Dance Victoria Footnotes 65 (Spring 2020)

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ISSUE 65 • SPRING 2020 • Ballet BC + Tania Pérez-Salas Compañía de Danza + 2020/21 Season + more…

Dance at the Royal , Videos + s o phot fo more in eb w on the

Ballet BC

Romeo + Juliet March 13 + 14 • 7:30 pm Royal Theatre

LEAD SPONSORS

Running Time: 2 hours and 18 minutes (including intermission)

Tania Pérez-Salas Compañía de Danza

Ex-Stasis & 3.Catorce Dieciséis (3.1416) May 1 + 2 • 7:30 pm Royal Theatre LEAD SPONSOR

Photo: Ballet BC dancers Gilbert Small and Emily Chessa in Romeo + Juliet. Photo by Michael_Slobodian.

Running Time: 1 hour and 15 minutes (including intermission)

Announcing the 2020/21 Season Diverse. Dynamic. Daring.

2 Footnotes • Issue 65 • Spring 2020

Dance Victoria brings the World’s Best Dance to the Royal Theatre and supports the development of new dance for the international stage from its studios in Quadra Village. Dance Victoria is a non-profit charitable society. DanceVictoria.com

Dance Seen Balletic Irony

BY STEPHEN WHITE

Dance Victoria Board: Susan K.E. Howard

Treasurer

Emily Zeng

Directors

Stacey Horton Robert Millar Colin Nicol Kirsty Thomson

Staff: Executive Producer Stephen White General Manager Bernard Sauvé Operations Manager Shireen McNeilage Marketing Manager Tracy Smith Accounting Julie Collins Studio Bookings and Marketing Assistant Caitlin Mooney-Fu Production Manager Holly Vivian Events Manager Deborah Bricks Graphic Design Rayola Creative Advertising Sales Bonnie Light Advertising If you’d like to volunteer for Dance Victoria please visit DanceVictoria.com and complete the online volunteer form.

Studios and Office: 111 – 2750 Quadra Street Victoria, BC V8T 4E8 250-595-1829 DanceVictoria.com for trailers, tickets and more information Footnotes is written by Tracy Smith and Stephen White (unless otherwise noted).

MY SISTER-IN-LAW Jan brought a friend to our February presentation of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo. At the first intermission, that friend leaned over to Jan and said, “I thought this was an all-male company.”

It was magical how gender disappeared as the evening ensued. Sure, it was pretty funny at first, men in tutus stomping about, intimidating each other, but as the performance continued the comedy, for me, grew more sophisticated. I was laughing so hard I was crying in the second act when the company brilliantly spoofed Balanchine. It was such smart comedy, I’m sure Balanchine himself would have snickered.

And of course, in the third act it was almost all dancing, proving (if there was any doubt by that point) just how strong these dancers are.

In our curtain warmer before the show started, Bernard and I had some fun when we said we were thrilled to bring classical ballet back to the Royal Theatre by popular demand. Bernard said, “We heard you!” Then in rapid fire we told the audience that tonight they’d see “tutus, pointe shoes, arabesques and pas de deux!” There was plenty of laughter. We left the stage thinking that we were pretty funny.

But then, during the two intermissions and at the reception after the show, we heard it bubbling through the crowd, “Isn’t it wonderful to see classical ballet again?” or “I wish we could see more classical ballet!” And then, after the show was over, as they left the theatre, more than one audience member stopped at the door to say, “When will we classical ballet again at the Royal Theatre?”

Wait a minute, didn’t we just see some high camp parody of ballet? Were we at the same show? Didn’t we just experience a group of dancers skewering ballet and all its pretentions?

We programmed the Trocks because we thought it would be fun. We didn’t expect it to whet the appetite for more classical ballet. I am still flummoxed. How can this be? Dance Victoria’s audience never stops amazing and (sometimes) amusing me. FN

A note about the coming season We’re calling it diverse, dynamic and daring! Once again, we are standing proudly behind our mission to bring the World’s Best Dance to the Royal Theatre. As a subscriber you’ll experience diverse cultures, dynamic dance styles and daring technique from France/Algiers, Cuba and the US. The final show of the new season puts the icing on the cake: the return of Ballet Hispánico in a Special 50th Anniversary production choreographed

by Annabelle Ochoa Lopez titled Doña Perón based on the life of Eva Peron, direct from its New York City Center’s world premiere just the week before it lands at the Royal!

