Beamish explores pandemic fallout in PROXIMITY
In five short pieces, the Vancouver choreographer and dancer delves deeply into artists’ interactions
Renowned Vancouver dance artist Joshua Beamish has thought a great deal about the differences between being a choreographer and a dancer. He finds choreography to be “really intellectually demanding” because it involves learning how to communicate with a dancer while learning how they work and what their body is capable of doing.
“So there’s a lot of investigation,” Beamish tells the Straight by phone. “It’s like scanning. I feel you’re constantly scanning through material, seeking things that are resonant or vital.”
He explains that dancers, on the other hand, “are kind of in an unknown state” as they set out to achieve the choreographer’s vision and decode certain requests.
“It’s also physically demanding on top of that,” Beamish says. “So there’s the physical exhaustion and preparation for your body to be able to exceed what the choreographer may want.”
To him, jumping back and forth between both roles is the most challenging because although dancers will get used to the routine, alternating between dancing and choreography makes him feel that he’s always having to get back into shape.
“I need to have taken ballet class; I need to have done Pilates; I need to have done yoga,” Beamish says. “There’s just a different preparation, and when I’m dancing, I’m so tired.”
Reflecting his dedication to his art form, he decided to embrace both choreography and dancing in his latest project, PROXIMITY—a collection of short works, which will be presented as part of the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival.
Consisting of five filmed pieces, each seven to 11 minutes long, PROXIMITY revolves around different encounters that he has with other artists.
In the title piece, Proximity, he choreographs a duet between himself and Renée Sigouin. Inspired by the pandemic, they come close to one another at times but do not touch; on another occasion, there’s a gaping stage between them, with the dance set to the music from the outer-space film Interstellar.
“That space can feel infinite when you can’t touch or be close to people that you care about—or you can’t see them, or you’re near them but you can’t hug them,” Beamish says.
In another piece, Lost Touch, Beamish choreographs a solo performance by Sigouin, inspired by the notion that people lose touch with one another for many reasons. And in Falling Upward, Beamish choreographs and performs by himself, with Scott Fowler codirecting the film.
According to Beamish, Falling Upward was inspired by a quote from the Center for Action and Contemplation. He describes this as a moment in which pain, embarrassment, or failure cause a person to reevaluate their life and priorities as they move into the second phase of adulthood.
Two other pieces, Ablaze Amongst the Fragments of Your Sky and Redemption, involve Beamish dancing solo for choreographers Kirsten Wicklund of Ballet BC and Colombian-Belgian star Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, respectively. Ablaze is the only one of the five short pieces that will be having its world premiere.
There’s a reason why he chose Wicklund and Ochoa, beyond their impressive résumés.
“Kirsten, Annabelle, and I all generate our choreography on our own bodies,” Beamish explains. “So we all dance in the room as choreographers and make phrases.”
He adds that many choreographers he’s worked with prefer to create through theoretical ideas or tasks or have dancers generate movement. Then they thread that together into a coherent structure.
“Whereas this time, I was literally watching Annabelle and Kirsten and learning steps from them that they were coming up with from their bodies,” he says. “That in itself is a really different experience.”