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Robin J. Miller

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  1. Small City, Big Talent by Robin J. Miller chronicles how Victoria grew its vibrant dance culture over four decades. Excerpts below… EDITOR’S NOTE: Victoria can count itself very fortunate in having evolved and nurtured a robust, vibrant modern dance scene—and also that a talented local writer spent the considerable time and effort to tell its story. Anne Moon, a former entertainment editor of The Toronto Star, writes, “With a hop, a skip and a jeté, Victoria-based dance writer Robin J. Miller covers the extraordinary sweep of dance history in British Columbia’s capital city. Who knew that Mikhail Baryshnikov played a round at the Royal Colwood Golf Club ... that acclaimed choreographer Crystal Pite crafted her first dance at age three ... or that one gifted dancer had to resort to shoplifting to feed her family? But Small City, Big Talent is more than an entertaining tell-all book. It astutely observes how Victoria’s maritime environment inspires the remarkable talent that has emerged on the city’s stages, and it salutes the courageous organizations that have brought dance in all its forms to Victoria.” Here FOCUS presents two short excerpts from the 288-page, photo-filled book. The first, from Chapter 1, recounts how a personal tragedy at age 17 led to the singular career of Victoria’s modern dance legend, Lynda Raino. The second from Chapter 6, describes an equally momentous point in the life of internationally renowned choreographer Crystal Pite, when she left William Forsythes’ Ballett Frankfurt to make a risky return to BC.—LC Excerpt from Chapter 1: When Modern Dance Came to Town With five children to feed, a full-time music career was out of the question for Dominic [Lynda Raino’s father]. He worked in parts and service at [Vancouver’s] Hayes Truck Factory by day and taught music at night: acoustic and steel guitar, and banjo. He also performed whenever he could and even recorded a little as a jazz musician. “I remember once, it was late night and Mum was listening to CBC on the radio. They were playing a song and the announcer said, ‘this is a really neat piece,’ then listed the musicians, including Don Raino on steel guitar. I thought that was so cool.” It wasn’t until Dominic died of a heart attack at age 63, however, in 1965, “on Sunday night after The Ed Sullivan Show,” that Lynda truly understood what he had sacrificed. And it changed the trajectory of her life. Propelled into dance “I remember very clearly, when Dad died, thinking that it was wrong,” Lynda said. “It was not just. It was not fair that he had to have a day job and a night job just to keep us all alive. He was a musician, but there was so little time left over for his love of music. I also remember very clearly thinking that I have to start what I want to do now. I can’t wait anymore just because we’re poor. I have to start dancing now. He died having to do two jobs and I don’t want to be like that. His death propelled me to go and take my first class.” A 17-year-old high school senior at the time, Lynda had excelled in school sports, including gymnastics, but was far more drawn to dance, even though she had seen little outside of the June Taylor Dancers on TV. She decided to try her first class with Paula Ross because she’d walked by the sign for her dance studio on West Hastings. “I got to the studio that first time and I said, ‘I’m here for dance class,’” recalled Lynda. “The woman at the desk said, ‘Yes, okay, where’s your money?’ I didn’t know you had to pay. I said, ‘I didn’t bring money, I just came to dance.’” Luckily, the woman was kind and let Lynda take the class on condition she paid the next week. About halfway into that very first class, “Paula stopped the music and asked me how long I’d been dancing, and I was so confused and so mortified that she’d singled me out, and also that she was asking me a question I didn’t know how to answer. The she asked, ‘Well, how long have you been in class?’ and I looked at the clock and said ‘Thirty minutes.’ I was so, so shy then and I didn’t understand what she wanted. It was only later that I realized she thought I was already a dancer.” Paula had confirmed what Lynda already knew in her heart: “I was absolutely where I should be. I was home in the world I had wanted to be in for my whole life. Here I am, here I am!” Lynda Raino in Nocturne Ritual #1 (1986). Photograph by Evan Mathison. Excerpt from Chapter 6: Crystal Pite Much as she loved her time working with Forsythe, Crystal said she “always felt that Frankfurt Ballet was not my final destination as a dance artist. I always, from childhood, had the urge to perform in my own work and to have my own company. I also wanted to come home. I really missed the West Coast—it was a powerful pull—and, of course, Jay.” When she told Bill she