Museum Dances

When in ROM… check out a dance show?

That’s the brilliant idea behind this year’s CanAsian Dance Festival program, which turns choreographers and dancers loose among the Royal Ontario Museum’s treasures, resulting in a thrilling hybrid. Think Step Up meets Night At The Museum.

Last weekend’s program included three works, two of which are being repeated this final weekend.

Soojung Kwon’s Lines & Composition takes place in the museum’s airy, spacious rotunda. Inspired by a maebyeong, a Korean vase from the Goryeo dynasty (a shame it wasn’t there to look at), the piece sizzles with drama.

Blasts of a tuba announce something ceremonial as four dancers enter, faces hidden by fans. The music (by Charles Hong and Joo Hyung Kim and performed by the Opaque Ensemble and Jeng Yi) changes mood, becomes more contemplative, and the dancers pick up speed, hypnotizing us with their circular movements, colourful skirts swirling as they navigate the area.

Natasha Bakht sets her piece, Dafeena, in the ROM’s crystal room, and you’re encouraged to walk around to get different views – much as you’d walk around a gem to see it sparkle from various angles. Dancers Aarti Joseph and Atri Nundy initially proceed down two aisles, stamping their feet dramatically or quietly lunging forward. Alexander MacSween’s electronic score clangs and drips, suggesting hidden caves.

Chengxin Wei’s Koong takes place in the program’s most majestic setting: the huge Ming Tomb, with accompanying stone gate. In contemporary dress, dancers Jessica Jone and Wei himself separately enter the site, dwarfed by the structures. Gradually they meet, their sudden, shifting movements an attempt to make their mark amidst so much history. Michael Vincent’s score, performed by TorQ Percussion Quartet, resonates beautifully in the space.

A breakdancing piece performed by F.A.M. replaces Koong at this weekend’s performances.

WRITTEN BY CHRISTOPHER JONES

The CanAsian International Dance Festival moves into the Royal Ontario Museum this weekend and next transforming select galleries into glorious site-specific performance spaces. Curated by CanAsian’s Artistic Director Denise Jujiwara, each of the four commissioned companies was invited to choose a space or artifact as the inspiration for a new original dance work.

Vancouver’s Moving Dragon (dancer/choreographers Chengxin Wei and Jessica Jone, above) sought out Toronto-based composer Michael Vincent to score their 15-minute piece; written for percussion ensemble with taped choir, the music will be performed live by Toronto’s TorQ Percussion Quartet (tonight at 7 pm and Saturday and Sunday at 2 pm, free with admission to the ROM).

“We knew our dance would take place in the Ming Tomb from the moment we stepped into the space,” says Jessica. “The challenge is that we created the dance in Vancouver after Michael had composed the music. Then we had to fine-tune the piece when we got back into the gallery this week. We discovered that the space is smaller than we recalled.”

Vincent (seated, left) was equally inspired by the tomb of Chinese General Zu Dashou (died 1656). “The gallery space was chosen in part because of the unique acoustics,” notes the composer. “It’s four-stories high and feels a little like a church and we thought percussion would really suit the space. Also, there’s a lot of history with Chinese percussion so it seemed culturally appropriate.”

“I didn’t want to make musical wallpaper for them to dance to,” he adds. “The music provides a kind of narrative so there’s a structure for them to follow in addition to providing emotional content. I can’t overshadow what the choreography’s going to be doing, there’s a fine line between being too present and being too background.”

Moving Dragon is a very contemporary dance company, albeit one rooted in classical Chinese dance tradition, and Jone and Wei have elected to costume this piece in urban street clothes as a contrast to the ancient artifacts.

“There’s a lot of cross-cultural fusion in our work,” says Jone. “We chose the costumes because we wanted to juxtapose the modern against this historic backdrop; we’re Chinese in a Chinese space and it would be too easy for us to then get into traditional Chinese costume; we wanted to represent our time in this space.”

Says Wei, “We saw the gate as a kind of passage into another time, we were inspired by the notion of past, present and future all meeting in this room.”

