.
Vanessa Kwan (VK) is a curator and artist based on Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh territories (Vancouver, BC). They have been in artistic leadership roles for more than 20 years, contributing to organizations such as grunt gallery, Other Sights for Artists’ Projects, the Vancouver Art Gallery, Access Gallery, the Powell Street Festival, the Vancouver Queer Film Festival and others. They are currently Director + Curator of Galleries and Exhibitions at ECU. Their focus is on artist-led projects, performance and expanded approaches to presentation, residency design and international exchange.
Staff
Executive Director Mirna Zagar; Associate Programming Director Raquel Alvaro; Associate Producer Linda Blankstein; Membership Coordinator Kaia Shukin; Director of Marketing Heather Bray; Digital Marketing Coordinator Lindsay Curtis; Outreach Coordinator Yurie Kaneko; Development Manager Catherine Butler; Venue and Services Manager Christopher David Gauthier; Comptroller Elyn Dobbs; Dance Central Editor Shanny Rann
Board of Directors
Rosario Ancer, Elaine Carol, Yvonne Chartrand, Mique’l Dangeli, Linda Gordon (Vice-Chair), Selim Hasan (Chair), Anndraya Luui, Jordan Thomson, Sujit Vaidya, Wen Wei Wang, Mark Weston (Treasurer)
Scotiabank Dance Centre/The Dance Centre is an IATSE 118 Union house.
The Dance Centre is grateful for the generous support of The Choreographer’s Circle, Anndraya Luui, the BC Arts Renaissance Fund, and all of the following:
THE CORPORATE LEADER’S CIRCLE
The Holiday Inn and Suites Vancouver Downtown – Angela van den Byllaardt, Sales Manager
Jarislowsky, Fraser Limited – Beau Howes
THE CHOREOGRAPHER’S CIRCLE
Impresario: Charles and Eve Chang Foundation, London Drugs Foundation, Anndraya Luui, Ocean Park Foundation
Choreographer: Anonymous x2, Marnie Carter, Moh Faris, Tony Giacinti (in memory of Lola MacLaughlin), Stephen Jarislowsky, Yosef Wosk OBC
Artistic Director: Linda Blankstein, Beau Howes, David Matte, Jackson McKiee
Principal Dancer: Anonymous, Ken Alexander, David Cousins, James Felter, Judith Garay, Ken Gracie and Philip Waddell, McGrane – Pearson Endowment Fund, Jean Orr, Dubravko Pajalic, Patrick Shea, Janet and Ron Stern, R&J Stern Family Foundation
Dance Artist: Anonymous, Santa Aloi, Rosario Ancer, Noel Best and Barbara Shuman, Matthew Breech and Shino Watanabe, Richard Cavell and Peter Dickinson, Kirk Chantraine, Yvonne Chartrand, Amanda Collinge, Robert & Nicola Follows, Lorna Froidevaux, Mike and Kathy Gallagher, Kemo Schedlosky and Mark Gatha, Linda Gordon, Selim Hasan, Linda Johnston, Catherine McAllister, Anthony Roper, Annelie and Dan Vistica, Wen Wei Wang, Jason Wrobleski, Max Wyman and Susan Mertens, Mirna Zagar
THE ARTIST’S CIRCLE
Ingrid & Evan Alderson, Sylvia Anderson, Gary Bell, Linda Brandt, Carol Carr, Beth Carter & Bob Baker, Count and Countess Enrico and Aline Dobrzensky, Jason Dubois and Clayton Baraniuk, Erik Graff, Dr. Mary Robertson, Michael Watt
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.
Media sponsors:
Stir | The Georgia Straight
The Dance Centre | Scotiabank Dance Centre, Level 6, 677 Davie Street, Vancouver BC V6B 2G6
T 604 606 6400 info@thedancecentre.ca thedancecentre.ca
The VDC Dance Centre Society is a registered charity no. BN 11925 8754 RR0001