was leaving, he understood immediately. “He was actually surprised I stayed as long as I did because he knew about Jay and about my pull to home. So he cheered me on and still does cheer me on in my work and the things I make.” Even with Bill’s support, however, leaving the security of a company for the unknown “was challenging, for sure,” said Crystal. “But it felt right. It was also a good time for my body, because I was a bit broken. My back was bad and I needed to find ways to dance that didn’t hurt so much. When you’re making things for yourself you can really work around your own issues, find other pathways. So it was a really important thing for my health as well.” The desire to dance in her own work, Crystal said, originally stemmed from modern dancer Margie Gillis (who was taught and encouraged into the world of solo performance by Lynda Raino: the world of Canadian dance is a small one). “There was a point when I was really inspired and influenced by Margie,” she said. “I saw what she was doing, the synthesis between her as a creator and her as a solo performer. The direct relationship she had with her craft through her body. I was very moved by that. I never had that experience. I choreographed things on myself as a child, but as a professional choreographer, I’d never made anything for myself to dance alone. So my first impulse was to try to do that, solo performance.” In the end, however, Crystal never did create a solo evening for herself. Instead, after returning to Vancouver in 2001, at age 30, her career quickly began to run along two different tracks: one track leading to the formation of her own contemporary dance company, Kidd Pivot, with which she continued to perform until 2010, and the other to becoming a choreographer-in-demand at major dance companies around the world. Track 1: Kidd Pivot Crystal chose the name of her new company carefully: "Conflict is one of the forces that shapes my choreographic vocabulary. Although in my life I avoid conflict like the plague, in my work it has been vital. I don’t mean conflict in the studio as we create. I’m talking about the conflict that arises when contrasting ideas are set against each other in the very subject of a work: like certainty and doubt, for example. Or conflicting physical tasks within the body that create states of torque and exertion. I find it compelling to see someone striving, performing right on the very edge of their ability. There is conflict inherent in the effort of achieving something that is physically tricky, or really fast, or really tiring, or really complicated. "This creative state of conflict is reflected in the name of my dance company, Kidd Pivot. "Pivot, that precise and technical move that changes your direction, your point of view, evokes a sense of skill and rigour. Kidd is for the outlaw, the pirate, the prize fighter. In counterpoint to the rigorous pivot, Kidd stands for recklessness and aggressive freedom. It’s the tension between these elements that I’m striving for in my work. "I want to make choreography that is detailed and beautiful but also brave and brutal. It’s not a question of balance. Balance feels peaceful and still. I’m looking for the energy created by tension. The tension between rigour and recklessness, or between instinct and intellect. The need to respect traditional ways and the need to subvert them. This moves me. This feels like a dance I want to do." Crystal Pite in a solo she made for Kidd Pivot called Decembering, which she performed in Victoria at Suddenly Dance Theatre’s ROMP! Festival in 2002. When she performed it a few years later at the 2008 Canada Dance Festival in Ottawa, The Dance Current (June 29, 2008) called it “spine-tinglingly brilliant dance theatre.” Photograph courtesy of Crystal Pite. Crystal started small. She had brought Vancouver dancer Cori Caulfield to Frankfurt to work with her on a 25-minute duet called Field: Fiction, about writing and the creative process, which Ballett Frankfurt staged. After she returned to Canada, she was invited to present it at the Canada Dance Festival. The piece, she said, “became a kind of anchor for me, something to build on.” It led to Crystal creating a companion piece called Farther Out. The two works together became the first Kidd Pivot show, called Uncollected Work. She and Cori toured it to Germany and Croatia in 2003, before taking it across Canada, stopping in Montréal, Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver and Whitehorse. From there, Crystal said, “things sort of snowballed and one thing led to another and off I went.” Robin J. Miller is a Victoria-based writer and editor and long-time dance fan. Proceeds from Small City, Big Talent will go to Suddenly Dance Theatre’s Fountain of Youth Program which aims to support dance artists under age 26 for building new and diverse choreographic voices. You can order Small City, Big Talent here.
