Happy first day of Fall! It is still nice out, but the sun has set by showtime so go see some dance!

Sept. 20-23 and 26-29 Kokoro Dance presents the world premiere of
Embryotrophic Cavatina, the company’s latest full-length butoh work 20-years in the making. Choreographed by Kokoro Dance Directors & award-winning dance artists Barbara Bourget and Jay Hirabayashi, and set to the heartrending but uplifting music of acclaimed Polish composer Zbigniew Preisner, four dancers will strip themselves bare – literally and figuratively – in breathless motion and stillness, embodying the rawness of humanity, while transcending all superficial layers of persona and ego in true butoh style. Check out this video about the work, with Kokoro Co-Director Barbara Bourget. At the Roundhouse Arts and Community Centre, 8pm Tickets from $25

Tonight and tomorrow you still have a chance to see Joshua Beamish/MOVETHECOMPANY in Saudade. Saudade - a Portuguese word that represents a deep, constant desire for a reality that does not, and probably cannot, exist - investigates loss, memory, and the longing for something unattainable. Six male dancers merge elegant balletic lines with street-style dynamism and drive, conjuring up fleeting intimacies in a series of ghostly solos, duets, and group passages, accompanied by Hildur Guðnadóttir’s hauntingly beautiful cello score. A British Columbian choreographer who has achieved international success, Joshua Beamish brings together an ensemble whose collective credits include leading companies such as Nederlands Dans Theater, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Sasha Waltz & Guests, and La La La Human Steps. Check out the trailer. At the Scotiabank Dance Centre, 8pm. Tix

Feasting on Famine - Shay Kuebler/Radical System Art  Photo Alex Tam

September 27-30 The Firehall Arts Centre presents Shay Kuebler/Radical System Art in Feasting on Famine, one man’s journey through the extremes of body building and health fitness exploring the symmetry between the human body, the corporation and the excess of capitalism in a world where one man consumes the daily caloric intake of a family of five. Consume. Grow. Enhance. Consume. At the Firehall Arts Centre, 8pm. Tix

It’s Friday - enjoy!

Tero Saarinen Company (Finland) in Morphed

Tonight and tomorrow October 27 and 28, you still have time to join DanceHouse at their season opener with Tero Saarinen Company (Finland) in Morphed. In Morphed, seven male dancers seduce, challenge, demand and swagger, borrowing from casual street dance, Gene Kelly musicals, classical 19th century and modern dance. Saarinen masterfully crafts a fresh exploration of masculinity undaunted by the extremes of sensitivity and heroism, and all that lies between. Check out the Vancouver Sun’s article the company where Saarinen says his style has been called “butoh dance with wings”! And remember to come early for the pre-show chat with Tero Saarinen himself, in conversation with Janet Smith, 7:15 pm in the upstairs lobby of the Playhouse Theatre. Show time 8pm. Tix 

Also October 27 and 28, The Dance Centre Presents Deanna Peters | Mutable Subject in META. META proposes that our body is not one thing. We are fluid, messy and protean. Created and performed by Deanna Peters in collaboration with performers Justine A. Chambers and Kim Sato, with costumes and set design by Natalie Purschwitz, this new work dismantles expectations of what a body can be, generating a richly imaginative and engaging experience. It is really worth a trip over to Deanna’s website where she has some wonderful video and writings related to the work. At the Scotiabank Dance Centre, 8pm. Tix

Tonight through October 28  Amber Funk Barton and her contemporary dance company the response. return to the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts for the third installment of their exciting WorkSpace series. WorkSpace is a performance series developed by the response. dance team to showcase work-in-progress excerpts of dance work being explored by the company. Inspired by memories, past relationships and the relativity of time, WorkSpace III will endeavor to embody these ideas to a curated playlist of pop music. This special installment of WorkSpace III will also feature the emerging dancers of the company’s Apprentice Program, along with a new solo work for Amber Funk Barton by guest choreographer Heather Laura Gray.  Take a look at the video trailer here. Shadbolt Centre for the Arts, 6450 Deer Lake Ave., Burnaby 8pm. Tix

Jose Manuel Alvarez in Kasandra Flamenco’s Ritmo y Soniquete

Sunday October 29 Kasandra Flamenco is thrilled to present Ritmo y Soniquete, a super charged, high octane flamenco show starring some of Spain’s hottest flamenco musicians, singer Miguel Rosendo and festero Luis de la Tota, with the fire power of Barcelona’s Flamenco dancer, Jose Manuel Alvarez. Experience the Kasandra Flamenco Ensemble at its most raw and powerful, showcasing the best of improvisational, rhythmic Flamenco with spontaneity, passion and emotion. Experience pure flamenco at its roots as the artists torch the stage! Two shows at The Cultch 3pm and 8pm. Tix

Sunday October 29 New works presents Dance Allsorts: South Asian Arts. South Asian Arts has been championing South Asian dance, music, and culture since its formation in 2005 by Gurpreet Sian and Raakhi Sinha. With prestigious dance and music performances ranging from the 2009 Juno Awards to the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, South Asian Arts has firmly established themselves as a premier organization successfully promoting the rich, cultural diversity of British Columbian artists to widespread audiences. At the Roundhouse Community Arts Centre Performance 2pm | Free Workshop 3:15pm TIx

Let the sun shine - bring on the weekend!

