Vancouver International Dance Festival is back

Vancouver International Dance Festival Announces Extraordinary Breadth of International Artists Alongside Local Dance Greats in 2016 Season
 
 The Vancouver International Dance Festival (VIDF) proudly announces its expansive 2016 Festival Season: a vast and varied roster of internationally-celebrated artists and local favourites, presenting three weeks of endlessly enriching performances, workshops, and other dance activities from February 28 to March 19 - at various venues. This year’s festival presents an abundance of highlights, including world premieres from Vancouver’s-own Company 605 and EDAM; a Canadian premiere and dance co-production from Sweden’s Memory Wax and Cuba’s Danza Teatro Retazos; with west coast premieres from Quebec’s Compagnie Virginie Brunelle and Japan’s Natsu Nakajima, among many others.  

 “It is an honour and privilege to present the tremendous international and local talent who are part of VIDF’s 16th season. Our dynamic programming explores and celebrates the many facets of contemporary dance and its ability to unite us through visceral shared experiences,” says Barbara Bourget, Artistic Director of VIDF. “Audiences will be treated to a range of challenging, breathtaking, and compelling performances from world-class artists considered masters and innovators of their craft, while discovering multiple dance idioms – from butoh, street dance, modern, folklore, First Nations, contact improvisation, and more. The richness of dance on offer showcases the power of imagination, the possibilities of the human condition, and promises to inspire important conversation and connection about the world in which we live. As always, I look forward to receiving your feedback about what has engaged, enthralled, and entertained you this season.”
 
2016 Vancouver International Dance Festival highlights include:
 
Compagnie Virginie Brunelle: Foutrement
Roundhouse Performance Centre, March 3 to 5, 8pm
Quebec’s contemporary dance company makes their west coast premiere with Foutrement: a provocative, physically powerful, and audacious work that explores infidelity. Drawing inspiration from classical ballet - with some sections performed on pointe – three dancers, a man and two women, in love, endure the game of seduction, the mercy of temptation, and the weight of love’s disillusionment.

Natsu Nakajima: Like Smoke Like Ash
Roundhouse Performance Centre, March 8 to 9, 8pm
From Japan, VIDF welcomes back this lauded butoh artist, now in her seventies, for the west coast premiere of Like Smoke Like Ash. Having studied under butoh’s Founders Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno, this inimitable master artist becomes the transmission vehicle that conveys the butoh body from her generation to the next. A spellbinding work not-to-be missed.
 
Kokoro Dance: Book of Love
VancouverPlayhouse, March 9, 8pm
Having enjoyed critical success following its recent 30^th anniversary celebrations, the founders of VIDF, Jay Hirabayashi and Barbara Bourget, present an encore performance of the Book of Love. Hailed as “fresh, strange, and wildly engaging” (Georgia Straight), the full length work was brought to life by a stellar creative team: choreography by Vancouver’s Kokoro Dance; original composition by Jeffrey Ryan - performed live by chamber orchestra Standing Wave; costumes and set design by Jonathan Baldock; with lighting design by Gerald King.
 
EDAM: The Secret Life of Trees
Roundhouse Performance Centre, March 10 to 12, 8pm
Considered a pioneer of Contact Improvisation, Vancouver’s-own Artistic Director and Choreographer, Peter Bingham presents the world premiere of The Secret Life of Trees: a work inspired by the west coast rain forest. Two years in the making, six dancers combine contemporary choreography and ‘touch and tumble’ improvisation to stunning effect. Their movement choices are dictated by their senses – not unlike the way that trees have different sensory pathways and communicate through intricate, entwining root systems.
 
Memory Wax/Retazos: Possible Impossible/Crisálida (co-production)
Vancouver Playhouse, March 11 & 12, 8pm
Two action-packed Canadian Premieres from Sweden’s Memory Wax and Cuba’s Retazos showcase the outstanding artistry and rhythmic movement sensibilities of Cuba combined with surreal, visually suggestive imagery conveyed through masks, props, and a kaleidoscope of stunning video projection.
Possible Impossible deals with our perception of time and space, challenging our awareness of reality.
Crisálida infuses elements of pantomime, hip-hop, and folklore to create unforgettable characters that range from cartoonish to the existential.
During creation, both contemporary companies shared artistic experiences and reflected on the boundaries of the human condition, engaging artists and audiences in their respective countries.
 
Company 605 (formerly 605 Collective): Vital Few
Roundhouse Performance Centre, March 17 to 19, 8pm
The world premiere of Vital Few, which enjoyed a ‘work-in-progress’ showing during VIDF 2015, pushes the renowned Vancouver company into new physical territory to explore the essence of unison and togetherness, the negotiation of group dynamics, and the preservation of self inside the collective consciousness.
Following its anticipated world premiere at VIDF this season, Vital Few will embark on a hotly anticipated 10-city tour throughout BC, Alberta, Ontario, and Quebec.
 
For tickets and details on all VIDF performances, workshops, and activities, please visit: VIDF.ca
 
The 2016 Festival also features a variety of FREE-for-MEMBER performances. Membership is included in the price of 8pm tickets or can be purchased separately for $3 and allows entry to shows in the Roundhouse Exhibition Hall throughout the run of the Festival.
 
Roundhouse Exhibition Hall performances include Circadia Indigena, Sujit Vaidya, Project Soul, and dumb instrument Dance. Additionally, please watch for FREE performances by Mascall Dance and Raven Spirit at the Woodward’s Atrium. Visit: VIDF.ca for complete details.

About Vancouver International Dance Festival (VIDF.ca)
The Vancouver International Dance Festival (VIDF) is a social-profit, artist run organization dedicated to supporting and furthering the art of culturally diverse contemporary dance.
 
Each year the festival scours the globe, and its own backyard, to assemble a thrilling month of emotionally rich and intellectually stimulating dance expressions. In doing so, the festival functions as an important link between Vancouver and a vibrant, international community of artists, ensuring that world-class contemporary dance will always have a place in the hearts and minds of Vancouver audiences.