  2. The Dancers of Damelahamid confront us with the richness of Indigenous art, past and present. IT SEEMS UNTHINKABLE NOW, but the third section of the Indian Act, signed on April 19, 1884, once declared that: “Every Indian or other person who engages in or assists in celebrating the Indian festival known as the ‘Potlatch’ or in the Indian dance known as the ‘Tamanawas’ is guilty of a misdemeanour, and liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than six nor less than two months in any gaol or other place of confinement…” “The Potlatch ban,” says Margaret Grenier, artistic director and choreographer of Dancers of Damelahamid, “made it illegal to practice song and dance and wear regalia. And that meant, for many families and communities, they lost their song and dance. Their very histories were wiped out.” Fortunately for her Gitxsan family, however, “my grandmother, Irene Harris, made an effort to document it and, after the ban was lifted [in 1951], we had someone who knew the songs and dances.” Irene taught them to her children, who taught them to their children, who have now taught them to yet another generation—the result of which you can see on stage this January at the McPherson Playhouse in a visually vivid and beautiful production called “Flicker.” Jeanette Kotowich, Margaret Grenier and Raven Grenier in “Flicker” (Photo: Derek Dix Image and Design) A flicker is a woodpecker native to the Northwest Coast. It appears often in coastal art and mythology. “For this production,” says Grenier, “the flicker is embodied by a young man who is on a personal journey, a journey to find self, and is about his ability to navigate through different worlds, including the spirit world of his ancestors. But ‘Flicker’ is also a metaphor. It’s also about the flickering of light and how a flame needs to be nourished to stay alive––just like our art forms of song and dance need to be nourished.” Margaret Grenier’s parents, Ken and Margaret Harris, founded Dancers of Damelahamid in the 1960s as a way to ensure that the songs, dances and regalia of their ancestors were not lost, and to allow the public to experience what once had been a private practice, seen only within Gitxsan feast halls. Named after the original city where, according to Gitxsan legend, the first ancestors were placed on Earth from heaven, the company has always been primarily a family affair. Margaret started dancing in it when she was a child. “I think what I realized growing up is that it was a lot more than dance for me,” she says. “It helped to define me as an Indigenous person and really shaped my identity.” Today, based in Vancouver, she continues to dance in the company while her husband Andrew Grenier, a former Damelahamid dancer, now sings and serves as creative producer, responsible for creating the sets and magnificent regalia for each new production. Her two children also dance, and her mother, Margaret Harris, continues to cast her eye over each new production. “In my heart,” says Grenier, “I know that what supports a healthy community, a healthy family, is having all the generations connected. Elders and young people sharing knowledge and teaching each other.” The works created by Dancers of Damelahamid today are not simply a continuation of ancient practices, of Elders teaching youngsters the old songs and dances. As “Flicker” demonstrates, Damelahamid is also an up-to-date dance company, combining elements of coastal masked dance with the very latest in high-tech lighting and immersive, multi-media projected environments. (Anyone who saw Pacific Opera Victoria’s production of “Missing” in November will recognize the impressive design work of Andy Moro here, too.) Grenier, who took over the company in 2006, also trained in contemporary dance, and performed with companies including Vancouver’s Karen Jamieson Dance. “I realized that when my parents started in the 1960s, it was all about bringing back and saving the hereditary dances,” she says. Every gesture and movement needed to be as authentic as possible to ensure their preservation, but now, “my intent is to remain open to the beautiful, creative abilities of different contributors, to be still rooted in our traditions, but not stifled by them.” The company’s current productions are therefore no longer based on hereditary songs and dances. “‘Flicker’ is a newly-created work with an original narrative, original songs and dances, as well as newly-created regalia.” The result, says Stephen White, executive producer of Dance Victoria, “is a performance that my colleague, Bernard Sauvé, believed we absolutely needed to share. He was completely enthralled and said he felt privileged to be in the audience when he saw ‘Flicker’ at the Canada Dance Festival in Ottawa last year, which is why we decided to present it as the big event of Dance Days 2018.” A pre-show, on-stage discussion—“By Invitation Only: Dance, Confederation and Reconciliation”—will delve into stories of how women and dance were essential to the 1864 conferences that led to Confederation, and how Indigenous dance was banned after Confederation in an attempt to culturally suppress and assimilate Indigenous peoples. Says Grenier, “‘Flicker’ is a work that’s a reflection of my world as an artist, set on the foundation taught by my parents. It is these voices from the past that I believe will help us get to a better place. When we talk about things like reconciliation and decolonization, what it boils down to is helping people know and be their true selves. There is so much richness to Indigenous art and artists, but most people have not had an opportunity to really hear and know the diversity of those voices, those pasts. I hope that our work will help open up the world to hear and see these other artists too.” Dance Victoria presents “Flicker,” with Dancers of Damelahamid, January 19, 7:30pm, at McPherson Playhouse. Dance Days 2018, January 19 - 28: Free dance classes across Victoria, six new contemporary dance pieces at the Metro Theatre, and free community workshop by Dancers of Damelahamid on Indigenous coastal dance at the Songhees Wellness Centre on Saturday, January 20th, 10:00 - 11:30am. Tickets and information: dancevictoria.com. Victoria-based Robin J. Miller writes for national and international arts publications, and for business and government clients across Canada.