Next week April 7 and 8 DanceHouse will end it’s season with a bang! Compagnie Hervé KOUBI, twelve Algerian and Burkina Faso dancers, mostly coming from street dance and hip-hop, will perform in What the day owes to the night  (Ce que le jour doit a la nuit). The piece takes its name from an eponymous 2008 novel by Algerian author Yasmina Khadra, and through his dancers, choreographer Hervé Koubi explores his own Algerian origins and journey through capoeira, martial arts, urban and contemporary dance with evocative Islamic imagery. Watch a video of their performance at Jacobs Pillow Dance Festival 2016. At the Vancouver Playhouse, 8pm. Tix

Compagnie Hervé KOUBI  What the day owes to the night  Photo by Lou Damars

And as always DanceHouse offers a number of ways to deepen your understanding of dance and the arts, particularly in relation to the upcoming show. On Tuesday April 4 Speaking of Dance Conversations presents Absent and Present: Muslim culture in today’s society - how is Muslim identity positioned and perceived in the contemporary world? This will be a great and timely conversation between Adel Iskandar (Assistant Professor of Global Communication at SFU) and Arash Khakpour (Dance Artist), moderated by Kaija Pepper (Dance Editor, Dance International magazine). At Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre, Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, SFU Woodwards, 7pm. FREE And on the night of each show, join us for the pre-show chat when Hervé Koubi (Artistic Director, Compagnie Hervé Koubi) will converse with Kaija Pepper (Editor, Dance International Magazine) about his work and the piece you are about to see. 7:15pm in the upstairs lobby of the Vancouver Playhouse. And finally, for professional and advanced pre-professional dancers, members of Compagnie Hervé KOUBI will offer a masterclass April 6 10-11:30am at Harbour Dance Centre - for more info on the class contact For further information contact Francesca Piscopo at francesca@dancehouse.ca.

If you are reading this before 5pm today March 31 you still have time to make it down to Creative Collaboration, a panel discussion and sharing of works in progress exploring collaboration across different artf orms, with artists from The Dance Centre’s Artist-in-Residence and DanceLab programs and their collaborators: Lesley Telford and poet Barbara Adler; Natalie Tin Yin Gan and theatre director/dramaturg Eury Chang; Emmalena Fredriksson and visual artist Nancy Lee; Moderated by Peter Dickinson. For more info. Free admission - all welcome! At the Scotiabank Dance Centre, 5pm

Photo: Lesley Telford | Inverso by David Cooper

April 1 New Works at Night presents Raices y Alas Flamenco with the premiere of del Mar. This multimedia collaboration between percussive dancers centres around the theme of water – its sounds and movements, the forms it takes and the stories it inspires. The work combines traditional elements of flamenco with unexpected modes of music, dance and visual expression. At the Waterfront Theatre, 1412 Cartwright St (Granville Island),  8:00pm For guaranteed seats or pay what you can at the door: Suggested $20 adults; $5 Children under 12

For lovers of the ballet classics Monday, April 3 the Royal Moscow Ballet presents Don Quixote! Don Quixote can rightfully be called one of the most popular performances in the Royal Moscow Ballet’s repertoire. Perfectly synchronized, smooth and precise, there is a special charm to the performance that draws the viewer into the story. Here is the temperament, the emotion and the fascination of Old Spain wrapped up in a classic story of adventure, misadventure and love. At the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, 7:30 PM. Tix 

BJM in Kosmos. Photo Ignio Cereminga

A busy week in store…

DanceHouse has much to do and see coming up this month! Tuesday February 21, in Speaking of Dance, we will look at Identity and Location: Immigration and cultural integration. What are the challenges and opportunities of being an immigrant artist? With speakers Rosario Ancer (Artistic Director, Flamenco Rosario and Vancouver International Flamenco Festival) Henry Daniel (Professor of Dance and Performance Studies, SFU’s School for the Contemporary Arts) and Choreographer Chengxin Wei (Artistic Director, Moving Dragon Contemporary Dance), and moderated by Georgia Straight Dance Critic and Arts Editor Janet Smith, this conversation will facilitate dance spectators to deepen their understanding, and develop their observation and interpretation, of dance. At the Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre, Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, SFU Woodwards, 7pm. FREE! 

