Dancing on the Edge
Festival Of Contemporary Dance 2009 | July 9 to 18
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FESTIVAL PROFILE: 12 MINUTES MAX SAMPLER

Monday, July 13 8pm 
Firehall Arts Centre

Get a taste of Vancouver's longest running multi-disciplinary showcase of emerging talents and emerging works from established artists.  Join us for works from the 2008-2009 season curated by Tanya Marquardt and Joyce Rosario and featuring choreography from Justine Chambers, Dance Troupe Practice, Rob Kitsos, Brett Owen, Katherine Single-Dain and Amy Tao & Bevin Poole.

PUSH

Rob Kitsos

Rob Kitsos' PUSH is a duet for sisters Vanessa and Meghan Goodman. PUSH reflects on the constant struggle to keep moving forward past obstacles, both internal and external. As described in Plank magazine, the "two sisters explore their relationship to resistance and come head to head with their 'good natured habits.' They created very brave and (I mean this in the best possible sense) unattractive moments. They dared not being correct or pretty. This is a key transformational moment for artists: when they stop pleasing others and start unearthing themselves."-Rachel Scott, Plank Magazine, December 15th 2008

THE USUAL STUFF

Bevin Poole & Amy Tao

Bevin Poole graduated from SFU's Contemporary Dance Program with a BFA in Dance and English Literature. As a company member with Dancers Dancing, Bevin recently performed in Voices in Motion, Bodies that Sing in the VIDF.              

Amy Taois a graduate of SFU with a BFA in Dance and a B.Sc. in Kinesiology. She has apprenticed with Wen Wei Dance and performed for Kokoro Dance in Ghosts and Tabula Rasa.

THE WHAT IF DANCE

Katherine Single-Dain

Through a hilarious mixture of modern dance and clowning, The What If Dance asks us a series of "what if" questions relating to dance and its role in our daily lives. In many of the scenarios, modern dance is placed as a non sequitor in environments that dance is usually foreign to, thereby questioning its absence from a variety of settings.

Katherine is a dancer, filmmaker, and clown, currently doing all three as choreographer and co-director for The Dusty Flower Pot Cabaret. She has choreographed six full-length theatre productions in the last three years, and is currently on tour with veteran performers Ancient Rugged Revival. The show, Cabaret L'amour Fou, incorporates music, shadow puppetry, mask work, contact dance, tap dance and slow motion mutiny!  It will be at the Russian Hall on July 24th. 

IDLE

Justine Chambers

This duet is an excerpt of a larger work entitled, Idle.  The work explores the ways in which we are idle in every day life.

Hairy Lumps: An Inter-dimensional Allegory

Collective creation guided by Christie Watson -The Cycling Club

A six person movement piece performed to an abstract sound-score, incorporating yarn and all available space. The piece moves from the pedestrian to the atomic level creating a highly focused, reflective atmosphere.

String Theory: The way in which strings interact is by splitting and combining in a smooth way. It is impossible to introduce arbitrary extra matter, like point particles which interact with strings by collisions, because the particles can fall into the black hole, so holography demands that it must show up as a mode of oscillation. The only way to introduce new matter is to find gravitational backgrounds where strings can scatter consistently, or to boundary conditions, endpoints for the strings.

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Dancing on the Edge
FESTIVAL PROFILE: Edge TWO

Tuesday, July 14 8pm
Wednesday, July 15 8pm
Firehall Arts Centre

Winterfall

Lisa Hostman
Vancouver, B.C.
This work for two women is a kinesthetic exploration of the different places we inhabit when traversing the landscape of relationship. How a myriad of unexpected paths can emerge, how things once clear can become muddied, and how the unspoken words, thoughts and meanings one holds can come to speak louder than those that are. Ultimately, this piece speaks to the fragility that emerges with the realization that all relationships are ephemeral and that we stand, in our essence, alone.
SLAM2

The Contingency Plan
Serge Bennathan
Vancouver, B.C. Premiere
The Contingency Plan is a contemporary dance collective whose primary focus is to create and present work that is socially relevant and accessible. We are three emerging contemporary dance artists, Vanessa Goodman, Jane Osborne, and Leigha Wald, who met while pursuing degrees in dance at SFU. As a collective we are committed to the versatility required for contemporary performance and we seek constant opportunity for growth and further sophistication of our craft. We recently returned from Whitehorse, Yukon where we facilitated a youth residency and performed in Local & Abroad, presented by the Society of Yukon Independent Dance Artists. TCP will be performing in Dances for a Small Stage XXI in August, and in submerged at the Roundhouse in October. www.contingencyplan.ca
This One's for You, Dad

Meredith Kalaman
Vancouver, B.C.
Keith and Ed perform an Ode to the Rock Gods that will get you back in touch with your inner Rock Star.
Goggles

Tara Cheyenne Performance
Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg
Vancouver, B.C.
Work-in-progress/excerpt
In this excerpt of Goggles, Tara Cheyenne Performance's newest comic creep-fest, a mystery unfolds. Obsession, bone chilling fear and black comedy translate into disturbingly compelling physicality and the sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes hilarious voice of Goggles

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FESTIVAL PROFILE: Paul-André Fortier & Robin Poitras

Monday, July 13, 9:30pm
Tuesday, July 14, 9:30pm
Chapel Arts Centre

SHE

is she a musician
is she a dancer 
is she a singer
who is she

Robin Poitras is a dance and performance artist based in Regina, Canada.  Actively engaged in contemporary dance practice since the early 80's, she co-founded New Dance Horizons in 1986, where she continues to act as Artistic Director.

She has worked with an eclectic group of artists and teachers, namely: Bill Coleman; Sarah Chase; Marie Chouinard; Floyd Favel; Dianne Fraser; Paul-André Fortier; Amelia Itcush; Benoit Lachambre; Boye Ladd; Laurence Lemieux; Daniel Léveillé; Richard Martel; Jennifer Mascall; Susan McKenzie; Davida Monk; Jocelyne Montpetit; Edward Poitras; Linda Rabin; Tedd Robinson; Chiyoko Szlavnics and Jean Philippe Trépanier.

Robin's works have been presented across Canada, in Spain, France, Germany, Mexico and Mongolia. In the fall of 2008, she was featured as eminence gris through a residency at 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art in Toronto. At home in Regina she has developed and realized several multi-disciplinary and community performance projects, including The Pelican Project and of the Downtown Ice & Fire Carnival.

In the spring of 2009 Robin launched Rouge-gorge, a project-based company dedicated to her independent dance and performance practice. Rouge-gorge is presently a company in residence at New Dance Horizons' House of Dance Studio. In its inaugural season, Rouge-gorge realized the commission of a new solo creation by Paul-André Fortier sponsored by local philanthropist Jacqui Shumiatcher, and began a new creation by Robin, entitled in fur till spring. This year's season will see the remounting of several of her early works, including Tangora, Left of centre and memex ovum.

Robin holds a B.F.A. special honors degree in dance from York University and has received many grants and awards including the 2004 Women of Distinction Award for the Arts and the 2006 Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2006 Mayor's Awards for Business & The Arts in Regina.

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