Dance Central Spring 2023

Content

Dance Central

Dance//Novella

on STANCE and creating safe spaces for dance

Page 4

Matriarchs

Uprising’s Ñswe

niiminwinan

Page 14

Editor's Note

Welcome to the Spring 2023 issue of Dance Central.

I write from a desk in my room with a view of the cherry blossoms. It is the season that brings a smile to people as they gather and dance under the bountiful trees. Regardless of the season, there is always a time to rejoice and to grieve. April also brought sad news of Eury Chang’s passing. With a special tribute to Eury, we thank him for all those years he served as the editor of Dance Central from 2004-2011.

In this issue, our seasoned dancer-writer Rachel Maddock brings us an interview with Racheal Prince and Brandon Alley, both former members of Ballet BC, who are carving out a new and equitable space for dance. We also welcome a new contributor to Dance Central—Tin Gamboa. Like Maddock, Gamboa is a beautiful dancer-writer bringing embodied practices into her writings. She shares a reflection piece about the annual Matriarchs Uprising Festival which was held for the fifth time this year from February 13-18.

The Matriarchs Uprising Festival offered many of its performances and workshops for free or by donation. Through that, I was able to attend/ watch my very first virtual reality dance film by Atamira Dance Company and was utterly blown away by the experience. VR made possible another dimension of tapping into the feminine energy invoked throughout the festival that centred Indigenous women artists.

We thank all the artists who have contributed, and we welcome new writing and project ideas at any time to make Dance Central a more vital link to the community. Please send materials by email to editor@thedancecentre.ca. We look forward to many more conversations!

Shanny Rann Editor

Samantha Sutherland © Chris Randle

Dance//Novella on STANCE and creating safe spaces for dance

by Rachel Silver Maddock

In the early part of this year, Dance//Novella developed and presented STANCE, their largest ensemble piece yet, with eight female-identifying dancers. The burgeoning dance company run by Racheal Prince and Brandon Alley (former members of Ballet BC) is tackling the potent topics of protest and the urgency for change in our troubled world.

On the final day of their residency at the Polygon Gallery, I had the pleasure of watching a run of the multifaceted work, which involves flags, video and dance, and then sat down with Alley and Prince to chat. As the January rain fell outside, we discussed unique aspects of their process, including how they opened rehearsals to the public, the role of their mentor in New York, and the ways in which they are trying to build their company with infrastructure to give artists a voice and make a safe, equitable workspace.

Rachel Silver Maddock (RSM): How did you two get connected to the Polygon Gallery?

Racheal Prince (RP): Brandon and I actually danced in this room as part of Ballet BC for a site-specific work made in collaboration with John Wood and Paul Harrison (Very Clear Instructions). That’s how I knew this room worked for dance. When we moved to the North Shore, we wanted to make connections here rather than doing everything downtown. I reached out to the Associate Director, Jessica Bouchard, and she was really interested in utilizing the room at certain hours. This room particularly is a huge money maker for the Polygon. They wanted to see ways to bring art to the room but still have it generate revenue to support the beautiful building they have.

RSM: It’s a great space! And as part of your process, you’ve made all your rehearsals open to the public, which is pretty unique. Normally the public only gets to see the finished product in dance and they miss all of the interesting artmaking that happens behind closed doors. Why did you decide to do it that way?

Brandon Alley (BA): It opens up everyone to the process. It’s more inviting—people can see decision-making, not only the choreographers but the dancers. And this process was super collaborative. We had [the dancers] build solos to text or generate movement together for certain sections. As an audience member, especially for people who don’t know dance, it’s incredible to see movement come to life, and see the humanity in that.

Artists of Dance//Novella © Racheal Prince and Brandon Alley

The Dance Centre

Scotiabank Dance Centre

Level 6, 677 Davie Street

Vancouver BC V6B 2G6

T 604.606.6400 F 604.606.6401 info@thedancecentre.ca www.thedancecentre.ca

Dance Central is published quarterly by The Dance Centre for its members and for the dance community. Opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent Dance Central or The Dance Centre. The editor reserves the right to edit for clarity or length, or to meet house requirements.