Thursday February 23 DanceHouse sponsors a masterclass with BJM (Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal) for professional and advanced pre-professional dancers. At Harbour Dance Centre, 10 to 11:30pm. For info and to register francesca@dancehouse.ca

And to round the week off - the big event! Friday and Saturday February 24 and 25, DanceHouse presents BJM (Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal) in an evening of mixed repertoire with works by Foniadakis, Galili and Pederneiras (of the much loved Brazilian company Grupo Corpo). Check out a review of their visit to Victoria last year. BJM has earned the title « feel good company », often employed by both the public and the media. Displaying its radiant and expressive style, BJM explores the creative side of contemporary trends, yet is still firmly committed to classical aesthetics. Making a conscious effort to remain accessible, BJM brings to stage creations, which speak to both neophytes and informed audiences. At the Vancouver Playhouse, 8pm and don’t forget the Pre Show Talk at 7:15pm in the upstairs lobby where Janet Smith (Arts Editor, Georgia Straight) will be in conversation with Louis Robitaille, Artistic Director of BJM. Tix

For the past month, MMP Artistic Director, Martha Carter, along with collaborators Soressa Gardener (electronic composer), Debra Jean Creelman (singer, songwriter), Cassandra Naud (dancer) and Joanna Garfinkel (dramaturg), have been guiding a group of Vancouver teenagers in weekly workshops at the Coal Harbour Community Centre. These workshops focus on creative process, opening up possibilities for realization in music, creation and dance. On Sunday February 12 an open rehearsal will give the audience a peek into the workshops’ activities, as well as some works-in-progress by the teen participants. Scotiabank Dance Centre, Faris Family Studio 4-5pm FREE

Sunday February 12 New Works presents Dance Allsorts with Cause and Effect Circus in In The New Conformity. Three of the west coast’s favourite jugglers team up to create an award-winning show that is a theatrical social commentary packed with high-level circus skills bringing to light a universal struggle of the modern age: the comfort of conformity versus the freedom of individuality, all told through tightly choreographed prop manipulation, martial arts and physical theatre. As always performance at 2:00pm, followed by Q&A with the artists and then a free workshop at 3:15pm, open to all ages and abilities. At the Roundhouse Community Centre. For advanced tix

Kaha:wi Dance Theatre presents NeoIndigenA

February 15 to 18 Kaha:wi Dance Theatre presents NeoIndigenA, a full-length solo performance from award-winning artistic director, choreographer, and performer Santee Smith (TransMigration), exploring our relationship to ancestors, the living universe, and renewal. The spellbinding score features elemental voices of Inuit singers Tanya Tagaq and Nelson Tagoona with musical composition by Cris Derksen, Jesse Zubot, Michael Red, and Adrian Harjo. Check out the trailer. At the Cultch 8PM, matinee Feb 19 2PM, artist talkback Feb 16, 8PM

Thursday to Saturday February 16 to 18, as part of the Chutzpah! Festival (more about that next week!) Tara Cheyenne Performance + Silvia Gribaudi collide and embrace in a new collaboration  empty.swimming.pool which navigates the role of comedy as a catalyst to understanding and communication, addressing questions of gender, culture and language along the way. Both these seriously funny women have crafted their own expert blends of physicality and characterization to create hilarious but poignant works, which reflect on the absurdities of life and what it means to be human. Featuring an original soundscape composed and performed live by musician Marc Stewart, empty.swimming.pool is a cocktail of dance, theatre and voice, spiced with acute observations and subversive humour. At the Scotiabank Dance Centre, 8pm. Tix

Tuesday Feb 14 Teaching Wildness: in December, in response to a Talking, Thinking, Dancing Body discussion around the body, control and consent, Su-Feh initiated a conversation for pedagogues to come together in order to share ideas and strategies towards, as bell hooks says, “teaching to transgress”. The response has been rather enthusiastic and those at battery opera have decided to keep it going as a regular thing. They encourage teachers from all disciplines to attend. Some of the questions we have been discussing in the last few meetings have been: What is the alternative to compliance as the default value?
What does consent look like in class? What does it mean to teach your students how to say no? All welcome. There will be chocolate. 5-7pm at The Hopbopshop 150 McLean Drive (at Powell), Vancouver, BC

Can you believe it - snow? But don’t let it deter you to go out and see some dance - it will warm your heart!

We are so excited to tell you about DanceHouse’s second show of the season: BJM (Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal) February 24 and 25! Last presented by DanceHouse in 2013, Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal (BJM) returns with a triple bill. Rouge, choreographed by Rodrigo Pederneiras of Brazilian company Grupo Corpo, is direct, genuine and raw, an ode to resilience and a tribute to indigenous peoples and their musical and cultural legacy. For Kosmos, Greek choreographer Andonis Foniadakis finds inspiration in the world around us and the excitement people experience every day in a city; moments of reunion, gathering and let go. In Israeli choreographer Itzik Galili’s Mono Lisa, two dancers execute incredible acrobatics in a factory-like atmosphere filled with sounds and visions of iron and steel – a breathtaking pas de deux executed with absolute mastery. Check out some video footage of the upcoming show. At the Vancouver Playhouse, 8pm (pre show chat 7:15pm in the upstairs lobby). Tix