Photos: Stephen White by Tracy Smith. Ballet Hispánico dancer Gabrielle Sprauve by Rachel Neville.

President

DanceVictoria.com • 3

Dance Victoria Legacy Giving Program Update Presented by Chair, Dance Victoria Legacy Giving Program

We’re very pleased to announce that Board Director, Kirsty Thomson, has stepped forward to Chair our growing Legacy Giving Program. In recent years, a community of visionary donors have approached us with an interest in including Dance Victoria (a charitable non-profit society) in their estate planning.

Their generous support will ensure our organization’s sustainability well into the future.

Thomson, owner of Willow Wealth Management of Raymond James Ltd., has many years’ experience as a financial advisor. “I believe in the power of performing arts as a positive force in our community. Leaving a legacy in support of this endeavour can and should be very fulfilling. I am here to help and ensure that it is.”

For more information about Dance Victoria’s Legacy Giving Program, please call our office at 250-595-1829 or you can contact Kirsty directly at 250-405-2480 to learn more about how you can reach your personal financial goals while also ensuring the future of Dance Victoria. FN

2020/21 Season Diverse.

Dynamic.

Daring. ge Turn pa 21 for 20/ ! o Seas n

Photos: Compagnie Hervé Koubi in What the day owes to the night. Photo © Nathalie Sternalski. Kidd Pivot in Revisor by Michael Slobodian.

FREE Pre-Show Chats Presented by

Join us in the lobby of the Royal Theatre at 6:50 pm before Ballet BC and Tania Pérez-Salas Compañía de Danza at the Friday and Saturday performances — a lively conversation about the evenings’ works hosted by Dr. Allana Lindgren, dance historian and Acting Dean of Fine Arts at the University of Victoria. Ballet BC’s Artistic Director Emily Molnar will join us on March 13 and 14.

Subscription Renewals Revising our Revisor Thank You Dance Victoria is grateful for the support from a group of local donors to the commission of Kidd Pivot’s Revisor. It has come to our attention that we failed to credit three donors in our house program. These include Susan Porter and Murray Jacobs, and Sharon Walls. We wish to thank these individuals for their commitment to supporting the development of new work.

Renew your subscription for Dance Victoria’s 2020/21 Season by 5:00 pm, Saturday, April 4 if you want to retain or upgrade your current seats. Phone 250-386-6121 or visit the McPherson or Royal Box Office, Monday through Saturday: 10:00am to 5:00pm.

(The Royal closes for lunch from 1:30 to 2 pm each day.) If you have not renewed by 5:00 pm on Saturday, April 4, your seats will be released. The Royal and McPherson Box Office will be closed throughout the month for April for seat allocations opening again on May 4, 2020 for public sales.

If you did not receive your renewal form at the theatre or in the mail, give us a call at the office at 250-595-1829. We’ll make sure you have all the information you need to renew.

4 Footnotes • Issue 65 • Spring 2020

An Interview with Incoming Artistic Director of Ballet BC and Choreographer of Romeo + Juliet

Medhi Walerski

BY JANET SMITH, ARTS EDITOR/DANCE WRITER, THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT JS: You’re coming at it in a different way, from the outside, then?

MW: Of course, when I think of story ballet I think of classical ballet, but this piece is almost an homage to classical ballet. I’ve been watching a lot of ballets of Romeo and Juliet and the way that they’ve portrayed Shakespeare’s play. But of course, I find my own voice and interests in the story. It’s almost like opening a door that hasn’t been opened with what I’ve seen…. So, I wanted to stay close to the story, but I wanted to develop certain parts that caught my interest.

JS: So what really spoke to you in the story?

MW: It’s what happens to you when you know that the only way out is to die, and what happens to you when you die. Like that moment when Mercutio is dying and he’s trying to contain himself because he’s such a party guy. What happens to you in this time between being hurt and then the moment when you really die, when you separate from your physical body? It’s like a time lapse in a way that I thought was interesting to look at. I connect to this because of the age I’m at. When I was in my 20s, people got married and had children, But now in my 30s people are dying around me. Death was not part of my journey before as a human being.