Editor, Art Director & Layout

Shanny Rann

Copy Editor

Kaia Shukin

Design Layout

Becky Wu

Contributors to this issue:

Tin Gamboa, Rachel Silver Maddock

Photo credits

Front Cover: Santee Smith

© Chris Randle

Dance Centre Board Members:

Chair

Jason Wrobleski

Vice Chair

Andrea Reid

Secretary

Tin Gamboa

Treasurer

Annelie Vistica

Directors

Rosario Kolstee, Judith Garay, Linda

Gordon, Arash Khakpour, Anndraya

T Luui, Katia Oteman, Jennifer Aoki, Yvonne Chartrand, Rachel Maddock

Dance Foundation Board

Members:

Chair Linda Blankstein

Secretary Anndraya T Luui

Treasurer Janice Wells

Directors Samantha Luo, Mark Osburn, Lorne Mayencourt, Andrea Benzel

Dance Centre Staff:

Executive Director

Mirna Zagar

Programming Coordinator

Raquel Alvaro

Associate Producer

Linda Blankstein

Director of Marketing

Heather Bray

Digital Marketing Coordinator

Lindsay Curtis

Membership Coordinator

Kaia Shukin

Outreach Coordinator

Yurie Kaneko

Technical Director

Diana Bartosh Comptroller

Elyn Dobbs

Venue and Services Manager

Michelle Johnstone

Founded in 1986 as a leading dance resource centre for dance professionals and the public in British Columbia, The Dance Centre is a multifaceted organization. The Dance Centre presents an exciting season of shows and events, serves a broad membership of 300 professional dance companies and individual artists, and offers a range of activities unparalleled in Canadian dance. The Dance Centre is BC's primary resource centre for the dance profession and the public. The activities of The Dance Centre are made possible bynumerous individuals. Many thanks to our members, volunteers, community peers, board of directors and the public for your ongoing commitment to dance in BC. Your suggestions and feedback are always welcome. The operations of The Dance Centre are supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Province of British Columbia, the BC Arts Council, and the City of Vancouver through the Office of Cultural Affairs.

RP: We were asking, how can we make use of the fact that we’re not at The Dance Centre, or a studio we are used to? In this place there are benches, there is a bit more space, there is other art in the building, [we asked] how can we utilize that? When people walk by, it sparks curiosity. We hear them say, “Oh, there’s a dance class in there” and I’m like, "No, not quite!" When they peek in, they can see “Oh, they are making something.” [It’s about] building awareness for people that have not had the exposure to see people get together and craft dance—it’s a whole process.

RSM: How many people have actually taken advantage of it and stayed for more than 30 seconds?

RP: Quite a few!

BA: In the past few days there have been more. At first, people were scared,but they don’t just walk away, they linger and ask “Can I come in?”, and we say “Yes, come in!” That has been really nice.

RP: If we are not running a section, I noticed, people think nothing is really going on—when the dancers are working independently and moving around the space, but when we’re doing the flag section for instance, people tend to be more excited, there’s more draw. We wanted it to be accessible, to not just a dance audience per se, and the flag section was another way to represent our theme other than the body alone. The video too—because the Polygon is a lens-based gallery it was important to us to try to incorporate some

influences from this building. There are all these different elements…even if contemporary dance is not someone’s thing, there are other parts they can connect to.

RSM: Correct me if I’m wrong, but this is the first major group piece you’re doing with Dance//Novella?

RP: When the Walls Come Down technically has a cast of six, but it had more solos. This one is really our first ensemble, which is exciting and scary!

RSM: What has it been like transitioning into that role of company director/rehearsal director/choreographer?

BA: It was daunting at first, but we had the privilege of knowing all the dancers before from previous projects, so there was already a level of comfort. A process last fall helped [set the stage] and then coming in here, it was all about building an outline, or a structure for them to fill. There is a goal and we know where we are going.