BJM in Mona Lisa. Photo Alan Kohf

The Cultch, in collaboration with the PuSH Festival, presents Quote Unquote Collective in Association with Why Not Theatre (Toronto) continues until Saturday February 4 with Mouthpiece. Mouthpiece follows one woman, for one day, as she tries to find her voice. The push and the pull, the past and the present, the progress and the regression: this is the inner conflict that exists within a modern woman’s head. Interweaving a cappella harmony, text, and movement – Mouthpiece is a harrowing, humourous, and heart-wrenching journey into the female pysche. At the Cultch, 8pm. Tix

Alessandro Sciarroni FOLK-S, Will you still love me tomorrow? Photo Matteo Maffesanti

Thursday-Saturday February 2-4 the PuSH Festival and The Dance Centre present the Global Dance Connections series with Alessandro Sciarroni in FOLK-S, Will you still love me tomorrow? The boundary-busting works of Italian choreographer Alessandro Sciarroni range freely between dance, theatre, performance art and anthropology. In FOLK-S, he deconstructs the Schuhplattler (‘shoe-beater’), a Bavarian folk dance where the performers slap their shoes and legs with their hands, and refines it to its most essential elements, reactivating the movements in a contemporary context. Six outstanding dancers execute a seemingly limitless series of complex rhythmic sequences, giving an extreme exposition of the multiple variations that a form can take, even to the point of exhaustion. The hammering of bodies transformed into percussion instruments creates a hypnotic sense of ritual, in a spellbinding meditation on time, rhythm and effort. Talikback Friday February 3. At the Scotiabank Dance Centre, 8pm. Tix

Thursday February 9, as part of the Dance Centre Noon Hour Dance Series, Grupo America will treat us to a Latin dance extravaganza! Las Americas is an exuberant explosion of colour, which takes us on a journey through the dances of South and Central America and up to the United States. Vibrant Latin dances such as salsa, tango, cha cha and samba will be performed in addition to captivating traditional folkloric routines that are steeped in culture and history, including Mexican Zapateado, Cumbia, Afro-Latin dances, and more. At the Scotiabank Dance Centre, noon. Tix

Are you in the mood for love (And even if you aren’t…)? Small Stage 35 presents The Valentine’s Edition February 9-12. This is a classic Romeo and Juliet story with a twist – a genre-blending,gender bending, time-transcending twist! Immerse yourself in the age-old exposé of the universal story of love and loss. Small Stage 35: the Valentine’s Edition is a dance portrayal of Romeo and Juliet set on the signature distinctly small stage. Genres include hip hop, jazz, urban street, contemporary, and a few other surprises…(Bring your phone to unlock the full experience.)  Emcees: Lisa Christiansen and Andrea Warner, co-hosts of the popular podcast, Pop This! Works By:Josh Beamish, Heather Dotto
Kim Sato, The Darlings Cabaret and Navid Charkhi + Crew. At the Anza Club, 8pm. Tix

February 9,10,11 the SFU School for the Contemporary Arts presents Momentum, an evening of dances choreographed and performed by students in the School for the Contemporary Arts. All work is original and has been developed over the course of the 2016-2017 school year. These students showcase their creative talents by combining dance specific skills with their wider educational interests at SFU. SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts 149 West Hastings Studio D, 8pm. Tix

Thursday February 9 Itinérant – Choreographer’s space is a time and place for sharing and discussing: ideas, fragments, beginnings, questions…Originally conceived by Montreal choreographers Katie Ward and Dorian Nuskind Oder, now in Vancouver with your hosts Alexa, Erika and Sasha. Please join us!! Be ready to show something and discuss your ideas. What you bring can be developed or very sketchy. It can be raw, messy, a seed idea…or you can talk about an idea or read a snippet of writing. You may present up to 15 minutes.
Showing work is first come first serve. Sign-up starts at 4:15 pm, showing starts at 4:40 to 7pm.  At SFU Woodwards, For more info FREE!

Register NOW for on the MOVE, a is a dynamic career planning and networking conference designed specifically for dance students in the graduating year of their professional programs and emerging artists on the cusp of entering a performance career. The February 24th, 2017 on the MOVE conference is geared to students graduating from dance programs. 

Today’s mantra: spring is around the corner, spring is around the corner….

We know it is early days yet, but a heads up for the upcoming DanceHouse presentation of Toronto Dance Theatre in a celebration of the company’s 50th anniversary with House Mix, February 23 and 24. More details over the coming weeks!

