MESSAGE FROM THE FESTIVAL PRODUCER
Evocative! Provocative! Movocative!
Words are being created daily to serve text-messaging and email so at
Dancing on the Edge we decided to coin a new word to describe what it
is about dance that fascinates and delights us. We came up with -
Movocative! Researchers have found individuals watching dance
performances are stimulated mentally and physically during the
performance. While your mind is processing the context, emotions and
information performers are communicating from the stage your body is
experiencing deep kinesthetic responses. You might not be dancing but
if you are truly engaged in the viewing of the work your body is kind
of "going through the motions" without really moving. Now, we are
not recommending that a regime of watching dance will help your
fitness level but we do know it will stimulate your mind/body. Who
knows? All that deeply unconscious stimulation may just provide
enough to get you dancing in your living room, or
perhaps in a dance class or two.
This year, we have again worked with dance artists
and dance companies to bring you a festival filled
with dance works that are Evocative, Provocative and Movocative. In
this, our eighteenth annual festival, we bring back festival favorite
Compagnie Marie Chouinard in their international renowned
contemporary classic, The Rite of Spring and offer a new work,
Unbound, which the festival co-commissioned from Wen Wei Dance.
sirenscrossing, from London, brings
us a site specific work that will animate doorways and forgotten
corners of the downtown eastside, asking audiences to consider the
very nature of the way cities are constructed and how we exist within
them. The
festival is, also, spreading its wings this year and offering
performances at a number of great dance performance venues that have
not been on the EDGE flight path before. Please join us as we take
the EDGE to the Centennial Theatre, the Norman Rothstein and the Kay
Meek Centre as well as our favorite dance haunts, the Firehall Arts
Centre and the Scotiabank Dance Centre.
Donna Spencer
Festival Producer
The Dancing on the Edge Festival Society is a not for profit charitable
organization whose mandate is the production of an annual festival of
professional contemporary dance celebrating the work of British
Columbian, Canadian and international dance artists. Our purposes are
to strengthen the art form and create opportunity for greater public
appreciation and enjoyment of dance by our audiences.