Adds Jone, “We find the entire concept fascinating; here’s this Chinese tomb for a General who’s long gone, it’s totally out of context in downtown Toronto. And our dance has been created specifically for this unique space — it will be performed and then it will be gone. We’ve been touched by the artifacts, the room will be touched by us and then it will all be over. It’s completely ephemeral.”

WHERE/WHEN: Museum Dances at the Royal Ontario Museum (100 Queen’s Park) May 7 – 9 and May 14 – 16, free with museum admission.

Dance photo by Norm Jone, Ming gate courtesy of the Royal Ontario Museum, other images by Christopher Jones

Museum Dances

When in ROM… check out a dance show?

That’s the brilliant idea behind this year’s CanAsian Dance Festival program, which turns choreographers and dancers loose among the Royal Ontario Museum’s treasures, resulting in a thrilling hybrid. Think Step Up meets Night At The Museum.

Last weekend’s program included three works, two of which are being repeated this final weekend.

Soojung Kwon’s Lines & Composition takes place in the museum’s airy, spacious rotunda. Inspired by a maebyeong, a Korean vase from the Goryeo dynasty (a shame it wasn’t there to look at), the piece sizzles with drama.

Blasts of a tuba announce something ceremonial as four dancers enter, faces hidden by fans. The music (by Charles Hong and Joo Hyung Kim and performed by the Opaque Ensemble and Jeng Yi) changes mood, becomes more contemplative, and the dancers pick up speed, hypnotizing us with their circular movements, colourful skirts swirling as they navigate the area.

Natasha Bakht sets her piece, Dafeena, in the ROM’s crystal room, and you’re encouraged to walk around to get different views – much as you’d walk around a gem to see it sparkle from various angles. Dancers Aarti Joseph and Atri Nundy initially proceed down two aisles, stamping their feet dramatically or quietly lunging forward. Alexander MacSween’s electronic score clangs and drips, suggesting hidden caves.

Chengxin Wei’s Koong takes place in the program’s most majestic setting: the huge Ming Tomb, with accompanying stone gate. In contemporary dress, dancers Jessica Jone and Wei himself separately enter the site, dwarfed by the structures. Gradually they meet, their sudden, shifting movements an attempt to make their mark amidst so much history. Michael Vincent’s score, performed by TorQ Percussion Quartet, resonates beautifully in the space.

A breakdancing piece performed by F.A.M. replaces Koong at this weekend’s performances.

WRITTEN BY CHRISTOPHER JONES

The CanAsian International Dance Festival moves into the Royal Ontario Museum this weekend and next transforming select galleries into glorious site-specific performance spaces. Curated by CanAsian’s Artistic Director Denise Jujiwara, each of the four commissioned companies was invited to choose a space or artifact as the inspiration for a new original dance work.

Vancouver’s Moving Dragon (dancer/choreographers Chengxin Wei and Jessica Jone, above) sought out Toronto-based composer Michael Vincent to score their 15-minute piece; written for percussion ensemble with taped choir, the music will be performed live by Toronto’s TorQ Percussion Quartet (tonight at 7 pm and Saturday and Sunday at 2 pm, free with admission to the ROM).

“We knew our dance would take place in the Ming Tomb from the moment we stepped into the space,” says Jessica. “The challenge is that we created the dance in Vancouver after Michael had composed the music. Then we had to fine-tune the piece when we got back into the gallery this week. We discovered that the space is smaller than we recalled.”

Vincent (seated, left) was equally inspired by the tomb of Chinese General Zu Dashou (died 1656). “The gallery space was chosen in part because of the unique acoustics,” notes the composer. “It’s four-stories high and feels a little like a church and we thought percussion would really suit the space. Also, there’s a lot of history with Chinese percussion so it seemed culturally appropriate.”

“I didn’t want to make musical wallpaper for them to dance to,” he adds. “The music provides a kind of narrative so there’s a structure for them to follow in addition to providing emotional content. I can’t overshadow what the choreography’s going to be doing, there’s a fine line between being too present and being too background.”

Moving Dragon is a very contemporary dance company, albeit one rooted in classical Chinese dance tradition, and Jone and Wei have elected to costume this piece in urban street clothes as a contrast to the ancient artifacts.