Toronto Dance Theatre Martingales. Photo Guntar Kravis

Tonight, Friday January 26, as part of Club PuSh, Ralph Escamillan presents HINKYPUNK. Striking, subversive and gorgeous to behold, Ralph Escamillan’s dance spectacular has its creator decked out in “sequin skin”—a layer of shiny ornamentation that serves to mask and reveal all at once. The skin conceals identity but expresses intent: to create a walking, breathing signifier. Drag, ballroom and vogue are subcultures that have allowed queer men to express themselves through artifice, and they’re a key inspiration for Escamillan. The HINKYPUNK is a camp cipher for audiences to contemplate—a mystery figure of liberation.The beguiling figure performs on a pedestal—an object for our delight and our study. Everything is up for analysis in this show: the gaze, the body and the artifice with which we create ourselves. This is a sexy, stimulating work—an intellectual swoon. At the Fox Cabaret, 9pm. Tix

Ralph Escamillan in HINKYPUNK. Photo: Richie Lubaton

Thursday-Saturday February 1-3 The Dance Centre Global Dance Connections series, in conjunction with the PuSh Festival, present Daina Ashbee in Pour, a dark and devastating solo. Pour explores the vulnerability and strength of women, using the taboo subject of the menstrual cycle as a departure point and turning it into an object of painful beauty steeped in symbolism. The piece applies imagery from the seal hunt to boldly tackle complex questions about femininity, blood, and the loss of control, deploying the body and voice in an unflinching depiction of suffering and catharsis. Daina Ashbee has quickly become a prolific and prominent Canadian choreographer, whose work is rooted in her relation to the land, the environment and her ancestors. A BC native of Cree, Métis and Dutch heritage, she is now based in Montreal. At the Scotiabank Dance Centre, 8pm. Tix

January 31 - February 2, as part of the PuSh Festival, Vancouver’s Hong Kong Exile presents Foxconn Frequency (no.3): For Three Visible Chinese Performers. Wildly eccentric and marked by an infectious sense of play, this is a deconstructive take on piano pedagogy, manufacturing ethics, and the relationship between labour and sound. That’s right, this is not your average music performance—local upstarts Hong Kong Exile are known for their crazy creativity, and with this show they’ve outdone themselves.Three performers work with seven video outputs, five speakers and 3D printers, performing piano-keyboard drills in which they play with and against each other. There’s so much to enjoy here: the multimedia excess, the virtuosity of famed pianist Vicky Chow and, most refreshingly, the unabashed intellectualism of the project. This is avant-garde radicalism that plays like a video game: dynamic, exuberant and visually arresting. At Performance Works, 7pm. Tix 

Lots to see this week - Enjoy!

It’s here and don’t miss it! Tonight Friday, and tomorrow in DanceHouse’s last show of the year, Compagnie Hervé KOUBI will thrill the audience with What the day owes to the night (Ce que le jour doit a la nuit)! Check out the article in this week’s Georgia Straight to learn more about the beginnings of this unique company made up of twelve Algerian and Burkina Faso dancers, mostly coming from street dance and hip-hop. And if you are still not convinced, watch the teaser here. At the Vancouver Playhouse, 8pm. Tix .And don’t forget to come early for the Pre-show chat at 7:15pm in the upper lobby of the Playhouse.

Compagnie Hervé KOUBI Photo Olivier Soulie

Tonight and tomorrow night April 7 and 8, there is still time to see Zab Maboungou | Compagnie Danse Nyata Nyata in Mozongi. Montreal-based choreographer Zab Maboungou has earned an international reputation for pioneering a unique style which is deeply rooted in traditional African dances, but is imbued with a fiercely contemporary approach. This revival of her seminal 1997 work Mozongi (‘Return’) reveals the potent poetic power that she constructs from movement, bodies and rhythms. Performed by six dancers and two percussionists, Mozongi explores time and memory, motion and stillness, the individual and the group. The electrifying dancing and drumming radiates energy and purpose, and the piece emanates profound wisdom, immense heart and unforgettable spirit. At the Scotiabank Dance Centre, 8pm. Tix

It is always fun to experience dancers performing and working in the intimate studio setting, and you can do just that this Saturday April 8 when Flamenco Rosario Presents an in-studio rehearsal of REGENERACION.  Featured guest performer, Deborah Dawson, a Flamenco Rosario Professional Training Program graduate and now based in France, will be performing along with local aspiring professional dancers and Professional Training Program graduates, Michelle Zaharik and Sula Boxall. They will showcase their personal flamenco styles as they join Flamenco Rosario’s Artistic Director, Rosario Ancer, and Musical Director, Victor Kolstee, on stage. The performance also features guest singer, Stephanie Pedraza. Presenting a new generation of flamenco dancers, this will be a fun, informative and interactive performance followed by a Q+A session. At Flamenco Rosario Studio,102-2083 Alma St. Vancouver, 8pm. Tickets $20/$25 at the door.

April 11, The Dance Centre presents 12 Minutes Max: Studio Showing. 12 Minutes Max supports the development of innovative new short works. Dance artists Carolina Bergonzoni, Jenn Edwards and Greer Whillans give an informal studio showing of works in progress. At the Scotiabank Dance Centre, 6pm. FREE!