RP: They are just very easy to work with! You can see [the product] after only ten rehearsals, and quite a few missed three—because they are independent artists, we wanted to respect that this project is a little sparse and they have their everyday commitments—so some have only been at like six rehearsals. But their expertise and knowledge in their bodies and hopefully the clarity we’re providing allows it to take shape very easily. It lets us see the ideas very quickly, to see what works and what doesn’t work.

BA: Also, we trust them a lot, there’s a lot of trust within the room.

RP: As for rehearsal directing, I don’t even think about it, I think I was born rehearsal directing, [laughs]… But Brandon and I have different strengths, so we don’t step on each other’s toes very often. There are parts where Brandon goes into detail and others where I naturally take over and they don’t cross that often.

RSM: It sounds like you are finding a good balance within yourselves, and working within a larger group. About the theme of protest—obviously it’s very topical right now with women, or female-identifying dancers, with the unrest in Iran, social protests around the world, and the many other areas where women are being oppressed publicly. I can see how this piece would connect with a lot of people deeply. How is it navigating the topic with so many women of different backgrounds?

RP: Since Brandon and I don’t identify as members of a diverse community, right away we were asking, what is our connection to the work? We wanted to talk about the urgency for change— that’s a message I feel everyone, no matter who you are, can connect to when we are open to the world around us. There is an urgency for change [both] here in Canada and across the globe. So that became our way in. With the artists, we allowed them the freedom in the [video] interviews (before we got into the studio) to ask what these topics mean to them. They opened up and shared

what they felt comfortable sharing. They could pass on any question, and the editing was all collaborative.

BA: We really wanted to amplify the artists and have a platform for their voices—what they are thinking about, what they are passionate about. Some felt very empowered in being able to have that opportunity.

RSM: It was definitely nice to hear the voices. You get a sense of someone when they’re dancing and then when you hear them speak [on the video], especially from the heart, you see a different side of them. And after experiencing their perspective, I found that I watched them dance differently because I had a little more information to

connect with them, which was really nice and gratifying as a viewer. Can you explain how Gilbert Small II was involved?

RP: So, Gilbert is a very good friend of ours that we trust a lot from Ballet BC—I danced with him for ten years, and Brandon for four years. He’s now the director of the Gibney company in New York which prioritizes diversity, inclusion and creating a platform for the artists’ voice. The artists at Gibney have a different title, they are called…

BA: Artistic Associates.

RP: That’s right. They really try to build up artists as individuals not just as company dancers, and they influence what the

Kiera Hill and Mia Pelayo © Racheal Prince and Brandon Alley

company does, it’s really collaborative. Before we got into the room, we sat down with Gilbert [remotely] for a few hours and described what we were trying to do. We talked about how we could make a safe space, talked about tools—not to just say “this is an open space, come to us”—but actual tools that we can use to bring that out in a more organic way. For instance, daily check ins: even if we only have a 3-hour rehearsal day, the first 15 minutes we don’t dance, we just sit in a circle and talk about what we’re going to do today. Then we go around and share a little about how we are feeling.

BA: It’s about having an open dialogue around any kind of subject that someone could have a feeling about. For instance, we drew images or postures from certain monuments throughout the process, and we wanted to have a conversation about that, because we are also building a monument of our own [in the piece].

RP: Gilbert also talked about being careful of what he called “white fragility,” that sometimes

we feel like we can’t have a voice because we don’t want to step on other’s voices. But at the same time, he says when we’re talking about injustice, everyone in the world has faced injustice, and it is important for artists not to undervalue our lived experience. Gilbert is there to help guide us, provide support and ideas, support the dancers and the project overall. In a next phase he’s going to meet with the artists without Brandon and I there to see how they feel inside the work. When we work with sensitive subject matter, we want to navigate that [well] and not just shy away because it’s difficult or we don’t want to do or say the wrong thing.