“There’s a lot of cross-cultural fusion in our work,” says Jone. “We chose the costumes because we wanted to juxtapose the modern against this historic backdrop; we’re Chinese in a Chinese space and it would be too easy for us to then get into traditional Chinese costume; we wanted to represent our time in this space.”

Says Wei, “We saw the gate as a kind of passage into another time, we were inspired by the notion of past, present and future all meeting in this room.”

Adds Jone, “We find the entire concept fascinating; here’s this Chinese tomb for a General who’s long gone, it’s totally out of context in downtown Toronto. And our dance has been created specifically for this unique space — it will be performed and then it will be gone. We’ve been touched by the artifacts, the room will be touched by us and then it will all be over. It’s completely ephemeral.”

WHERE/WHEN: Museum Dances at the Royal Ontario Museum (100 Queen’s Park) May 7 – 9 and May 14 – 16, free with museum admission.

Dance photo by Norm Jone, Ming gate courtesy of the Royal Ontario Museum, other images by Christopher Jones

By Alexander Varty

Vancouver’s artists are conceiving fresh hybrids to reflect the city’s intercultural scene.

Vancouver has been a multicultural city for a long, long time. Right from its inception, this Pacific port has been a meeting place for First Nations people, American fortune seekers, Chinese railway workers, British remittance men, and more, and it remains one of the most polyglot places on Earth. But in recent years, it’s been undergoing a small but significant change: from a multicultural city, it’s becoming an intercultural one.

And what’s really interesting is how deep this runs. In researching this piece, I started from the premise that the arts are at the vanguard of our new intercultural community. The more people I spoke to, however, the more it became clear that artists are simply reflecting a profound cultural change–as playwright and actor Maiko Bae Yamamoto is quick to acknowledge. She and her colleague, James Long, are co-artistic directors of Theatre Replacement.

“We try and speak about the world we live in today–and the world we live in today is a diverse world,” says Yamamoto, the SFU–trained thespian, calling from her Vancouver home. “Let’s face it: you’re not sitting on the bus with people who look just like you. When you talk about the responsibility of theatre in terms of this subject, its responsibility is to portray the world we live in.”

The boom in the intercultural arts is not entirely a new development. As far back as the 1920s, for instance, visual artists were taking their cue from Haida sculpture and Salish basketry. Vancouver’s underdocumented 1950s bohemian scene maintained a serious and prescient interest in Japanese art, literature, and aesthetics, while in the 1960s it was not uncommon to find the city’s cultural elite listening respectfully to Ravi Shankar and his contemporaries.

“Interested in” and “influenced by”, however, are subtly different from the cultural interpenetration that is a hallmark of Vancouver’s contemporary arts scene. It’s one thing to sample from the cultural smorgasbord, but quite another to dive into the new hybrid world and make compelling art from it–as, increasingly, local performers are wont to do.

“Our philosophy at Theatre Replacement is that we never go out to become the poster people of diversity or intercultural performance,” says Yamamoto. “We make work from who we are, and that’s really where it comes from. For me, it’s always been about who I am–and my culture, my heritage, is part of who I am. But it’s also about making the work really good–as good as possible.”

The glowing reviews that greeted past Theatre Replacement productions such as Sexual Practices of the Japanese and Yu-Fo attest to Yamamoto and Long’s innovative sense of the theatrically absurd. But the shows also examine identity politics, usually in the context of a world in which creating one’s identity can be a life’s work. That was certainly the case with Yu-Fo, in which Yamamoto and Long’s relationship served as a loose template for a 2010 meeting between a robot-obsessed Japanese tourist and a spacy Canadian organic farmer, and a similarly transformative sensibility has been applied to Train, which Theatre Replacement will mount in Calgary early next year.

With Train, the source material is the courtship of Yamamoto’s parents and their subsequent immigration to Canada. “It’s a story that I’ve been working on, it feels like, for most of my life,” says the playwright. “But it’s morphed and changed over the years; if you see it, you would not directly recognize it as an immigrant story.

“In my family, I’m the story keeper,” she continues. “Whenever anybody would tell me a story, I would kind of mentally write it down–and then I actually did start writing them down. People would always tell me, ‘Oh, you should make a show from this. It’s such an interesting thing.’ And I kept saying ‘Yeah’ and nodding my head, not wanting to approach it from a really biographical point of view. To me, that just seemed really exposed. And if I was going to make it theatre, I wanted to make it theatre.”