April 11 to 15 Hong Kong Exile presents Room 2048. This multi-media dance theatre piece explores the socio-political realities of the Cantonese diaspora, sourcing themes of loss, nostalgia and desire that re-occur with selected works of Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar Wai.  Room 2048 is the work from Vancouver-based interdisciplinary supergroup Hong Kong Exile, known for their loud and striking digital aesthetic, tongue-in-cheek humour, and engagement with cultural politics. Room 2048 — a dream machine — in digital light and smoke, we pursue a history that is not ours. A living past, a dying future, and a stillborn present. We will lie. We will cheat. We will spend thousands of years here. At the Firehall Arts Centre, 8pm Tix 

Hong Kong Exile Room 2048 

April 12 to 15 Tara Cheyenne Performance presents How to be. Choreographer/creator Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg presents an exciting blend of dance and theatre with her signature comic sensibilities. How to Be is a close up look at how we think we “should” be, how we think others “should be,” and the beautiful failure of it all. At the Cultch, 8pm, 2pm matinee April 15. Tix.

And remember, we can’t share your stuff with the dance community if you don’t share it with us first! Send your news, events and other interesting goings on to debora@dancehouse.ca. Thanks, and have a wonderful week!

It is official - welcome to fall!

Happening through to Sunday September 25, plastic orchid factory and SFU Woodward’s Cultural Programs present Digital Folk. This show has been receiving rave reviews! Digital Folk is a video game/costume party, music and dance performance/installation built around the desire to revisit how communities gather to play music, dance and tell stories. It is an interdisciplinary collaboration between dance artist, James Gnam, visual artist, Natalie Purschwitz, lighting designer, James Proudfoot and 11 dance artists that explores a generation’s approach to identity, physicality, social dance and performance. Digital Folk lives as a scale model built out of an in-between world that is not quite a home and not quite a theatre. Where the desire for music, dance and community is focused through the lens of video game culture and technology. Creating an irreverent and interactive world of virtual and physical community, feedback and paradox. Friday and Saturday 7pm, 8pm & 9pm, Sunday 5pm, 6pm & 7pm. At Milton Wong Experimental Theatre, SFU Woodwards. Tix

Friday September 23 Montreal-based dance artist Thea Patterson gives a studio performance of her work ’between the is and the could be’.

To listen this space, to linger here and wait…wait..
This hesitation carves time out of time.
It brackets space, it glimmers.
We glimmer this space into being

‘between the is and the could be’ and Glimmer:
Glimmer in the dance and glimmer in the event are two questions that chase, elude and tease me
First a definition:
Glimmer:
The just coming into form/being of something that is not yet something.
“A pause, a temporal suspension animated by the sense that something is coming into existence” (Kathleen Stewart)

This event is hosted through the artistic residency of Justine A. Chambers. At the Scotiabank Dance Centre, 3-4pm. FREE

As part of the Dance Centre’s Discover Dance series Shiamak’s Bollywood Jazz performs on Thursday September 29 at noon. Originally springing from India’s booming film industry, Bollywood dance has become its own wildly popular genre, mashing together jazz, folk and modern influences with lavish costumes and inventive props. The Shiamak Dance Team, Vancouver will get your toes tapping with a colourful, high-energy performance bursting with infectious rhythms, vitality and fun. At the Scotiabank Dance Centre, noon. Tix

September 29 and 30 New Works opens it’s season with Porno Death Cult, an exploration of faith and faithlessness, life and death from dance-theatre guru Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg, Porno Death Cult is infused with her signature humour and pathos. In a pilgrimage through a strange landscape of longing, a woman, a preacher, and a god, come face to face with each other, and the unanswerable questions that contort our collective perceptions. Director Marcus Youssef (Neworld Theatre) lends his unique style and impeccable eye to this quirky, idiosyncratic fusion of text, dance, character, and prayer for something better. At the Roundhouse Performance Centre, 8pm. Tix $20 in advance, $25 at the door.

Photo by Wendy D: Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg Porno Death Cult

Coming up starting October 7 (but registration is NOW) are a series of dance and poetry workshops for immigrant and refugee youth. Participate in a series of 10 free dance (creative movement) and poetry workshops for immigrant and refugee youth (14 - 24 years old) with professional artists from diverse backgrounds. Learn about your new Canadian homeland through dance, creative writing, theatre games, music, new media and video arts. You will have the opportunity to attend FREE dance performances as well as participate in cultural field trips within the Lower Mainland to learn about your new home. No experience required. Meet new people, make new friends, learn something new and have fun! For more info

And remember, we can’t share your stuff with the dance community if you don’t share it with us first! Send your news, events and other interesting goings on to debora@dancehouse.ca. Thanks, and have a wonderful week!

How nice is this extended summer we are having?