JS: Was the decision made early on that you wanted to use Prokofiev’s lush romantic score?

MW: Yes. It was from day one and was from the first discussion of collaborating with Ballet BC on Romeo + Juliet. I didn’t hesitate. I thought about adding a soundscape but it was not needed. This was like the gene, the DNA of the piece.

Medhi Walerski: I’ve been trying to keep myself away from story ballet for so many years because it was not what I wanted to do. And also, how I developed as a choreographer was not related to telling a story; it was more abstract, and I had different interests. But funny enough, and I said it just this morning, I am so happy that I got the chance, that I got offered a story ballet! First because it challenged me but also because I really enjoyed it!

I feel connected now. Maybe I didn’t feel brave enough to enter that before — to talk about love, to talk about death, to talk about conflict. But now I see it is so relevant and I feel connected to it now, more than I could have in the past.

JS: You’re going very sleek and black and white and geometric on the set.

MW: Yes, I knew that I wanted it to be timeless and not in a specific place — this was very clear to me. I wanted something pure, something universal so that you could connect with the emotions and psychology of the characters, more than being in Italy or Renaissance time. The look also relates to Shakespeare: what I connected to with him was this idea of dark and light, day and night.

There’s this constant duality in his work that I wanted to use in the aesthetics of this piece.

Medhi Walerski photo © Rahi Rezvani.

Janet Smith: Tell me your feelings about story ballet coming into this project.

Photos: Emily Chessa and the Artists of Ballet BC in Romeo + Juliet. Photo © Michael Slobodian. Brandon Alley and Emily Chessa. Photo © Michael Slobodian.

DanceVictoria.com • 5

JS: You’ve integrated moving sets with the dancers moving among them. And there are so many dancers.

MW: I’ve never worked with sets like this. And I’ve never worked with so many characters! I am used to doing group pieces. But here they all belong to the same story, yet they all have a very specific role. So, the way I’m going to choreograph and search for movement with someone that feels much more anger is going to be different than someone that is 14 and full of joy and hope. It’s really demanding.

JS: Would you say this is the piece where you’re bringing your past and your present together?

MW: I am classically trained — it is part of my heritage and it is part of my language, even though my movement is contemporary. And it is not something I reject; it’s something I embrace. In a way this is an expression of all my past choreography but also opening some new doors. FN Ballet BC comes to the Royal Theatre on March 13 + 14 with Medhi Walerski’s Romeo + Juliet. Tickets: 250-386-6121 or DanceVictoria.com

Diverse. Dynamic. Daring.

Announcing Dance Victoria’s 2020/21 Season All performances at the Royal Theatre except Bygones.

Dance at the Royal Series COMPAGNIE HERVÉ KOUBI CONTEMPORARY • FRANCE/ALGIERS November 13 + 14, 2020 • 7:30 pm

Hervé Koubi created this highly physical, stunningly fluid work after traveling to Algeria to find his North African roots. Combining capoeira (Afro-Brazilian martial arts), urban and contemporary dance with powerful lighting, imagery evocative of Orientalist paintings and the stone filigree of Islamic architecture, What the day owes to the night is a cultural, emotional experience set in the desert and sunlight of North Africa.

“This company not only exhibits artistic excellence but also cultural relevance!” T I T A S

DALLAS

MALPASO DANCE COMPANY CONTEMPORARY • CUBA February 26 + 27, 2021 • 7:30 pm Mixed Repertoire In the six short years since its establishment in 2012, Malpaso Dance Company has already become one of the most sought-after Cuban dance companies with a growing international profile. Committed to collaborating with top international choreographers and nurturing new voices in Cuban choreography, the company brings a diverse program that lays contemporary dance atop intentional storytelling to create an engrossing evening of exceptional dance.