  3. Former Ballet Victoria star returns to Victoria with renowned Alonzo King LINES Ballet of San Francisco, March 10 & 11. AS WE GROW OLDER, it becomes easier to brush off criticism and disappointment. We’ve been through enough, we know that life will go on and we will somehow survive. But imagine being 12 years old, already knowing exactly what you want to do with your life, and then being told that you will never be able to do it. That’s what happened to Robb Beresford. Born and raised in Elmira, Ontario, Beresford was accepted into Toronto’s National Ballet School of Canada, which starts at Grade 6. He thought he was doing well at the prestigious and rigorous institution, which requires two to four hours a day in the dance studio on top of a regular school day. After Grade 7, however, “I was not re-accepted into eighth grade. They said it was because of my body, a shape thing––I didn’t have the right proportions to be a dancer.” Instead of crushing Beresford, however, the rejection “made me even more determined, more convinced that this is what I was meant to do. Their decision to let me go is what led me here, to Alonzo King LINES Ballet. If they’d kept me, I might not have made this journey. I am so happy here where I am now, it’s hard to have bad feelings.” It’s certainly true that Beresford has landed in a privileged spot in the dance world. Among many other honours, Alonzo King––choreographer, founder and Artistic Director of LINES Ballet––was named a Master of Choreography by the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, in 2005, and has received a Jacob’s Pillow Creativity Award, the US Artist Award in Dance, and a New York Dance and Performance Bessie Award. In 2015, King received the Doris Duke Artist Award in celebration of his ongoing contributions to the advancement of contemporary dance, and his choreography is in the repertoire of classical and contemporary dance companies around the world. “I never thought,” says Beresford, “that I’d make it into the company. I thought it was impossible.” After the National Ballet School’s rejection, Beresford found a less well-known school willing to take a chance on his odd body shape (I challenge anyone to figure out what’s wrong with his 6-foot, 4-inch physique today). The Quinte Ballet School in Belleville, Ontario, “had wonderful teachers,” he says, who prepared him well for his first professional company, Kelowna Ballet. A year there in turn led to four seasons with Ballet Victoria, starting at age 19. “I remember Ballet Victoria very fondly,” says Beresford. “I loved being there. It was small and young and everyone worked so hard—did a million roles each, with a tonne of outreach in the community, a lot of touring. I had so much time on stage, made so many great friends, found so many people I loved.” Ballet Victoria’s Artistic Director Paul Destrooper sounds like a proud papa talking about Beresford today: “I was thrilled when Alonzo King chose him. He deserved it. He’s a brilliant dancer.” But that brilliance took a little polishing. “When Robb came to audition for me,” says Destrooper, “I saw so much potential in him. He was very statuesque and had a lovely, natural movement quality, but his artistic side had not been tapped into.” Over time, with a few suggestions from Destrooper, Beresford found a way to “unlock his emotions on stage. By the time he left, he was such a wonderful, generous partner.” That artistic and emotional development, says Beresford, has continued in the four years he’s now been with LINES. “I came to San Francisco to audition for LINES in 2013, after seeing the company in Victoria. It was my first time seeing them and I was so moved by the show. I fell in love. I like to think Alonzo saw my willingness to go on his kind of artistic journey. He’s not interested in having dancers do what he says. He pushes us to personalize the movement, to understand it for ourselves. It was a completely new way to work for me. You have to be ready and willing to dive in.” For Paul Destrooper, Beresford’s entry into the company was also “a testament to what we are doing here in Victoria.” Others from Ballet Victoria to go on to larger stages include Matthew Cluff, Beresford’s successor as male principal, who is now with Les Grands Ballets Canadiens; Io Morita, who dances with Oklahoma City Ballet; and Mahomi Endoh, also with Les Grands. “When a dancer is willing to do the work,” says Destrooper, “it’s wonderful to see them bloom and develop and go to the next level.” Robb Beresford will be dancing in both pieces presented by LINES Ballet here at the Royal Theatre on March 10 and 11. The first, the 30-minute Shostakovich, premièred in San Francisco in 2014. Set to music from four of Dmitri Shostokovich’s string quartets, “it has great, athletic pas de deux,” says Beresford. Not what you would call a “light” piece, Shostakovich represents Alonzo King’s attempt to capture both the suffering and the poetry so apparent in the Russian composer’s music. It’s “a little darker, a little bolder,” says Beresford, than the second piece, Sand, which is more of an ensemble work, “very poignant and heartfelt.” First performed in April 2016, Sand is set to a jazzy, bluesy score by pianist Jason Moran and tenor saxophonist/flutist Charles Lloyd—a score that has been described by one critic as “effusive, sophisticated and lyrical.” That same critic also called the piece “an instant classic,” and said Robb Beresford was “never better.” Beresford himself says the work is not really “about any one thing. One of the things Alonzo believes in strongly is that your experience watching a piece is as valid as anything he or anyone else might tell you about it.” The choreographer also believes in allowing his dancers the room they need to grow. “Alonzo has helped me figure out who I am and what I want to say,” says Beresford. “When I was a young dancer, I was very focused on dancing like I’d seen other people dance. I wanted to fit into what I thought dancers should look like, move like. Now, I am not afraid to be an original, to honour who I am, my voice. It’s scary to be yourself on stage. It’s a difficult thing to do, to be in such a vulnerable place, but totally worth it.” Plus, says Beresford, in a few short years he’s gone from never having travelled outside of Canada to “now running out of pages in my passport. I get homesick, definitely, and I will be so happy to be back in Victoria, in Canada, to show everyone what I’ve been up to. But for the time being, I know I am where I should be.” For ticket details see www.dancevictoria.com. Victoria-based Robin J. Miller writes for national and international arts publications, and for business and government clients across Canada.
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