Tero Saarinen Morphed. 

We are just three weeks out to the opening of the DanceHouse season! October 27 and 28, in the spirit of Finland’s centennial, DanceHouse is pleased to present the acclaimed work of celebrated Finnish choreographer Tero Saarinen. In Morphed, seven male dancers seduce, challenge, demand and swagger, borrowing from casual street dance, Gene Kelly musicals, classical 19th century and modern dance. Saarinen masterfully crafts a fresh exploration of masculinity undaunted by the extremes of sensitivity and heroism, and all that lies between. Dance Magazine says “A seldom-seen, wondrous combination of hardness and softness brings out the potential of dance.” Check out a video of the work here, and tickets are available here - it is not too late to buy a subscription to the whole season, or single tickets are available also. At the Vancouver Playhouse, 8pm

Co-presented by DanceHouse and SFU Woodward’s, Speaking of Dance Conversations is a series of free public dialogues and roundtable conversations about the world of dance, contextualizing it within culture and society. Presented by noted writers, choreographers and creative thinkers, Speaking of Dance is a platform for everyone to share and develop their observation and interpretation of dance. The first of these conversations Cultural Policies in a Global World: a Comparison, moderated by Janet Smith, is on Tuesday October 24, 7pm at the  Djavad Mowafahian World Art Centre, SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts (149 West Hastings Street). FREE

Thursday October 12 as part of the Dance Centre’s Discover Dance! series, get set for VanTap Romp, a percussive extravaganza with a troupe of accomplished and entertaining dancers! Featuring guest artist Terry Brock and friends, this exhilarating program showcases the infectious rhythms, technical skill and musicality of tap, tracing its vibrant history and its contemporary innovations. The dancers will ‘lay down some iron’ and create a rhythmic conversation full of zest and charm. For more info go to the Vancouver Tap Dance Society. At the ScotiaBank Dance Centre, noon. Tix 

Thursday-Saturday October 12-14, The Dance Centre presents as part of its Global Dance Connections series Compañia Sharon Fridman in                   Hasta Dónde…? + All Ways. One of a new generation of sensational Israeli choreographers, Sharon Fridman has taken the dance world by storm since establishing his company in Madrid a decade ago. His athletic, adventurous work is rooted in contact improvisation techniques, filtered through an innate musicality and an eye for design. Hasta Dónde…? explores the relationship between two men as it evolves through dependency, struggle and harmony. The endlessly fluid lifts and tumbles are propelled by a wonderful surging score. Fridman’s latest work All Ways is a meditation on the multiple paths before us: seven outstanding dancers power through an extreme physical and emotional spectrum, which ranges from fierce urgency to calm contemplation. At the ScotiaBank Dance Centre, 8pm. Tix

This is exciting: October 13, 2017 - 11am + 8pm
October 14, 2017 - 2pm + 8pm Dances for a Small Stage presents Small Stage: Act 1, specially designed for kids and parents who are never able to make it to a Small Stage show due to the age restrictions.  At the BMO Theatre Centre, and tix are only $12! Tix

Animal Triste  Photo: Mathieu Doyon

October 19, 20 & 21 plastic orchid factory & MAYDAY/Mélanie Demers present
Animal Triste. In the world’s grand parade, humans are nothing more than sad little animals. Prisoners of a hidden biology that guides their every step. In MAYDAY/Mélanie Demers’ Animal Triste, a national cast of stellar, inexhaustible performers grapple with this inner turmoil. With setbacks and vagaries of living together. Neither quite man nor woman, slaves to their desires and anxious to escape them, they are terrestrial beings, wild animals, angels and demons. Side by side, these domesticated primates rush towards something: their ruin, most likely. “The result is a pivotal work.” (C. Lalonde, Le Devoir). At the Scotiabank Dance Centre, 8pm. Tix

Keep it coming - so much dance this month!

Toronto Dance Theatre in Echo Park. Photo Guntar Kravis

Next week, February 23 and 24, DanceHouse brings the iconic Toronto Dance Theatre to Vancouver to celebrate the company’s 50th anniversary with House Mix, a retrospective program showcasing five diverse works by choreographer Christopher House. “As an artist, [House] might be compared to Richard Serra, that most choreographic of sculptors, so attentive to curves, planes, elevations, rises, landings and, above all, footing, reconfiguring ever more ordinary, unadorned and consistent steps into original, affective and solid dance forms.” – Ben Portis, The Dance Current. Don’t miss this exciting program! For more info and to buy tickets. At the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, 8pm. Come early to hear the pre-show talk with Christopher House, hosted by Pia Lo. 7:15PM each night in the Vancouver Playhouse Upper Lobby.

