The Vancouver International Dance Festival Celebrates 20 Years

The Vancouver International Dance Festival (VIDF) celebrates its 20th anniversary season, from March 6 to 28, 2020, by offering 31 performances including 12 free shows, 20 free dance classes, 7 free life drawing sessions with dancers as models, and a free art exhibition of photography by Flamenco Rosario Musical Director and guitarist Victor Kolstee.

The 2020 VIDF presents Vancouver companies Shay Kuebler / Radical System Art and Kokoro Dance at the Vancouver Playhouse, Toronto's InDANCE and Nelson's Ichigo-Ichieh New Theatre at the Roundhouse, and Hungary's Ferenc Fehér and Vancouver's FakeKnot at the KW Production Studio. In addition, there are free performances by Vancouver companies Modus Operandi and Boogaloo Academy / Now or Never Crew at the Woodward's Atrium, as well as Farouche and Olivia Shaffer at the Roundhouse Exhibition Hall. See all ten companies for only $135!

2020 VIDF - VANCOUVER PLAYHOUSE SHOWS:

SHAY KUEBLER / RADICAL SYSTEM ART (Vancouver)

Epilogos

Vancouver Playhouse, March 6 & 7, 8pm

The Radical System Art (Artistic director: Shay Kuebler) focuses numerous art forms with a theatrical sensibility that creates a greater accessibility for the public. Since it was formed in Vancouver, BC in February of 2014, RSA has researched its artistic form and pushed the boundaries of physical performance by blending various genres of art. RSA performs Epilogos that builds its performance language off a blending of theatre, dance, martial arts and the interaction of these elements to video and live sound. Epilogos explores the five canons of rhetoric, the "art of persuasion," and the seven values of Bushido, the honor code of the samurai. Working with these influences of control and persuasion, Epilogos reveals how beliefs alter perceptions of value. While systems only have as much power as the people who agree to support them, individuals can often be vulnerable within these agreements. When pushed to extremes, any value can begin to erase itself.

Kokoro Dance (Vancouver)

Reading the Bones

Vancouver Playhouse, March 27 & 28, 8pm

Reading the Bones, directed by Barbara Bourget and Jay Hirabayashi, is an assemblage of repurposed choreographic moves taken from Kokoro Dance repertoire dating back to 1990. Eleven pieces - Impending Death (1990), Truths of the Blood (1996), Embryotrophic Cavatina (1998), Crime Against Grace (2001), ( ) (2003), Here to There (2005), Falling Down (2006), Bellatrix (2007), F (2009), Music of Amber (2011), and Life (2013) - are selected out of nearly two hundred dance works, and these selected sections are set on five dancers. Rather than having to adhere to a strict timeline, they are free to start and stop movement sequences at will. This practice is to allow these dancers to go in and out of phase with one another, to sometimes lead, sometime follow. Through this aleatory performance piece taken from past choreography, the audiences can discover if these favourite movement sequences still have significance outside of their original historical context.

2020 VIDF - ROUNDHOUSE SHOWS:

inDANCE (Toronto)
Śiva kissed Via??a??u

Roundhouse Performance Centre, March 18-21, 8pm

Śiva kissed Via??a??u, choreographed by Hari Krishnan, expands on the trajectory of heteronormative mythological themes of love and desire, propelling these popular narratives into the terrain of same-sex relationships. Since India decriminalized homosexuality in September 2018, the importance to continue the progressive inclusion of multiple sexualities in the 21st century recasting of Indian dance, compelled the creation of Śiva kissed Via??a??u. Two classically trained Indian male dancers perform a provocative work focusing on same-sex love.

Farouche (Vancouver)

Here Again: A collection of Three Scores

Roundhouse Exhibition Hall, March 19-21, 7pm

Vancouver based dance artists Felicia Lau, Erika Mitsuhashi and Mahaila Patterson-O'Brien formed the collective, Farouche in Fall of 2016. The collective's artistic practice is focused towards collaborative creation and addressing individual voices within a collective setting. Their choreographic interests consist of devising structured movement scores, thinking bodies, formal clarity, and visual design.