RSM: The way you are engaging Gilbert is very interesting, I don’t know if I’ve heard of that type of role. It seems like you’re setting up your company with infrastructure to keep it healthy. And because you both have company experience with Ballet BC and other companies, you probably know what works and doesn’t work. What other values are you trying to bring into Dance//Novella?

we wanted to talk about the urgency for change— that’s a message I feel everyone, no matter who you are, can connect to when we are open to the world around us.

RP: Not having a hierarchy—that we can value our emerging artists as much as our experienced ones. There are strengths to everyone, of course some people have more lived experience and more tools, and we’re going to learn from them and trust their guidance, but it doesn’t mean they’re above you in any way. We’re all equal. We really want to honour each person at each stage in their career, and as Brandon and I take on more of a leadership role in this work, that doesn’t put our voice above or below anyone else. We can all be heard and seen. That is something you cannot just say—you have to really practise it.

RSM: That is so great! And what are the next steps for STANCE?

RP: We are working on a bit of a shoestring budget for the work, but after the February show we’d like to do a three-week creation process if we get the funding. We would love to bring Gilbert here for a week, so he can spend time in the studio with us and we can go deeper into the layers of the work, and to translate into a more traditional performance venue for dance. We could have one version for more of a gallery setting, and one version for more of a dance venue. I would love to

Artists of Dance//Novella © Racheal Prince and Brandon Alley

grow both. Once we get a beautiful filming of the work, we want to see if any other galleries are interested in having this as part of their programming.

RSM: I look forward to seeing where it goes next! It’s great to see what you two are doing, especially, making group work which is rare in our city.

RP: Yes, thank you so much!

BA: We are so excited about it honestly.

D//N recently received funding from the City of Vancouver to showcase STANCE at the Annex on July 27th, 2023 featuring all 8 original cast members and understudy Nancy Li.

Founded in 2019 by Racheal Prince and Brandon Lee Alley, Dance//Novella is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the research and development of contemporary dance theatre. We believe that by developing daring societal stories and concepts that challenge and inspire the performer and viewer, we can positively engage humanity while sharing our stories in the 21st century. A large part of what motivates Dance//Novella is the idea of collaboration, not only with other dance artists but cross-disciplinary partnerships that engage and uplift all artists involved. We believe in making dance accessible for a wider audience and seek to do so in balance with a high level of artistic merit.

Rachel Silver Maddock is an independent dance artist, choreographer and arts writer guided by artistic curiosity. She has a BA in Visual Culture & Performance Studies from SFU and a Diploma of Dance Studies from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music & Dance, London, UK. Rachel writes regularly for local publications including The Dance Current, Dance International and Dance Central. She has presented choreography at Mascall Dance’s Bloom, Chalk It Up, Small Stages, 12 Minutes Max, Open Stage and Co.ERASGA's Studio Salon Series, and has performed with artists and companies locally and in the UK since 2013.

Dr. Eury Chang

1971–2023

BEYOND BORDERS AND BOUNDARIES

I write this tribute in memory of Eury Chang – a friend, respected colleague, and resolute supporter of Asian Canadian dance and theatre. Eury has made an immense contribution in the development of Asian performing arts advocacy in Canada.

Eury and I shared a path in Canadian dance ecology that goes back since the early 2000's. Two of the most memorable moments I spent with him was when we collaborated on a dance film project and a marvellous trip we had in Singapore for the Asian Arts Market. Eventually, he took a management position for Co.ERASGA's 2006/07 season in which he contributed in the early development of the company’s commitment for championing Asian-Canadian voices. Over the years, I spoke with Eury with frequent curiosity that resulted in many enlightened discussions and illuminating exchanges of ideas about Asian dance representation in Canada. In these discussions, his intelligence consistently shone and his passion for AsianCanadian dance constantly sparked deep inspiration.

His kind presence and approachable self, yet wilful tenacity invigorated Asian cultural advocacy through his artistic and scholarly work and certainly made an immeasurable impact, not just in our community in Vancouver but across Canada. As a public scholar, Eury held editorial positions at Dance Central and the renowned Vancouver Asian magazine, Rice Paper where he engaged in conversations with many dance artists, advocated their works, and championed the brilliance of Asian Canadian imaginations. His scholarly work both investigates and provides a historical map of Asian Theatre in Canada which is groundbreaking and pioneering at its best. This corpus of work is now an important record of our struggles, victories, and visions as a community that the present generation of dance and theatre artists can access to lead them into the future.

