Vancouver, in the second Summer of COVID
By Kaija Pepper
Last May, when artistic producer Donna Spencer announced the Dancing on the Edge Festival, live theatre performances were scheduled “with limited capacity, if permitted.” Happily, they were. When the festival took place at the Firehall Arts Centre July 8-17, audience members were seated in social bubbles, an empty seat between each group. Despite the uncertainty of these pandemic times, Spencer successfully cobbled together a mix of live and filmed work shown in the theatre or on the courtyard stage for this 33rd edition of Canada’s longest running contemporary dance festival, which Spencer has produced since the beginning.
Opening night marked the return to the theatre for many, myself included, after more than a year of social gathering restrictions. Momentum of Isolation — the partitions by Radical System Art had just the right zing needed to celebrate the occasion. Choreographed by artistic director Shay Kuebler with his seven collaborating dancers, Momentum of Isolation was researched live and, not unusual anymore, digitally. It was also, rare for a festival opener, a work-in-progress, a series of loosely connected solos and ensembles. Kuebler himself appeared only in solos, his chunky, muscular body punching out into space with the force and surprising momentum that always makes him so watchable.
Momentum of Isolation’s dramatic intentions were lightly indicated: by a prop cell phone incorporated into the action, in Kuebler’s scene; by a tick-tock beat the ensemble follows compulsively and then breaks away from, in another; or by a changing series of partners, in duets set with ironic intentions to Always and Forever, a mellifluous slow-dance song. [An earlier version of Momentum of Isolation was presented at the 2020 Edge, reviewed for DI here.]
Mid-festival, an excerpt from Raven Spirit’s Confluence, one of a handful of Edge COVID Commissions, also hit a welcoming chord, inviting us into its dreamy aesthetic. Created and performed by artistic director Michelle Olson together with Starr Muranko, Jeannette Kotowich, Tasha Faye Evans and Tin Gamboa, the creative process for Confluence is described in the program note as having been a way to “build scaffolding in which to hang our thoughts, desires and impulses as Indigenous dance artists.” Performance energy was evident, but quietly, building from the presence of each of the women as their hands and hips flowed and rippled like the water the title evokes: not a confluence of rivers, but of dancers.
The Edge also featured an online digital package of films, including Ape, by the always inventive and often hilarious Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg. One that I somehow missed — Limb(e)s by the fledgling contemporary aerial group, Company Ci — was back in sight throughout August, when the 40-minute work was streamed on-demand as part of the Assembly Festival at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Limb(e)s is an atmospheric film rendering of a stage show developed in 2019 by the Vancouver group’s two founding directors: former Cirque du Soleil performers Gabrielle Martin and Jeremiah Hughes. Set to a minimalist soundtrack of sighing, keening strings and ambient buzz by composer Nicolas Bernier, Martin and Hughes entwine their bodies around each other, arms and legs as pliable and strong as the ropes they hang from. Visual beauty abounds — the saturated blue colour that washes onto the screen, the long loose bodies stretching into space, weightless on the ropes — and there’s one gasp-worthy moment when, mid-air, Martin lets go of Hughes and of the ropes, dropping straight down, past the bottom edge of the screen and out of sight.
Also during the second summer of COVID, when we were well-schooled in the idea that it is safest to be together in outdoor gatherings, Vines Art Festival’s mandate to “bring imagination into everyday spaces by presenting work for free on ‘earthstages’” was a timely one.
In Re:Place, audience members were led to seven locations around Trout Lake in the city’s east side, where seven dancers took their turn performing in the midst of small stands of trees, on a wharf next to the water or in grassy fields. Created by Vancouver’s Body Orchestra and Saskatchewan’s It’s Not a Box Theatre — and despite slightly gritty air due to fine particulate matter blowing into the city from forest fires raging across the province — it was a pleasure to be out in the August sun watching dance. Full disclosure: Re:Place was choreographed by Dance International contributor Jenn Edwards.
September marks the 20th anniversary of Scotiabank Dance Centre, where Dance International lives. The building is under the care of The Dance Centre, whose work programming and commissioning shows, and supporting artist initiatives and training for professionals and the general public, has given the city’s dance world a much loved, high-profile home to call its own. The annual Open House, this year on October 2, is a wonderful time to visit; whatever COVID-19 restrictions might be in place by then, Aeriosa’s aerial dance on the building’s exterior is programmed outside in the fresh air.
