Breaking ground becoming Second Nature to Aeriosa
For its latest show Second Nature, Aeriosa Dance Society is doing something different. The Vancouver-based vertical dance company is taking its moves indoors.
“What’s really special about this show is the chance to bring the work back inside the theatre and perform on stage with all of the production values and collaborators you have in the theatre,” said company founder and choreographer Julia Taffe. “It gives you the power to create a world and invite the audience into it.”
Aeriosa is a site-specific company that looks for spaces in and on which to create and perform. Past productions have seen the company perform on Stawamus Chief Mountain in Squamish, at Taipei City Hall and the Vancouver Public Library exterior.
A ready comparison is Cirque du soleil; however, “circus is a specific artistic discipline that is categorized by the skills of the performers,” Taffe said.
The similarities are in the aerial dance and acrobatics aspects. In Cirque, “those are specific disciplines where people are working with apparatus, either a trapeze or silks or hoops. We’re not using circus apparatus. We are using ropes and harnesses.”
A contemporary dancer by training, Taffe took up rock climbing in her off time. Originally from the Prairies, she moved to the coast and trained to be a rock-climbing guide in Squamish.
In 1997, she attained Association of Canadian Mountain Guides certification.
“Eventually I took a break from performing and focused on guiding full time,” she said. “Then I decided I would combine the two.”
In Aeriosa, everyone in the company is a dancer first, a climber second.
“It’s much easier to train an artist, particularly dancers,” Taffe said. “They’re so precise. It’s much easier to give them direction and train them to climb than to train a climber to have a dancer’s body and approach to moving.”
The dancers in Second Nature include Georgina Alpen, Alyson Fretz, Thoenn Glover, Julia Carr, Cara Siu and Alex Tam.
“We’re a tight company. This kind of work requires a lot of trust along with current safety practice and knowledge.”
Collaborators on Second Nature include Jordan Nobles, who won a 2017 Juno Award for classical composition of the year and has created an original score for the piece.
“I’ve been working with him since 2010,” said Taffe, who formed Aeriosa Dance Society in 2001. “His music is really rich.”
Noble’s specialty is creating work for specific spaces, such as the Vancouver Public Library atrium.
“There’s quite a synergy between us in that we are both interested in having our work situated in the community and in exploring how work affects different spaces.”
Dan Law, a Tofino-based carver, has helped realize Taffe’s desire to bring an additional element into the performance — bamboo.
Working with bamboo allows the nature-loving choreographer “to bring another living substance into the theatre and blend the world. The dancers use the bamboo to transform the space and go on a journey that brings some of this natural environment in from the outdoors and into the human world where we change things.”