Expect formal innovation from the upcoming work–and a curious link to the original tale. In Train, Yamamoto has taken the unusual step of asking her father, an accomplished shakuhachi player, to join her on-stage.

“This is the part I really like about the play,” she says. “My dad’s flute, which I’ve grown up listening to, is all of a sudden becoming the sound of the train whistles, and he’s up there on-stage with me. And he’s kind of a clown, my dad, so it’s really made for some very interesting moments.”

In contrast to Yamamoto’s “art first” agenda, Moshe Denburg’s Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra has a specifically political intent. With composer-performers like John Oliver, Trichy Sankaran, Jin Zhang, and Farshid Samandari onboard, the group’s aesthetic credentials are solid, but its explicit aim is to promote cross-cultural understanding through music. Denburg is particularly concerned with redressing the possibly exclusionary implications of mosaic-style multiculturalism.

“In every community, there are going to be elements looking for bridge-building with other communities,” says this third-generation Canadian of Russian-Jewish descent. “There’s also a kind of communal or tribal survival mentality as well. I actually look at the entire multiculturalism guideline in our country as having two aspects. One is the multiculturalism of exclusionism; it’s not a bad exclusionism, but it’s the kind of multiculturalism where the Jewish community prepares klezmer concerts for whoever, right? So it’s preserving Jewish art. The Chinese community then preserves Chinese arts, and so on. This is necessary, from an artistic point of view, to preserve and develop tradition. But then there’s the multiculturalism of intercultural dialogue, where on an artistic level the whole guideline is ‘Let’s build bridges.’”

And part of VICO’s mandate–beyond promoting concerts and lecture-demonstrations like Hussein Janmohamed’s upcoming presentation on Islamic/First Nations choral fusion (December 5 at the Vancouver Public Library’s main branch)–is lobbying various levels of government to ensure that intercultural art is properly funded.

“What we’re up against is still a certain administrative bias towards the multiculturalism of individual communal concerns, rather than the multiculturalism which celebrates the intercultural arts as its highest blossom,” says Denburg. “So we’re actually putting forward an argument like this to Canadian Heritage, to express the need to reward artists and organizations for involving themselves in intercultural work.”

regardless of government funding, it’s a certainty that intercultural collaborations will continue to grow in number and strength, if only because so many Canadians experience an intercultural reality.

“In Vancouver, you can decide your own culture in a lot of ways,” argues Neelamjit Dhillon. “Living in a multicultural area like the Lower Mainland, you can pick the things that interest you, and those become your culture. In a lot of ways, the people who are making art have gravitated to that, art being a medium where you can explore and take influences from around yourself and then integrate them.”

With his long beard and black turban, the multitalented Dhillon looks the part of an observant Sikh, and he honours his heritage by playing tabla, sitar, and Indian flute. But he also maintains a parallel path as an avant-jazz saxophonist and has no problem engaging in intercultural or even interdisciplinary collaborations–as he will when the Shakti Dance Society presents Gods, Demons & Yogis at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre on October 21 and 22. Bharata natyam specialist Anusha Fernando will be the featured performer, but the Shakti troupe also includes Chinese-Canadian storyteller Adrienne Wong, martial-arts specialist Kelly Mac lean, and Israeli singer David Tsabar.

“The music will be fairly traditional,” Dhillon reveals, “as we’re telling stories that draw primarily from Indian mythology. But we’re also adding other elements that aren’t from the Indian tradition. We can use a lot of things that are from outside the tradition to create with, like borrowing musical concepts from anywhere we feel will serve the piece.”

Stylistic and cultural fusion are also at the heart of Moving Dragon’s Triaspora, scheduled for the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts next Saturday (September 22). A collaboration between Moving Dragon and the Orchid Ensemble, the ambitious piece includes original compositions from intercultural explorers Jin Zhang, Mark Armanini, and Ya-wen Wang.