A visionary in his own subtle and dignified ways, Dr. Eury Chang opened and expanded the voices of Asian Canadian performing artists towards a new horizon of arts history in Canada. I delight in eternal love with these powerful words that Dr Chang has gifted us, “To me, being a public scholar is about sharing knowledge and ideas and speaking widely across real or perceived borders and boundaries ”

Alvin Erasga Tolentino Artistic Director Co.ERASGA Dance

www.companyerasgadance.ca

Matriarchs Uprising’s Ñswe niiminwinan (3 Dances):

‘what is,’ ‘who is,’ ‘how does,’ and ‘why would’ a mother…?

by Tin Gamboa

Grounded through the heels, aware of the lumbar, tender in the palms, powerful and ready spine, open and grounded hearts.

If Matriarchs Uprising Festival were a living being in itself, the Indigenous matriarchs and artists would be its beating heart, their matriarchal lineages would be the spine, a woman’s everyday labour and life-giving force would be the blood coursing through its veins, and the embodied expressions of movement performance, verbal sharing in circle, and the act of witnessing and holding space are some of the offspring that the festival birth every year.

As an uninvited guest to Turtle Island (North America) who attended Matriarchs Uprising Festival, I am thankful for the space that Matriarchs Uprising provides anyone to engage in the worldviews of the Indigenous female artists, who through their simple acts of being , allow me to witness various ways to simultaneously be brave, firm, welcoming, soft, tender, and powerful.

Matriarchs Uprising Festival manages to take a meaningful turn towards the importance of bodily experience as it merges verbal conversation and movement in such a way that embodiment and lived experience are put at the forefront of compassion, care, and strength in remembering, living in the present, and being mindful for the future.

Sophie Dow © Chris Randle

What is a mother?

A mother is a caregiver who has the power to sustain life. It is through the most subtle interactions between babies and their primary caretakers that the body can have its first experiences of reciprocity and emotional attunement. The attachments formed will hopefully act as a secure base from which one can explore the world as stated by van der Kolk (2015) in his book, The Body Keeps the Score.

Recurring themes of the festival are the womb, Mother Earth’s elements, and what is passed on from generation to generation. Throughout the festival, audiences, and workshop

participants were able to explore these themes through improvisational tasks that allowed for a more embodied experience of various Indigenous worldviews, performances, and discussions between people of different international backgrounds.

Within the context of Canada’s colonial history and the colonial structure’s attempts at Indigenous erasure, Indigenous matriarchs, their presence, their labour, their stories, and what they pass on to the next generations hold valuable roles within cultural resurgence and land stewardship. It is exactly these roles and stories of Mother Earth, Indigenous mothers and Indigenous daughters, from diverse Indigenous backgrounds, that

Santee Smith © Chris Randle

Matriarchs Uprising Festival centres through movement workshops, discussions held in a circle, and performances.

“Who is your mother?”

For Sophie Dow, this is a question that roots back to the late Margaret Harris, who is Margaret Grenier’s mother, within the lineage of Dancers of Damelahamid. The question found its way to Dow through Starr Muranko, Raven Spirit Dance’s Co-Artistic Director, and Olivia C. Davies, Matriarchs Uprising’s Artistic Director. In her movement workshop, Dow asked this question with a spark of excitement in her eyes at the Matriarchs Uprising Festival to invite others to search through the body for stories and memories that describe one’s mother. This invited the movers in the space to pensively settle into their backspace and begin their embodied queries with stories and memories of their own mothers. Later, Dow had the participants explore the womb space through an improvised score, where they started smaller and more inwards, eventually transitioning to more external and expansive explorations.

It was a well-rounded experience to invoke matriarchal lineages in the space, to discuss the related stories, and even more so to have a chance to carry these thoughts and reflections through the body with movement.

