ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE
Dancers in international spotlight
Dance in Vancouver is a great sampler for both local dance fans and the international presenters that come here looking for talent.
“It’s a platform for a lot of presenters to see our work — national and international presenters,” said Michelle Olson, the artistic director and choreographer for DIV-showcased group Raven Spirit Dance. “It’s very much about having conversations with presenters and introducing yourself to them and them seeing your work. It gets the conversation going.
"I think it is really important to have the opportunity to share your work on this kind of platform,” Olson added.
For DIV, Olson’s Vancouver company will be remounting their show Gathering Light on Nov. 23 at 2 p.m.
“It’s an hour-long piece; it follows the journey of a seed turning and transforming into a flower. All the things that happen along the way of this transformation,” said Olson, a member Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation in Yukon. “As well, there is a parallel journey of woman going through her own transformation into her own understanding of how she is fully going to bloom. So that’s the nuts and bolts of it.”
The biennial event is also packed full of industry panels, open rehearsals and workshops where artists can show the beginnings of a new piece and presenters can decide whether a piece will grow into something that fits their programming.
“With the seeding of ideas, artists feel they might generate some response from visiting presenters,” DIV executive director Mirna Zagar said.
As for the public, the mainstage performances are accessible and varied, with companies such as the Dancers of Damelahamid, Vision Impure, Amber Funk Barton/the response; Joshua Beamish/Move Company; OURO Collective and Company 605 taking part.
“This is sort of a mini-festival where you can explore what Vancouver has to offer. Performances are not that long. In a couple of days you can see some of the best works and decide: OK I’d like to follow this artist or that artist or maybe this is a whole new area of interest to me as an art lover and a novice dance enthusiast and it’s not life threatening so to speak,” said Zagar. “It is really offering a glimpse into what happens in Vancouver year-round. All the works are recent and from the most prominent dance artists that live and work in Vancouver.”
Dieter Jaenicke, the artistic director of internationale tanzmesse nrw fair and festival, curates DIV, now in its 12th incarnation.
“As a curator I have had the privilege to come several times to Vancouver and get familiar with the dance community here,” Jaenicke said via email. “It was quite surprising for me: the infrastructure for dance in Vancouver and the enormous creativity and diversity of dancers and choreographer. As a curator I want to share this experience with presenters from all over Canada and from many other parts of the world. Abroad, dance from Canada is mainly known through dance from Quebec. Vancouver and B.C. seem to be out of the common routes of international presenters. DIV is a brilliant opportunity to change that.”
As director of tnazmesse nrw — the world’s largest contemporary dance festival — Jaenicke also wears a programmer’s hat here.
“As a presenter you can see in only five days a big number of contemporary dance productions from Vancouver, outstanding in quality, diversity and talent. You can become familiar with artists from Indigenous backgrounds and also get familiar with the importance of Indigenous themes, concerns and experiences in a country like Canada,” Jaenicke said. “We are always looking for new talents not yet known internationally, Vancouver has a lot of them. So I think it is more than worth it to come to Dance in Vancouver.”
The Indigenous component is something Zagar, who is also the executive director of the Scotiabank Dance Centre, says has been an important part of DIV and the centre’s programming.
“We’re very proud to say that Vancouver has one of the largest number of professional dance companies in Canada that are working in the Indigenous traditions. So for us it was very important that we work with Raven Spirit and the Indigenous community to put a specific focus on (Indigenous artists), but in the context of not exclusive but inclusive.”
For this year’s DIV the keynote speaker opening the festival on Nov. 20 is Sierra Tasi Baker,
an award-winning Squamish/ Musqueam/Kwakwaka’wakw/ Tlingit/Haida/Hungarian designer, artist, storyteller and choreographer. “Through the discussion of her work she will focus on how Indigenous contemporary expression can tell hidden histories and tell reconciliatory narratives, so that sort of sets the stage for the whole event,” said Zagar.
Raven Spirit Dance has further stepped up to create the IndigeDIV series at the festival.
“It is a sublevel of DIV, which is focused on Indigenous work,” Olson said. “It was really important for us to create this space that was specifically for Indigenous artists and so part of that is we are doing a work in progress showing off different Indigenous artists in the community. We have four choreographers that are going to be sharing their work in a work-in-progress setting. We have offered them development money as a company to develop their own work. And we are having different panels around talking about how you work with Indigenous artists how do you change your organization so it is inclusive and it is responsive to the Indigenous artists that want to work with you.”
DIV is much more than live dance festival. It is a nurturing, educating home for creatives and those who value their work.