Triaspora encapsulates the Chinese-Canadian immigrant experience, but it also refers to that of Moving Dragon founders Jessica Jone and Chengxin Wei. Born in Canada, Jone travelled to Beijing to study traditional Chinese dance. There, she met her future partner, Wei, after which he joined her in Vancouver, where he initially made his mark with Ballet B.C.

In many ways, Wei has compressed three generations of immigrant experience into his seven years in Canada: he began by wanting to assimilate, found himself temporarily unsure of his direction, then finally reconnected with his roots–but only after having established a comfortable life in the New World.

“For me, I’m still looking for my identity,” he says, laughing. “When I came here seven years ago, I did not want to throw my Chinese background away, but I felt that I was going to a new culture and I was really eager to explore that culture–like with the ballet. I’m even doing my high-school diploma –I wanted to educate myself here, because it’s a different system in China. But after I danced with Ballet B.C. for five years, I’m more and more thinking, ‘You know what, Chengxin? You are Chinese–and a Canadian. You are from China, so you can’t deny your background; why are you not using this to introduce your culture to Canadians? And later on, they’ll see more Chinese dance, and we’ll have more to talk about.’”

Wei’s arrival here coincided with what Jone identifies as a rising interest in hybrid dance. “There’s not only a combination of different genres–like, for example, hip-hop and ballet–but also an interest in cultural dance,” she says. “I think that’s what we’re starting to explore with Moving Dragon.”

Both Wei and Jone sense a growing optimism in Vancouver’s arts scene, an optimism rooted in the awareness that intercultural collaboration is an artistically challenging way to address our changing world. “Being from such a culturally rich place,” Dhillon says, “we really can come up with something unique to offer the rest of the world–which I think will follow suit very quickly.” Yamamoto concurs: “It feels like something is growing,” she says. “It’s a real nurturing time–a gestation period, in some ways. People are testing out the waters, it seems. It’s hard to say what’s going to happen, but people are committing to a sense of longevity in the community, and I think we’re going to see more diversity, even on the big stages.”

We’re already seeing that diversity. A very short list of Vancouver’s intercultural artists would have to mention the Kokoro and Karen Jamieson dance companies and a dozen or more musical groups including Uzume Taiko, the NOW Orchestra, and Loud. There’s no disputing that Vancouver’s future is intercultural–and in many ways that future is already here.

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“East Meets West in blend of traditions” -
North Shore News – September 21, 2007

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“one of Canada’s most audacious new composers” – The Western Front

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“[Gouldberg Variations] is fascinating, and very well done” – John Oswald

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“Michael Vincent’s work, Gouldberg Variations will charm and please you mightily…”– Allan MacInnis – Alienated in Vancouver

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“…a young composer with imagination, talent and a strong desire to find and develop his own unique musical voice” – Tim Brady

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“This past evening I went to see Generation X – The Opera. A spoken word and musical performance based on Douglas Coupland’s book. It was awesome. The 3 spoken word performers were all great in their roles, speaking and doing background vocals for each other. I loved Barbara Adler as Claire. The band played some bumping rhythms and were throwing in clapping and yelping with their instruments. They made good use of some of the funny/pithy Generation X bits. All in all, it added up to a great show. Kudos to all involved. I saw a video camera at the back, so hopefully they will put it on the net. Either that, or they should take this show on the road!”– Dustin Sacks – Silly Tech Blog

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“This young student from Concordia University produced the one piece of the evening that I personally found absolutely gripping. The composer was present, and explained that Sat There and Clapped is a narrative from the early days of EA. It uses the voice of Kevin Austin taken from an interview. While we hear only snippets of the original text, the particular bits of text that were chosen are sufficiently suggestive to make us want to know the whole story, and to feel that we “almost have it”, which is probably in part why the composition is so intriguing. The main form of processing used is looping, and the genius is in the actual composition; the story does seem to flow forwards, to reveal itself one tantalizing bit at a time; it ends with a reference to a “new world”, and “farewell to those things”, which seems nostalgic and forward-looking at the same time. Finally, this was the only piece of the evening where the diffusion made sense to me: having Kevin’s voice appear here and there enhanced the repetitive aspect of the composition.”– Anne Bennet- EuCue XXII concert review

ROM Iconic Ming Tomb: General Zu Dashou

Chengxin Wei

Jessica Jone