In Ñswe niiminwinan (3 Dances), a split bill between Sophie Dow, Samantha Sutherland, and Santee Smith of Kaha:wi Dance Theatre, Dow explores the question “who is your mother” by sharing her experience of having two

mothers— one birth mother and one adoptive mother. With the use of recorded text and a three-chaptered movement performance, Dow so bravely shares her reflections and experience of her birth mother’s diary that was written when Sophie was in her birth mother’s womb.

In Samantha Sutherland’s kaqwiⱡȼI, Sutherland calls upon her matriarchal lineage through her mother tongue. She includes a recording of her grandmothers speaking in their Indigenous dialect, Ktunaxa, as she embodies the language through movement. Sutherland has been learning Ktunaxa herself, and in the piece speaks the language while moving to its cadence, history, and meaning. This performance was her way of deepening her understanding of the language through embodied exploration.

Kaha:wi Dance Theatre presented a solo that was created and performed by Santee Smith. Smith’s work explored regeneration, generational continuance, and one’s umbilical ties to land and water, addressing the cycles of Yethi’nihsténha tsyonhwentsyà:te or Mother Earth.

How does a mother birth and create? Labour.

When watching these works that evoke sensations and reflections around the womb and our umbilical ties to our mothers, our mother tongues, and to our Mother Earth, it is imperative to acknowledge the labour, not just of mothers in labour but also of these Indigenous female artists to birth such honest and striking works.

Why do mothers go through this labour?

One cannot help but reflect on the unremunerated and often unseen labour of mothers. Matriarchs Uprising does an outstanding job of centring the stories that hold this labour. These Indigenous female artists and their artistic expressions are each a testament to their matriarchal lineages and their future generations.

Matriarchs Uprising’s Artistic Director, Olivia C. Davies, has one daughter and another on the way. As a mother and artist, Davies expressed in her opening speech at Ñswe niiminwinan, that the work she does in general and with the festival, is in huge part for the purpose of a better world for future generations.

In her curator note for this 5th year of Matriarchs Uprising, she writes:

As a curator of the platform that supports Indigenous women exploring their choreographic expression through Contemporary Indigenous dance and storytelling, I am continuously growing in my understanding of what it means to hold space for meaningful connection. Our festival seeks to amplify the stories shared by these creators whose work reaches into the past, to better understand the present and tell new narratives of the future.

This year’s theme of Indigenous Futurism is shared through the portals opened by the artists from Australia, Canada, and Aotearoa with a selection of dance and film that consider what it means to reclaim our Indigenous heritage and be a good ancestor. As artists, we find ourselves asking what legacy do I leave behind and how might there be an opening for old teachings to manifest once again?

Conceived in 2019, Matriarchs Uprising is an annual performance festival that celebrates contemporary female Indigenous dance. This year’s Matriarchs Uprising Festival was held from Feb 13-18, 2023. Held on unceded Coast

...it is imperative to acknowledge the labour, not just of mothers in labour but also of these Indigenous female artists to birth such honest and striking works.

Salish Territory, this year’s festival offered a program of live performances, a virtual reality dance film, classes, community workshops, circle conversations, and an online film series! The offerings were led by local and international Indigenous artists from across Turtle Island, Australia and Aotearoa. More information about the festival can be found on www. matriarchsuprising.com

Tin Gamboa is a Filipina emerging writer and dance artist who is primarily based in the traditional homelands of the Musqueam,

Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations, in a place now commonly known as Vancouver, Canada. Her research and arts practice begins with the body as the centre, conduit, and catalyst for self-reflection and change. Intrigued by the reciprocal cycles within and between the self and larger social culture, her personal practice focuses on patterns, habits and behaviours that either change or permeate through multiple generations and how these impact societal common myths and group cooperation. She recently completed a Master of Fine Arts Degree at Simon Fraser University and is now focusing on interdisciplinary practices that would foster a cross-cultural arts practice between Manila and Vancouver.

Dr. Eury Chang

1971–2023

Dance Central

Spring 2023