DanceHouse recently announced its 2023/24 season, bringing bold and transformative works from around the globe to Vancouver stages from July 2023 through April 2024. Seven companies and choreographers offer distinct and fearless worldviews, deconstructing and reinventing dance norms across multiple genres to explore urgent and timely themes of connection and community.
“Dance has the power to deeply impact and alter our perspectives,” says Jim Smith, Artistic and Executive Director of DanceHouse. “We’re honoured to bring Vancouver audiences the fierce intelligence and visionary storytelling found in the extraordinary works of our 2023/24 season. From the gritty to ethereal, cacophonous to quiet, each performance will revive and reset our notions of home, of belonging, coupled with our relationships with ourselves, with each other, and with the natural world.”
Five companies make their DanceHouse debuts this season, including the long-anticipated presentation of Compañía Rocío Molina’s masterwork, Fallen from Heaven (Caída del Cielo). Described as the ‘enfant terrible’ of Flamenco, Spain’s Molina is feted for reinventing this classical form with anarchic punk energy and avant-garde theatricality. Sv?h?! Toronto’s Nova Dance exalts the human spirit in a striking revelry of rites and rituals. Australia’s ground-breaking Gravity and Other Myths offers a visceral yet sublime spectacle of the corporeal glory of bodies in The Mirror, a raw and physical new work infused with elements of circus, cabaret, and a touch of kink.
The tone shifts to playful but quiet magnificence in Vástádus eana – The answer is land by Indigenous choreographer Elle Sofe Sara of Norway. Inspired by the relationship between the Sámi people and their ancestral homeland, Sara fashions a vital message about the foundational attachment arising from community and culture in her powerful exploration of kinship, continuity, and reclamation.
The quest for home is central to X (Dix) by Toronto’s Côté Danse. Drawing inspiration from the mythic story of Odysseus, renowned choreographer Guillaume Côté employs archetypal storytelling ideas, from the hero’s journey into the unknown, to the role of home, to create new narratives of leaving and returning in a work of singular beauty.
Returning DanceHouse audience favourites include a world premiere from Vancouver’s Kidd Pivot. In their third collaboration, Kidd Pivot’s Artistic Director and choreographer Crystal Pite and Electric Company Theatre Co-Founder Jonathon Young upend the conventions of dance and theatre, creating a pan-disciplinary fission. New York City’s Dorrance Dance brings the season to a thunderous close with SOUNDspace, putting the vocabulary of tap fully on display in a rousing celebration of the future and legacy of this beloved Black American art form.
The 2023/24 DanceHouse Season includes:
Sv?h?! – Nova Dance (Toronto)
Co-presented with Indian Summer Festival and SFU Woodward’s Cultural Programs
July 14 & 15, 2023 | Vancouver Playhouse
Fallen from Heaven (Caída del Cielo) – Compañía Rocío Molina (Spain)
Co-presented with SFU Woodward’s Cultural Programs and Vancouver International Flamenco Festival
September 27-30, 2023 | Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre, Goldcorp Centre for the Arts
New Work – Kidd Pivot (Vancouver)
Created by Crystal Pite and Jonathon Young
October 25-28, 2023 | Vancouver Playhouse [October 25 Preview, World Premiere on October 26]
The Mirror – Gravity and Other Myths (Australia)
Co-presented with The Cultch
January 25-27, 2024 | Vancouver Playhouse
Vástádus eana – The answer is land – Elle Sofe Sara (Norway)
Co-presented with Dancers of Damelahamid
February 23 & 24, 2024 | Vancouver Playhouse
X (Dix) – Côté Danse (Toronto)
March 22 & 23, 2024 | Vancouver Playhouse
SOUNDspace – Dorrance Dance (US)
Co-presented with Vancouver Tap Dance Society
April 19 & 20, 2024 | Vancouver Playhouse
For tickets and further information about the 2023-2024 DanceHouse season visit dancehouse.ca