“As the theatre begins to vibrate with accumulated energy, you get the feeling that they could dance just about any genre with jaw-dropping style.” N O W M A G A Z I N E T O R O N T O

NORTHWEST DANCE PROJECT CONTEMPORARY • PORTLAND March 19 + 20, 2021 • 7:30 pm Le Fil Rouge Ihsan Rustem | Ensemble for Somnambulists Luca Veggetti | Mixed Repertoire Founded in Portland by acclaimed Canadian dancer and choreographer Sarah Slipper, NW Dance Project has premiered nearly 300 original contemporary dance works over 16 years.

The company is changing the way dance is created and encouraging risk-taking with new works by the next generation of choreographers from Europe and North America. An innovative program of athletic emotionality including humour, surprise, love and deep tenderness.

“The ‘it’ company….one of the most dynamic dance troupes in the country.” O R E G O N

PUBLIC BROADCASTING

BALLET HISPÁNICO CONTEMPORARY • NEW YORK April 23 + 24, 2021 • 7:30 pm Doña Perón Annabelle Lopez Ochoa | Music Peter Salem Choreographed by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, Doña Perón is an explosive portrait of Eva “Evita” Perón whose ambition and conflicting desires fed her life as an activist and feminist leader. Ochoa explores that extremes of power at the forefront of Evita’s life as she ascends the ranks of Argentinian society while concealing a shameful past within a poor family. Music by Peter Salem will hint at notes of tango, reinforcing the intensity of Evita’s diverging legacies.

Compagnie Hervé Koubi: What the day owes to the night. Photo © Nathalie Sternalski. Malpaso Dance Company: Liquidotopie. Photo © Anja Beutler. Northwest Dance Project: Ensemble for Somnambulists. Photo © Blaine Truitt Covert. Ballet Hispánico: Doña Perón. Photo © Rachel Neville.

What the day owes to the night Hervé Koubi Music J. S. Bach, Kronos Quartet, Algerian compositions

Special Presentations ROYAL WINNIPEG BALLET + VICTORIA SYMPHONY CLASSICAL BALLET December 4 + 5 + 6, 2020 • 7:00 pm December 5 + 6, 2020 • 1:00 pm Nutcracker Choreography Galina Yordanova and Nina Menon | Music Pyotr IIyich Tchaikovsky A snowy pond hockey game, a battle on Parliament Hill, Mounties, and a cast of Canadian critters make this production memorable. Performed to live music by the Victoria Symphony.

Subscribers can buy the best seats at early-bird prices before they go on sale to the general public on August 15, 2020.

“A picture-perfect Nutcracker.” G E O R G I A

STRAIGHT

OUT INNERSPACE CONTEMPORARY DANCE THEATRE January 29, 2021 • 7:30 pm • McPherson Playhouse Bygones David Raymond and Tiffany Tregarthen, in collaboration with Renée Sigouin, Elya Grant and David Harvey Bygones is a dance theatre piece that combines hyper-detailed choreography, ghostly architecture, puppeteering and illusions, celebrating how we are shaped by what we overcome, and how something challenging can lead to something beautiful.

Co-commissioned by Dance Victoria “… some of the city’s most exciting, ambitious dance-theatre work right now, and the trip they’re offering is a rush — even if you don’t trust your eyes.” G E O R G I A S T R A I G H T

SUBSCRIBER BENEFITS

Royal Winnipeg Ballet: Nutcracker. Photo © David Cooper. Out Innerspace Dance Theatre: Bygones. Photo © Alistair Maitland.

Subscribe to Dance Victoria’s Dance at the Royal Series and receive these benefits: • Access to RWB’s Nutcracker tickets at early bird pricing before August 15, 2020.

• Buy additional tickets at a discounted price to any show throughout the season.

• Receive 10% off any 2020/21 Victoria Symphony concert when you call or visit the Box Office.

• Keep or upgrade your seats, season after season.

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HOW TO BUY Phone: 250-386-6121 or Toll Free 1-888-717-6121 In-person: Visit the Royal or McPherson Box Offices, Monday to Saturday, 10:00 am to 5:00 pm Online: DanceVictoria.com Prices include GST, credit card fees and ticket surcharges.

WHY SUBSCRIBE Subscribers save up to $81 over regular prices. It’s like seeing one show for free! Get the best seats before single tickets go on sale September 8.

