The Global Dance Connections contemporary dance series runs from October 2010 to April 2011 and brings you exciting works from local, national and international artists. October sees the premiere of Helen Walkley's stunning new solo and Toronto-based Susanna Hood's devastating She's Gone Away. In the spring we welcome Company Drift from Zurich, Serge Bennathan's new work for Les Productions Figlio, and Alvin Erasga Tolentino's new collaboration with the magnetic Uruguayan dance artist Martin Inthamoussú. Click here for full season details.
Subscribe and save! Book for a package of three or more shows and save up to 25% on your tickets! For further details and to book please call us at 604.606.6420, email ticketsATthedancecentreDOTca or download an order form here. Single tickets are available through www.ticketstonight.ca
Helen Walkley(Vancouver) How is sleep beautiful? World premiere Friday-Saturday October 1-2, 8pm Post-show artist talkback October 2 Presented through The Dance Centre's Artist-in-Residence program A compelling performer whose original and deeply felt work evokes a powerful response, Helen Walkley's artistry resists simple definition. She has an uncanny sense of time and space; her fine and supple dancing is both enigmatic and engaging. Walkley's new solo is a richly-textured memoir, a story of heart, a story of wishes and dreams, of love and aspiration, of family and confusion, and of death as a transformation. How is sleep beautiful? has been created in collaboration with composer James Maxwell, lighting designer John Webber and sculptor John Noestheden.
Moves on levels that transcend straightforward dance. The GeorgiaStraight on Helen Walkley Duration: approx 50 minutes
Susanna Hood(Toronto) She's Gone Away Vancouver premiere Thursday-Saturday October 7-9, 8pm Post-show artist talkback October 8 Co-presented with Presentation House Theatre www.phtheatre.org She's Gone Away is a theatrical tour de force conceived and created by the extraordinary performer Susanna Hood with co-composer Nilan Perera and director Jennifer Tarver. Sexuality, female power, healing, and loss of innocence are explored through the combined language of movement, song, poetic text, instrumental music, and visual design. A woman in the fragmented home of her mind battles to stay in her body, spinning through a cycle of animal states that provide both the escape from and the clues back to her integrated self. Featuring a courageous performance of absolute commitment from Hood, this physical and emotional journey throws us into the depths of voracity, bravado, dread, despair, and release.
Explores female sexual power in a haunting visceral style... Brilliant and chilling. Eye Weekly, Toronto www.humdansoundart.com Duration: 60 minutes This performance contains adult content
Company Drift (Zurich) sound machine BC premiere Thursday-Saturday January 27-29, 8pm Post-show artist talkback January 28 Presented with the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival Consider how science might investigate some of life's more absurd scientific questions: how can the inaudible be made audible? How does a fly scream when it bumps into a burning hot light bulb? What does Mr Fish say to Ms Fish when he asks for her fin in marriage? What does the rose whisper when the sun comes up? In sound machine, the internationally acclaimed Swiss ensemble Company Drift gathers these and other 'inaudible' noises and mixes them with dance, theatre, sound and video to exhibit a dreamlike world that is profound and surreal, tragic and witty, and continually surprising.
Laugh-out loud hilarious and endlessly inventive, Company Drift's work blurred the borders between dance, theater and music... a dazzling highlight. San Diego Union Tribune www.pushfestival.cawww.drift.ch Duration: 55 minutes
Les Productions Figlio (Vancouver) Conversations World premiere Thursday-Saturday February 10-12, 8pm Post-show artist talkback February 11 Co-presented with the Chutzpah! Festival Serge Bennathan, Artistic Director of Les Productions Figlio, is not only an award-winning and internationally renowned choreographer, but also a writer, painter and opera director whose works move between dance, theatre and text with fluent ease. Conversations is an imaginary encounter between the great Spanish poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca, who was murdered by pro-Franco militias in 1936, and his assassin, Juan Luis Trescastro. Meshing movement, text, music, lighting and set design, the work examines the poetic and philosophical exchanges between the two men, portrayed on stage by the magnetic Billy Marchenski and Danny Wild.
Co. ERASGA/Complot (Vancouver/Montevideo) Expose World premiere Thursday-Saturday April 14-16, 8pm Post-show artist talkback April 15 Expose brings together two exceptional male solo artists: Co. ERASGA's Alvin Erasga Tolentino, whose innovative and sophisticated works have toured around the world, and Complot's Martin Inthamoussú, a driving force in Uruguay's contemporary dance scene, whose passionate works often grapple with provocative socio-political ideas. Linked by their distinctive cross-cultural sensibilities, and a personal creative expression rooted in the experiences of gay life, their first collaboration creates a spellbinding theatrical and physical dialogue. Identity, gender, isolation, displacement, sex and acceptance drive an evocative choreographic landscape mapped from two striking choreographic visions.
Martin Inthamoussú is considered one of the cutting edge choreographers in Uruguay and his work... a turning point in the dance community. El Observador, Uruguay A serious tour de force, Tolentino stretches our understanding of what dance can be. The Vancouver Sun www.companyerasgadance.cawww.ciacomplot.com Duration: approx 60 minutes