Vancouver: The online season
By Kaija Pepper
In the pandemic’s first year, along with cities worldwide, Vancouver dance was in a holding pattern. As elsewhere, once the idea of a lockdown became customary practice, companies and individuals quickly moved online with friendly, often home-based digital dance designed to keep artists in contact with their audiences. By 2021, however, these early hasty offerings had become heftier creative projects.
The mid-February streaming of Crystal Pite’s Body and Soul — recorded at the 2019 premiere by Paris Opera Ballet, onstage at Palais Garnier — was brought to our home screens thanks to the Digidance consortium. It meant Vancouverites could see the city’s star choreographer’s most recent ballet commission, nicely packaged with introductory statements from some of the artists involved, including Pite. In our new online world, a season of Vancouver dance can include an actual Paris performance.
Ballet BC followed a week later with a free online mixed bill to launch their 2021 season. Take Form featured nine premieres by the dancers themselves, with most of the camerawork and editing by former company dancer, now artist in residence, Peter Smida. Because of the pandemic-related shutdowns, this was the first performance by the company since Medhi Walerski took over the leadership from Emily Molnar in July 2020. It was good to see some new faces and some familiar ones, all in fine dancing fettle.
Upcoming April 15-21, with tickets by donation, is a Ballet BC double bill. It will be interesting to see how the filmed version of Bedroom Folk looks — the familiar piece by the Israeli duo of Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar entered the company’s repertoire in 2019. New to Ballet BC is Walerski’s GARDEN, set to a piano quintet by Camille Saint-Saëns, made in 2016 for Nederlands Dans Theater, where Walerski has often worked (and where Molnar is now artistic director). You can see a rehearsal trailer with NDT here and a Ballet BC performance trailer here. Walerski is a serious choreographer, well known to local audiences through his previous pieces danced by Ballet BC, which premiered his Romeo and Juliet in 2018.
The Dance Centre streamed a mixed bill featuring a current artist-in-residence, Joshua Beamish, for two weeks from February 25. (A plus for digital dance is the ability to have much longer runs than the usual few days of live theatre.) The 50- minute bill — you can find the trailer here — featured five staged works and one film, all either choreographed or danced by Beamish, who has established his group, MOVETHECOMPANY, in Vancouver and also New York.
Following four solos, the final piece, Proximity, was a duet performed by its choreographer, Beamish, with Renée Sigouin. Dancing in close proximity, the two bodies opened up a larger space between them, one they shared, but independently of each other. Dressed in sparkly black tops and pants on a dark stage, the pair moved quickly and precisely to a simmering galactic score by Hans Zimmer.
Two long-running local festivals launched online in March 2021. The Vancouver International Dance Festival opened with a livestream of Hourglass, a theatrical duet clearly relished by dancers Racheal Prince and Brandon Lee Alley, with choreography by Idan Cohen, artistic director of Ne. Sans Opera & Dance (in Vancouver since 2017). Hourglass should more accurately be described as a trio: pianist Leslie Dala was onstage playing four of Philip Glass’ distinctive solo piano études.
Festival co-producers Barbara Bourget and Jay Hirabayashi are focused this year on supporting local artists to meet the technical challenges of a livestream. To be able to offer residencies to the 2021 artists at the well-equipped studios run by their Kokoro Dance company, the festival has an extended season that takes it into June.
Next up, on April 29, is Company 605, with a solo, Brimming, for the always highly watchable Josh Martin. Tickets, available free or by donation, are available here.
The Coastal Dance Festival presented its usual celebration of Indigenous artists, but, of course, online, in March. A highlight was Doug Joe’s beautifully filmed and edited documentary featuring the Dakhká Khwáan Dancers, an Inland Tlingit group based in Whitehorse, Yukon. Joe offered viewers rich impressions of a place and a culture through landscape, dance, drum, song, regalia and people.
Creative and astute camera and editing also contributed to the spectacular Out of Order (En Panne) by Montreal’s 7 Fingers (Les 7 Doigts), the always entertaining circus arts group. Here, they are absolutely relevant, too, in a film that tackles the disorder wrought by the pandemic. Subtitles at the start state: “The world is upside down, the circus is Out of Order.” By the end, the troupe promises in a touching song: “We will find a way back from it all.”
Directed by Isabelle Chassé and Gypsy Snider, movement thrills are well-framed by several kooky storylines, as well as by Colin Gagné’s superb mix of original music and sound design. Thank you to the Vancouver East Cultural Centre for giving this streaming event its North American premiere. If Dance International used the star system, Out of Order would have five out of five.