Add Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s Nutcracker and/or Bygones to your package and pay subscriber prices. Only subscribers can buy RWB’s Nutcracker before August 15.

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8 Footnotes • Issue 65 • Spring 2020

An Interview with Mexico’s Leading Contemporary Choreographer

Tania Pérez-Salas the world. It is important feedback to me. If I have the time, I will visit museums and connect with people from other cultures.

We are presenting Ex-Stasis and 3.Fourteen Sixteen. In Ex-Stasis you explore the need to be attentive to your body and trust its instincts so your body can communicate with your mind freely — especially in modern times when we’re trained to work at all costs.

Why did you feel compelled to create this piece?

I am very inspired by the different places I visit, but mainly my perspective comes from living in the jungle that is Mexico City.

Mexico provides me with many points of view on the way the people see and feel, that moves me to mingle emotions with what I feel and see. Talking about death, love, feminism or more than feminism, femininity. There are books where the words inspired me. The words mean a lot of things I had in my mind.

I am very anxious sometimes. What is love? Does it really exist?

The eternal questions… through life you have to ask yourself many things. Dance helps me to answer those questions. Dance embraces me. If there’s no concrete answer, dance contains my body and empowers me to continue walking.

2019 marked your company’s 25th anniversary and you decided to go on tour. We’re honoured that Victoria is your only stop in Canada! What are you looking forward to most with this tour?

For me every audience is a challenge. A challenge to communicate things that come from my culture. For Mexican culture to be understood, through dance. I feel anxiety and a lot of pleasure to share my experiences in life through dance to a new audience. Many things to say and many things to perceive. My whole career has been developed in Mexico, but the tours happen to be very important in new creations. The energy I get from a place imprints very much on the pieces that are in process. In those short amounts of time, I get to see how a different place perceives and sees in other parts of

How is Ex-Stasis also about the impact of technology in modern society?

In Ex-Stasis I also felt I needed to use the plastics because plastic is the technology of my period of life. I can see computers going back, telephones developing, androids coming into existence, but plastic is everywhere. For example, in Mexico, I could go to ocean, to the most virgin place, and I would find a plastic bottle or bag. I said to myself, this is incredible, this is my time and that specific material is relevant in technology in my time. It was not the bottle, not the computer, it’s

Photos: Tania Pérez-Salas photo © Blanca Charolet. Tania Pérez-Salas Compañía de Danza in Ex-Stasis. Photo © Andrea López.

Where do you find inspiration for your choreography? What motivates you?

All my work has to do with my biography in a way. Sometimes we need historical or literal pieces, pieces that have to do with being inspired by a book. But even in those pieces, a part of me, my life, my way of viewing sense of love, sense of divinity, death, sense of depression all goes into it.

In the case of Ex-Stasis, I felt I was not hearing my body, I was just doing what my mind and my reason wanted to do. So, I was being led by rules. You don’t go to the bathroom; you don’t sleep so you don’t dream. If you have to work 14 hours, you have to work 14 hours. It doesn’t matter what you feel, what your heart says. If someone is angry with you, it doesn’t matter, you continue, you don’t stop. You just have to play the game, be very professional. I didn’t stop to feel what my body was saying, even though it was communicating to me. I know I was feeling a lot of things, but I really didn’t hear them at all. It is good to be aware that you should always be of what your body is telling you, always listen to your heart, your instincts. Most of the time instincts are right. They will almost always lead you to the right decision.

DanceVictoria.com • 9

the plastic. An element that means technology, that means artificial.

And then it dawned on me that I could dance with the plastic. I could feel the air going in and out, but at the end, if I wanted to connect with a body, it also represented that part that I was not feeling: my heart.

If I felt something I wouldn’t go through the plastic, I wouldn’t break it.

I was only staying at the level where the plastic let me go through.

There was an edge, a barrier that wouldn’t let me discover another person, discover another motion, discover anything on the other side. It could give me an inner emotion, but I could not express out loud what I was feeling or communicate through the plastic. But all that together sent a message. The message of erotism, of being lively, of the power of dance, movements, emotions, of feeling something we cannot describe, but it is there, and it expands from our soul to a complete phrase of movement.

