For me one of the great pleasures of spending time in Vancouver is the city’s contemporary dance scene. It’s a hidden gem in the Canadian cultural landscape.
Laura Hicks in He was swimming the other way, photo: Chris Randle
Provincial Essays seems an odd title for a work of contemporary dance: it evokes pastoral traditions, and vaguely suggests the image of a public figure-of-note in his or her sunset years retiring to the country to write memoirs – indeed, the original essays by Montaigne were a grab-bag of reflections on everything from diet to politics.
In Sara Coffin’s Dropped Signal, the set is made up of about eight weighted helium balloons on strings. Below them, two dancers (Jennifer Clarke and Sara Coffin) roll and move in low light.
He was swimming the other way by MachineNoisy part of Dance in Vancouver
When I was nine, I was limited to three very enthusiastic topics of conversation: Helen Keller, Annie Sullivan, and whales. The latter was inspired by actual encounters (my Dad was a commercial fisherman), but my interest, um, make that obsession, with the deaf and blind Helen Keller and her teacher Annie Sullivan came from regular readings of their Scholastics biographies (both by Margaret Davidson).
With our bodies stuck in cars and cubicles and confining clothes all the time, it’s easy to forget what they can do. The electric duet between Alvin Erasga Tolentino (dancer), and Emmanuel de St. Aubin (musician), presented by Company Erasga, that opened Program Four of this year’s Dance in Vancouver offers some possibilities.
