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In its 35th year and working on building back after the pandemic, the Dancing on the Edge Festival returns with all its creativity, collaboration and innovative choreography from July 6 to July 15. As Canada’s longest running professional dance festival, it emerges with a range of cutting-edge works focusing on themes such as identity, ancestry,…
Artistic director Julia Taffe’s Vancouver-based Aeriosa Dance Society merges elements of vertical dance and rock climbing in the theatrical work New Artists and Approaches in Vertical Dance, part of Scotiabank Dance Society’s Discover Dance! Series. This noon-hour show on May 18 at the Scotiabank Dance Centre features Landon Krentz, Deaf ASL Theatre performer, and dance group…
Coming full circle from 2003 to 2023, the Dancers of Damelahamid are back at The Dance Centre on March 30th. Their performance of Spirit and Tradition, a sizeable production for family audiences, is described as “conveying important cultural teachings on balance, interconnectedness and community through dramatic dance and intricate masks and regalia.” “This work speaks to…
From Soweto and Johannesburg and through Belgium, France, Spain, London, Germany, Austria and Hungary, choreographer Gregory Maqoma is bringing Broken Chord to the Vancouver public. Presented by DanceHouse and Vancouver New Music, the Canadian premiere of choreographer and performer Maqoma and musical director Thuthuka Sibisi’s Broken Chord will take the stage from Feb. 23 to 25 at the Vancouver…
The 5th edition of Matriarchs Uprising Festival features new contemporary Indigenous dance works from Atamira Dance Company, O.Dela Arts + Pepper’s Ghost Media Collective, Kaha:Wi Dance Theatre, Samantha Sutherland, Sophie Dow, Vancouver DTES Grandmother’s Collective and more! The week of Feb. 13–18 will include masterclasses, community workshops and Talking Truths circle conversations both at the…
A deep connection to the past requires the unique group sound and the raw emotion of the solo performance. The Marrow, a quartet that melds the styles of Persian and Arabic music with Western Jazz, brings an exciting, multicultural style to Hermann’s Jazz Club in Victoria on Jan 29, and Capilano University Theatre on Jan.…
Joshua Beamish/MOVETHECOMPANY presents the world premiere of Source Amnesia, an exploration of false memory and the fragility of truth, in which five Vancouver-based contemporary dance artists navigate a reality in constant flux in an age of misinformation and information manipulation. “I am thrilled to bring together such a talented group of dance artists from Vancouver to…
Search for the beauty within an unshaped space, says Usha Upta when she brings Khoj – A Contemporary Kathak Dance Extravaganza to The Firehall from Wednesday, Sept. 21 to Saturday, Sept. 24. “Just like how the ocean is always moving with the currents and the flow of the waves, we also move endlessly, from our beating heart…
Indian Canadian dancer and choreographer Sujit Vaidya explores queerness, sensuality, and movement in his performance of Off Centre at Performance Works on July 12, as part of the Indian Summer Festival. The performer has challenged himself to express his queer identity within a very traditional dance form. Bharatanatyam is said to be the oldest classical dance form…
Kunji Mark Ikeda uses family stories and artistic expression to navigate challenging life experiences in Sansei: The Storyteller at the Chan Centre Apr. 28–29. The show follows Ikeda as he brings the audience through his family’s experiences in Canada’s Japanese internment camps during World War II. Drawing on interviews with family members and his own experiences, Ikeda…
A low-level clerk arrives at a remote government complex where all the officials mistake him as a high-ranking inspector. Since they all have secrets that they fear being exposed, they do everything they can to appease him. This is the plot of Revisor – Government Inspector in Russian – Nikolai Gogol’s story of mistaken identity…
Gregory Maqoma’s Via Kanana opens with one word projected onto a white screen: corrupt. The Soweto-born choreographer brings together the traditional township dance of pantsula with contemporary counterparts to create a performance that emulates both struggle and hope. Under South Africa’s apartheid regime, black rural populations were displaced to the townships that surround big cities. In these…
An epic award-winning international dance performance Babel 7.16 will be on offer to the Canadian audiences through DIGIDANCE webcast from Dec. 8 to 19, 2021. With a cast of 22 dancers from 15 different countries, Babel 7.16 weaves together dance, music, and theatre in a two-hour production to explore the complexity, chaos and possibilities that arise when different people…