Did the music by Vivaldi and other Baroque composers come after the choreography or did you use the music to help create the movement?

In this case I was absolutely moved by the music. This buffet of music that I’ve loved since I was a child. I couldn’t contain it anymore in my body and I had to do something with this music. It had to do with that sense of community, that sense of power, and the elements that went into the music. These elements you will find in the piece. The instrument that goes in and out and the way it performs. The dancer is the music on stage, in this case specifically.

What is your greatest challenge as director of a dance company in Mexico? What is your greatest joy?

The greatest challenge has been financial stability through dance. It is difficult in Mexico, in every part of the world. We have worked and not gotten paid which influenced the company, my life, my family.

Developing art is challenging always, everywhere. I know that for many choreographers it is hard to have a company.

My greatest joy is balance. Being able to, after writing projects for hours, days, months, being able to get into the studio and work with the people, the dancers I love. I can sense their life through the movement and this in balance with my family is my greatest joy.

Do you have plans to open a dance school in Mexico?

Photo: Tania Pérez-Salas Compañía de Danza in 3.Catorce Dieciséis. Photo © Humberto Romero.

3.Fourteen Sixteen (3.Catorce Dieciséis) reflects on the circularity of movement through life drawing inspiration from the number Pi. You have said that it also plays on the theme of decadence — how one percent of the world’s population represents “the rich” and unequal hierarchies that abuse power. How does your choreography communicate and reflect on these complex themes?

3.1416 reflects one day, one life. It is the way we wake up, the way we get into a different density, intensity too, in a day. You have contact with yourself, with others. The power of the woman in dance, of man in dance and of both through life. Those two energies you can see them one before the other and they are different but very energetic.

And then they come together, and you see another combination of energy. And finally, at the end, meaning in the night when we are going to rest. It is a cycle where many things happen. And in the middle of 3.1416, many times I want to cry. It’s the part where we feel the community, where we are whole, we are 3.1416. We are Pi, we are circularity, we as a community. It is not individual. Giving themselves to something more powerful. That something could be God, the mountains, the wind, the light, water. We are devoted, we are defeated emotionally before all this beauty that is part of our world.

We are nothing without it.

Yes. I am right now starting to plan the next five years and I think within those five years we will be able to open a school, a school for dance and choreography in Mexico. A school in which the students have to study way more than just dance. They’ll have to study movies, choreography, lighting design, life, voice. I want to give them the tools to develop their own language.

What do you hope audiences will take away when experiencing your works?

Being able to forget about our daily concerns, experience something that is not your everyday. When I go see dance, I feel like a different person. I feel encouraged, it takes my breath away and gives me another perspective of my little life. It gives me another way of perceiving my own life. It is energy that goes in and out through the audience and the dancer. It’s the dancers projecting emotions and their life experiences on stage. This very sacred energy, that is what I want the audience to experience. FN Tania Pérez-Salas Compañía de Danza comes to the Royal Theatre on May 1 + 2 for a double bill program with choreography

by Tania Pérez-Salas. Tickets: 250-386-6121 or DanceVictoria.com

10 Footnotes • Issue 65 • Spring 2020

Chrystal Dance Prize – Projects Winners

Victoria-based David Ferguson has been awarded $20,000 for his project, LUCKY MAYBE, with South Korean artist Hoyeon Kim. Ferguson will work with photographer Daniel Carruthers to create short dance episodes, a full 24-minute film, and longer gallery installation versions for release in Canada, South Korea and internationally through film festivals. The Chrystal Dance Prize Projects will support production and filming in Victoria and Seoul, two two-week residencies and in-studio performances in both locations.

Vancouver based Julianne Chapple has been awarded $10,000 for The Pathways Project, working with Palestinian artist Sahar Damoni. The Pathways Project explores individuality, freedom and intention from a female perspective, but from two vastly different cultures: Chapple as a multidisciplinary artist living in liberal, urban Vancouver and Damoni as an Arab feminist living in repressive Shafamer in the Galilee. The Chrystal Dance Prize Projects will support research and creation in New York City with residencies in Germany and Vancouver.