Olivia Shaffer (Vancouver)

Senescence

Roundhouse Exhibition Hall, March 26-28, 7pm

Senescence sheds light on the unglamorous yet ubiquitous final stage of life when there is often an unravelling of our autonomy. Emerging from the experience of caregiving for my father, who had dementia and Parkinson's disease, the work reflects the metamorphosis that occurs as essential features of one's selfhood are stripped away. Dance, poetic spoken word, and electronic and live music are woven together with humour and pathos. Created by Olivia Shaffer, in collaboration with composer/performer Alex Mah and dramaturge Chick Snipper.

ICHIGO-ICHIEH NEW THEATRE (Nelson)

Birthday present for myself

Roundhouse Performance Centre, March 26-28, 8pm

Accomplished dancer, choreographer, actor Hiromoto Ida merges dance, theatre, classical music and voice to tell the story of the old man, raising a glass of sake to himself in celebration on what will be his last birthday. Reminiscing about the richness of his life experience, he is visited by the spirit of his wife. Inspired by the subtlety and simplicity of Japanese Noh theatre through western contemporary dance and music, Hiromoto Ida touches the hearts of audiences. Exploring shared moments through the inner world and emotions of an old man, Ida inspires unexpected beauty through themes of love, transformation and regeneration.

2020 VIDF - KW PRODUCTION STUDIO SHOWS:

Ferenc Fehér (Hungary)
The Station

KW Production Studio, March 11-14, 9:15pm
Ferenc Fehér is a dance artist from Budapest, Hungary who has been making and performing work internationally since 2007. According to a dance curator, Orsolya Bálint, "The Station, choreographed by Fehér, is a super-concentrated 'interim' microcosmos both inside and outside real space and time , depicting the incessantly restless state of an urban zombie and the cacophony of an outside world woven from a rich fabric of sounds (also created by Fehér); and in the centre of it all stands its quintessence that is the complex relationship between two people with their own internal rules, which they are all too ready to break at the drop of a hat."

FakeKnot (Vancouver)
HINKYPUNK

KW Production Studio, March 25-28, 9:15pm

FakeKnot creates inclusive performance works that strive to understand the complexities of identity and culture through costume, sound, technology and the body. Artistic director Ralph Escamillan gathers his breath of experience as a dancer in street, commercial and contemporary dance to create a truly unique choreographic perspective, while also questioning his identity as a queer person of color thought his work.

HINKYPUNK is a solo dance work that integrates costuming, sound design, lighting/projection design, and choreography. This 50 minute dance work is based on the notion of identity construction in relation to iconography and pop culture.

2020 VIDF - WOODWARDS ATRIUM SHOWS:

Modus Operandi (Vancouver)
Line, Starting line, Practical questions, Disappear, Solos and small groups, Swirling, Space, All together

Woodwards Atrium, March 8, 2:00pm and 3:00pm/ Mar 15, 3:00pm

Made and sustained by Alanna Kraaijeveld in collaboration with Modus Operandi artists and Kate Franklin, Line, Starting line, Practical questions, Disappear, Solos and small groups, Swirling, Space, All together is a scored improvised performance. It is comprised of an inventory of relational, movement, visual and textural possibilities. As a work, it practically manifests shifting perspectives, disappearance or invisibility, rhythm as a motor for dynamic possibility, as well a spectrum of intentional engagement.

Boogaloo Academy & Now or Never Crew (Vancouver)

Woodwards Atrium, Mar 15, 2:00pm/ Mar 22, 2:00pm and 3:00pm
Boogaloo Academy's co-owners Anita Perel-Panar and Jheric Hizon discovered that they have the same philosophies and vision about collaborating, building community, networking, imparting meaningful messages and bringing up the next generation of artists.

Now or Never Crew is a high-flying energetic hip-hop/breakdancing crew that has been captivating audiences for over 17 years.

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