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July 1, 2011
Dance explores relationship
Festival features works by several Jewish choreographers.
CYNTHIA RAMSAY
It’s more than entertainment. It’s also politics, art, kinetics, psychology and spirituality. With shows that are not always comfortable to watch, the more than 20 dance companies and choreographers participating in Dancing on the Edge will push audiences to consider and experience different ways of relating to themselves, each other and the world at large.
Several members of the Jewish community are involved in the annual festival this year, which takes place July 7-16. Among them is Tel Aviv-based choreographer Arkadi Zaides, whose Quiet is one of the opening night performances at the Firehall Arts Centre.
“Quiet arose from a real sense of emergency, in light of the growing violence and mistrust between communities in Israel, constantly subjected to states of shock that never allow the space needed for reflection and, thus, never allow for change,” reads the description of the piece, which also notes, “Palestinians and Israelis, actors and dancers, the creative process was nourished and inspired by all [the] differences between the participants’ social realities and artistic backgrounds. The four characters in the piece reveal a landscape that contains aggression, compassion, confusion and yearning. In the midst of this intensity lies a constant search for a place that is able to contain all conflicted layers – a place which is quiet.”
Explained Zaides to the Independent, “The work is very much set in terms of the movement material, but the performers are free with their emotional states to experience every part of it differently in each performance.” In Vancouver, the dancers will include Zaides, Muhammed Mugrabi, Rabie Khoury/Ehud Darash and Ofir Yudilevitch.
“I like to challenge myself and to use the language of dance to respond to different issues,” said Zaides. “Each work has a very different approach, both in terms of the theme and the source of the movement research. In [recent] years, I am more concentrated on social and political issues.”
His biography highlights that Zaides embeds in all his work “a belief that the role of art is to challenge and inspire viewers, while simultaneously it has a larger universal role to reach out and bring together different communities and different sectors of society.” It notes that he “is increasingly working in diverse communities, focusing primarily on the Arab sector in Israel.”
This aspect also comes out when Zaides describes his creative process. “Living in Israel, in this complex time, as an artist who finds importance in being connected to what is around me,” he told the Independent, “I find myself having no other choice but to respond to what I see, feel and experience around me.”
And others have responded to him. His works have been shown in numerous festivals around the world and, in both 2008 and 2009, he was awarded Israel’s Ministry of Culture and Sport Prize for young artist of the year in the field of dance. In 2010, he was honored with the Rosenblum Award, “which is awarded annually by the City of Tel Aviv, supported by the Hanna and Gottlieb Rosenblum Foundation, to encourage excellence in the arts,” and his Solo Colores garnered the Kurt Jooss Award in 2010.
Another award-winning dancer and choreographer, Noam Gagnon, has two works in this year’s Dancing on the Edge. Gagnon is artistic director of Co. Vision Selective, owner and director of Noam Gagnon’s Wellness Centre-Beyond Pilates Inc., and an associate dance artist of the National Arts Centre. For his solo performance in The Vision Impure, which premièred at the Cultch in Vancouver in 2007, Gagnon received the Isadora Award for excellence in performance.
In Dancing on the Edge, Gagnon has choreographed Through the Waters, performed by Meredith Kalaman, and ABC’s of Goodbye – Part One, featuring Tatiana Cheladyn, CarliAnn Forthun, Marisa Gold, Laesa Kim, Michael Kong, Milena Read, Kaitlyn Soo, Antonio Somera and Jessica Waren.
According to the festival program, “Using the thematics of the musical chair game, the ABC’s of Goodbye reveals the ebb and flow of saying goodbye”; it premièred this past March at the Fey and Milton Wong Theatre. The description of Through the Waters is less clear. It reads, “Revealed through a series of borrowed gestures, charged by various contrasting states – these gestures become a series of trials and errors of emotional intents.”
Gagnon, who said he loved working with Kalaman (“she is such a generous dance artist”), explained, “The meaning of ‘borrowed gestures’ stands for the traces and sometimes scars that we end up leaving on others through our daily interactions; however minute they may be, these intangible marks somehow end up informing our daily actions and impact the choices we make.
“The meaning of ‘trial and error’ in the instance of this work [is that] the character ends up in an aftermath and all that is left is to listen, to sense, feel and absorb.
“And,” he concluded, “‘emotional intent’ [means] we are what we think and, therefore, this work becomes an investigation of that responsibility – as the saying goes, ‘careful what you wish for.’”
For his part, Gagnon said he is grateful for the things he has and the opportunities and challenges that he is being given, despite mourning the recent death of Calvin, his 19-year-old cat, who he described as his “best friend.”
In reflecting on the role of art/dance in society, Gagnon told the Independent, “I believe we all have a path and we all have certain natural aptitudes that one should follow. I can only speak for myself, and the role I choose as an artist in this society is to reflect the intimate concerns, ideas and attitudes that shape our relationships to ourselves and each other by creating works that strive to locate a sense of conscience and hope through intense physicality and deeply sought courage.”
About the themes that run through his work, he added, “I have to say that I find people totally fascinating and honestly often just simply bloodcurdlingly frustrating. You’ll find in my work the exploration of the intricacies of human relationships and the dynamic tensions that move us; also the desire to create indelible experiences in audiences by creating emotional, psychological and visual landscapes that evoke, invite and provoke [them] to sense, feel and want to act or to react.”
For more information and tickets to Dancing on the Edge, visit dancingontheedge.org or call 604-689-0926. Other performers/choreographers of particular interest to the Jewish community include Josh Beamish, Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg, Vanessa Goodman and Karen Kaeja.
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