As part of Dance Victoria’s 2020/21 Season, we will present Bygones at the McPherson Playhouse on January 29, 2021.

Vancouver-based Out Innerspace Dance Theatre was a recipient of the 2019 Chrystal Dance Prize ($20,000) for the further development of this work. Early reviews are hailing Bygones as “imaginative” with “striking images” and “an art work of powerful originality.”

The Chrystal Dance Prize – Training Applications Open March 2 Applications for the Chrystal Dance Prize – Training will open March 2 with a deadline of April 15. The Chrystal Dance Prize – Training supports young dancers completing their training at an international dance institution. Application guidelines and the submission procedure are at DanceVictoria.com. FN

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Photos: David Ferguson Photo: Myles Lowry. Julianne Chapple Photo: Ed Spence

Since 2010, Dance Victoria has awarded its Chrystal Dance Prize Projects annually to dance artists from Western Canada working with international artists. In early 2020, the Awards Committee of Dance Victoria selected the following artists from a fall 2019 competition, committing a total of $30,000.

DanceVictoria.com • 11

Spring Raffle Proceeds from our raffle support the many artists whose projects are developed in our studios and then performed across the country and around the world. Tickets are on sale at our performances at the Royal Theatre and online at DanceVictoria.com. The amazing prize packages include: • GRAND PRIZE: Vision Travel Package A gift certificate for Vision Travel. Use for any travel package at Vision Travel or consider using this voucher to join Dance Victoria’s hosted tour to Russia and the Baltics in May 2021! (Value $2,500) • PACKAGE 1: Victoria Athletic Club One-year membership at Victoria’s premiere fitness facility, the Victoria Athletic Club at the Hotel Grand Pacific. (Value $1,100) • PACKAGE 2: Beautiful You Lifestyle Package A shopping spree at Tulipe Noire Clothing, Outlooks for Men, and Hughes Clothing, with Beautycounter skincare products, and a styling & products package from Carreiro Studio Salon on Broad Street or in Broadmead Village. (Value $1,150) • PACKAGE 3: Luxe Interior Design Package A gift certificate and complementary interior design consultation with a talented Luxe Home Interior Designer. (Value $1,000)

Support Creativity and Dance at Its Very Best Dance Victoria invites you to contribute to bringing the World’s Best Dance to the stage. Your investment has a direct impact on dance education initiatives, new dance development and the work you see at the Royal Theatre, McPherson Playhouse, Metro Studio Theatre and in our dance studios. Dance Victoria appreciates donations of all sizes. Considering joining our community of support involved in sustaining the work of Dance Victoria. We’re just $15,000 shy of our 2019/20 goal.

Tickets are $10 each or a book of five for $40. With fewer than 2,000 printed, your odds are great, plus you’ll enjoy knowing you’re supporting Victoria’s vibrant dance community. The raffle will be drawn at Dance Victoria Studios at 2:00 pm on May 12, 2020. Licence #122099

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Dance Victoria Society 111 – 2750 Quadra Street, Victoria, BC V8T 4E8 Phone: 250-595-1829 with your credit card in hand Online: Donate over our secure page at DanceVictoria.com In Person: at Dance Victoria Studios (we’ll give you a tour) or at the Royal and McPherson Box Offices Dance Victoria is a federally registered charity and will provide a tax-deductible receipt for all donations $10 and over. Charitable # 87377 5522 RR0001

12 Footnotes • Issue 65 • Spring 2020

Dance Victoria just announced its new summer residencies program open to Victoria- and Vancouver-based emerging choreographers and dance artists. Supported by Artistic Advisor, Susan Elliott, selected projects will be provided with ongoing access to studio space and financial resources. Elliot, an accomplished dance interpreter, choreographer and teacher will be accessible to all resident artists as a mentor/outside eye as they develop new work. Pieces from the summer residencies program will be considered for presentation during Dance Victoria’s 2021 Dance Days festival.

Dance Victoria is accepting proposals now through April 3, 2020. Go to DanceVictoria.com for more information.

The Summer Residencies program is supported by the RBC Foundation and Canada Council for the Arts.

Photo: Susan Elliott. Photo © Harry Lew.

New Summer Residencies Program at Dance Victoria Studios