With the TDT performance in mind, on Tuesday February 20, DanceHouse’s Speaking of Dance presents Vancouver and Toronto’s Cultural Scenes in the 70s: A Comparison. Moderated by Pia Lo (Dance journalist and blogger at Globe Dancer), in conversation with Megan Andrews (Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Performance Studies, School for Contemporary Arts at SFU), Kate Bird (Author of Vancouver in the Seventies: Photos From a Decade That Changed the City) and Cheryl Prophet (Senior Lecturer, Dance at the School for Contemporary Arts at SFU). Co-presented with Sfu Woodward’s Cultural Programs.Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre, SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, 7pm  FREE

And for you dancers out there, don’t miss the opportunity to take a master class with some of the exceptional artists of TDT! For details of time and place, go here. All classes have limited capacity and require advanced registration, and we strongly suggest grabbing your spot now!

The 2018 Chutzpah! Festival opens February 16 and 17 with Ezralow Dance (USA). Award-winning choreographer / director / multi-media artist Daniel Ezralow‘s unique style of physical expression and articulate choreography has earned him a distinguished reputation as a groundbreaking artist worldwide. In his new show OPEN, Ezralow mingles contemporary dance with playful humour, provocative ideas, striking visuals, and an unforgettable classical score. At the Norman Rothstein Theatre. Tix and more info.

On Tuesday February 20, MascallDance presents the first in a series of BLOOM! Twice annually in the West End twilight, historic St Paul’s Church Hall comes alive at cocktail hour.   On two consecutive Tuesdays, local dance veteran MascallDance throws open its doors for an unusual kind of “tasting.” Audiences join up-and-coming dancers and choreographers to sample unique pairings of dances and wines with a comedy chaser.  This year BLOOM is thrilled to announce the participation of Lisa Haley, a young sommelier currently taking the town by storm.  Restaurant & Wine Director of Gastown’s award-winning L'Abattoir Restaurant and recipient of Vancouver Magazine’s 2017 Sommelier of the Year, Haley joins the dance crew to pair wine selections with the flavour and mood of each creation. Well-known local comedian, playwright, poet and actor Jenn Griffin tops off the show, sharing the mic with Haley with short comic commentaries on each dance.  For audiences, it’s a light-hearted way to wind down after work and support the next generation of Vancouver’s best and brightest. For artists, it’s the culmination of a six week residency offering them the rare opportunity to focus on their art with MascallDance resources and consult with Artistic Director, Jennifer Mascall, whose decades of outstanding invention need no introduction locally or nationally.  Don’t miss this opportunity to catch dance creators Luciana Freire D’Ancinciação, Lara Amalie Abadir, Eowynn Enquist, Isak Enquist, Levana Irena, Clay Nikiforuk, Stefan Smulovitz and Marissa Wong as they share a taste of their choreographies in progress.   TICKETS are only $10 and include wine tasters - at the door. At St Pauls Church, 1130 Jervis St. Door open at 4:30, show at 5:30

Tuesday February 20, the Dance Centre has a studio showing of 12 Minutes Max artists Immigrant Lessons (Kevin Fraser, Alyssa Amarshi), Olivia Shaffer, Damarise Ste Marie, and Sujit Vaidya. 12 Minutes Max seeks to foster experimentation and the development of a choreographic idea or work-in-progress, along with critical feedback and community dialogue from a creative community of performers, facilitators, and audience, with a primary focus on the choreographic process from development to presentation. At the Scotiabank Dance Centre, 6pm. FREE

Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg I Can’t Remember the Word for I Can’t Remember.

February 21 to 24, Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg premieres her new work I Can’t Remember the Word for I Can’t Remember. This piece has been described as stand-up comedy with dance. Funny, poignant and intimate. No fourth wall needed. A new solo created in collaboration with Vancouver director/writer/actor, John Murphy. Mining the missing files of memory, the boxes into which we misplace ourselves, and the inexplicably of….you…know…this…thing…Check out a promo video of the work here. Also on the program is a new piece by Chick Snipper, Unnecessary. An older woman seeks redemption and recognition through public performance. Having been inspired by Rabih Alamedinne’s novel An Unnecessary Woman, Chick felt compelled to create a solo for long time collaborator Anne Cooper, revealing the aloneness, vulnerability and vitality of an ‘older woman’. At the Firehall Arts Centre, 8pm. Tix 

DanceLab: Margaret Grenier/Dancers of Damelahamid. Photo Chris Randle

Sunday February 25 come to a studio showing of DanceLab: Margaret Grenier/Dancers of Damelahamid. The Dancers of Damelahamid are developing a new multi-media dance work, Mînowin, that integrates narrative, movement, song, and multi media design, connecting to landscapes from contemporary perspectives of customary Indigenous dance forms. Mînowin describes how we clarify direction, as we recover and reinterpret the teachings that define and redefine who we are, and that are accessed through story, dance and song. The piece will explore the moments where we connect with one another, moments that bring new life into our artistic practices, the upheaval and rebalancing, and places of renewal for each generation as we redefine ourselves. At the Scotiabank Dance Centre, 4-5pm. FREE