Songs of a Wayfarer & other works is made up of three different ballets that have never before been performed in Vancouver.

In the bliss that from their limbs all movement takes, Montreal-based choreographer Jose Navas sets his unique abstract dance to musical legends Phillip Glass and Ravi Shankar’s collaboration Passages.

“This company really has such great stamina,” said Navas, who added that his Montreal-based Compagnie Flak just celebrated its 15-year anniversary. “Twenty-five years in the dance world is a lot of time. I am very, very honoured to be part of it.”

It’s the moment Jane Ellison sees the face of one of her students break into a smile, the cheeks beginning their apple expression and the lips slowly parting to a grin.

“The face just changes and they light it up,” she said. “It’s one of the things that really gives us access to joy.”

“It” is movement. Ellison is a dancer, an artist and an instructor at EDAM, a contemporary dance studio (and an acronym for experimental dance and movement) based out of the Western Front, an artist-run centre located in an 89-year old building on East Eighth Avenue near Main Street. She is a co-owner of the historic building and sits on the foundation’s board of directors.

The new studio has a sprung wooden floor, topped with a 3/8-inch thick rubber mat of the same type used for the dance programs at Simon Fraser University and the National Ballet School, says Saunders.

Saunders has been operating a dance school in Williams Lake since 1978, for most of those years at her studio in the mall at the corner of Midnight Drive and Western Avenue.

But last January Saunders lost her studio when fire ripped through neighbouring businesses in that building.

Navas will maintain artistic directorship of his Montreal-based troupe José Navas/Compagnie Flak, but will set about creating a full-length work for Ballet B.C. in 2011 and a contemporary revisioning of the ballet classic Giselle for 2012.

He will see a shorter new work, The bliss that from their limbs all movement takes, debut as part of Ballet B.C.’s season-opening production from November 18 to 21 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre.

On Thursday, Western Star Auctions will help the school auction off furnishings valued at over $48,000 after Derek Trethewey offered up the contents of two of his own homes he recently sold to help finance the young dance company’s work.

As the developer behind The Cove Lakeside Resort on the Westside, The Lakes in Lake Country and The Outback Resort in Vernon, Trethewey is no stranger to success, but keeping others at the top of their game has long been a trademark of the businessman as well.



Beamish and five other dancers from Move: the company will perform Trap Door Party, an abstract-narrative dance that has become the young company’s signature work. Beamish and his company were selected to represent the country in Shanghai along with two other dance companies, both aboriginal: Red Sky from Toronto and Dancers of Damelahamid, a Metro-Vancouver-based company that performs dances about the history and culture of the Gitksan.

“I was elated,” Beamish said in an interview at a Commercial Drive coffee bar.

Thirteen pairs of clear eyes look ahead, 13 necks are extended, 13 pairs of knees are pulled up straight. Typical of high-level teenage ballet students, their concentration is formidable.

Except these aren’t teenagers; they are pre-ballet students aged four to six, and they are in only their third week of classes at the Vancouver Junior Professional Division.

“We are different from most schools,” explains associate director Elizabeth Isabelle in a hushed voice as the girls practise rising to demi-pointe. “Our expectations are very high; we just don’t feel the need to teach them ‘the easy way,’ so we start with the hardest skills first. They can always do more than you think they can do.”

…For these students, if they want to further their dance training at the same level after they graduate from the program, they will likely leave the province. It’s a young age to be leaving home, but as with all of the arts in British Columbia, dance training and professional companies are under-funded and the few options available to talented dancers are simply too limited.

It’s always been this way, but last year, it started getting much, much worse.

Introduction to Popular Dance is a new course offered at SFU’s new School for the Contemporary Arts at the Woodward’s building in downtown Vancouver.

It is the first bhangra course for credit in Canada, and probably North America, instructor Raakhi Sinha said.

In recent years, the focus on dance as a popular pastime and form of exercise has skyrocketed.

Dance/fitness fusion classes such as Zumba, Afro’robics , burlesque and Latin dance fitness have proliferated, and dance forms such as bhangra and salsa that allow beginners to feel successful without years of training are increasingly popular.

Indeed, the new bhangra course is already oversubscribed, with 52 students coming from a variety of faculties ranging from dance to business and sciences.

Spencer Chandra Herbert? Wrong. Nicholas Simons? Wrong again.

To the surprise of more than a few artists in the lobby, Minister of Tourism, Culture and the Arts Kevin Krueger actually showed up.

It’s rare to see a Liberal politician at any cultural event in the city—so rare the Alliance for Arts and Culture is launching a campaign to try to change the attitude of the B.C. government toward the arts. Krueger must have extra concerns stepping out to these kinds of events, seeing as he says he has been “threatened” by arts groups (during budget battles).

Am Johal: The BC government restored some funding recently to the arts.  To what degree does it make up for the devastating cuts that were implemented?

Judith Marcuse: Well, it’s partial and it’s temporary. We have no guarantees on what was restored will be part of the budget in coming years, nor was the full amount restored particularly if one looks at the whole gaming situation which affects small and medium size organizations across the province.  I would say good for the government for, you know, retrenching on some of the cuts they made, but there’s a lot more to do.  Particularly in light of the fact that before the cuts, BC funding of the arts was at a rate that was the lowest in Canada and had been for many years.  And Canada is one of the lowest funders of the arts in the industrialized world.  Put in to a wider context, both looking at the wide shot and close up, there’s a lot more to do.

In 1991, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that two protesters had a constitutional right to hand out literature in a publicly owned airport in Montreal as long as they didn’t disrupt operations. “The distribution of pamphlets and discussion with certain members of the public are in no way incompatible with the airport’s primary function, that of accommodating the needs of the travelling public,” then-justices Antonio Lamer and John Sopinka wrote in their decision.

Since July 19th VCDT, Vancouver’s newest professional ballet company, has been rehearsing for their debut performance, The Dali Universe. Founders and co-directors, Roberta Baseggio and her husband Enrico Sorrentino relocated to Vancouver from Tuscany three years ago. VCDT is a family business; not only are Roberta and Enrico business partners but their oldest daughter will have a small role in Dali.

What surprised Kwan is how her very individual action has snowballed.

Her two hours of dancing at Kingsway and Main on Sundays has turned into an improvised street performance that has brought out many of the city’s dancers, choreographers and musicians.

“I’ve never done anything like this before,” the 41-year-old dancer said.

“After 22 years of dance, I’ve always been paid to do it. Even when I’ve done site-specific work, it hasn’t been busking. I’ve always been paid.”

Dear Premier Campbell,

I am writing you on behalf of the Canadian Dance Assembly in response to the recent and devastating decisions made in British Columbia in the field of arts and culture, affecting our daily mission as a national dance organization advocating for a healthy dance milieu.

We are writing on behalf of 33% of our members, based in your province, striving to survive in an environment that, with all due respect, could easily be called a “scorched earth policy”.

As everybody knows, arts and culture stimulate the economy. Close to 80,000 people work in culture in British Colombia, contributing over $5 billion to the provincial economy. The Ministry of Tourism, Culture and the Arts website informs us that the province makes its cultural investment back in direct taxes at the rate of 138%.

BC has the highest rate of its labour force in culture and arts and the past few years the Government of BC has made many wise investments in the arts sector, including a $150 Million endowment fund, so we find it inappropriate for the BC policy makers to cut funding for the arts by 40%-50%, and eliminate the support from gaming grants. It appears to be a short-term view and contrary to the interest of British Colombians and furthermore all Canadians.