Soft Currents

“Soft Currents” is inspired by Murmurations, which are enormous groups of starlings that twist and swirl across the sky in shape-shifting clouds. This inspiring idea of collective responsibility is an underlying value of Action at a Distance, directly leading to this new tour-ready work. "Soft Currents" is a task-based composition with original sound created to a highly structured co-authored score designed for a large group of dance artists. Ultimately, about social responsibility, the movement score works with text surrounding sensory proprioception in the body and asks the performers to find a collective sense of time while reacting to their environment. Working with headphones, the dance artists respond to a text composed by Goodman and the group that only they can hear. The audience witnesses a work of spontaneous eruptions, compositions and delights, alternating between collective unison and individual focus. The result is highly collaborative and creates a sense of anticipation from moment to moment. "Soft Currents" employs slow touring as a model for creation and dissemination, collaborating with a local group of artists and organizations in each location to create and perform the work. Each iteration is completed in approximately seven days and can be performed for a live audience in a traditional venue or at a site-specific location (inside or outside).

Action at a Distance’s Soft Currents was presented by The Scotiabank Dance Centre on International Dance Day on April 29, 2024. It will be performed again for Dance in Vancouver in November 2024.

DANCE IN VANCOUVER SOFT CURRENTS EDITION CREDITS

Conceived and Directed by: Vanessa Goodman/Action at a Distance

Co-authored with the performing artists: Alder Mauria Orest Graye, Alexis Fletcher, Ryan Jackson, danielle Mackenzie Long, Jamie Robinson, Janice Laurence, Kate Franklin, Kevin Li, Lance Lim, Leelee Oluwatoyosi Eko Davis, Simran Sachar, Natalia Martineau.

With contributions from: Juan Duarte, Justin Calvadores, Perelandra Waddle & Brenna Metzmeier

Original sound by: Brady Marks

Voice work by: Natalia Martineau

Lighting design by: James Proudfoot, Jack Chipman, Vanessa Goodman

Audio Design by: Jack Chipman

Technical Director: Jack Chipman

Artistic Producer: Hilary Maxwell

Created with generous support from The Dance Centre, Metro Vancouver's Regional Cultural Project Grants and BC Gaming.

BIOGRAPHIES OF PERFORMING ARTISTS

Alder Mauria Orest Graye (he/him) is a movement artist residing on the unceded lands of the xwməθkwəyə̓m, Sḵwxw̱ú7mesh, and Selí̓lw̓itulh Nations.

Receiving his post-secondary training through Modus Operandi, he has had the privilege of working with and learning from fantastic artists and choreographers including Tiffany Tregarthen, David Raymond, Kate Franklin, Josh Martin, Lisa Gelley, Zahra Shahab, Francesca Frewer, Hayley Gawthrop, and many others.
As a trans person who is navigating the experience of physically shapeshifting while working in a medium that requires deep connection to the body, Alder’s practice is currently focused on his desires to playfully expand boundaries, tell effective stories, and approach the unfamiliar with tenderness.Alexis Fletcher I am a dance artist, creator and producer based in Vancouver, Canada. After dancing with Ballet BC for 14 years I then became a guest artist and Artist in Residence with the Company before moving fully into my independent career in 2020.

Alexis Fletcher and her husband, Sylvain Senez, are the founders and Artistic Directors of Belle Spirale Dance Projects. The Company is a 2023/24 recipient of The Chrystal Dance Prize and holds the position of Artist in Residence at Chutzpah! Festival. It has been generously supported by Dance Victoria, Ballet BC, Canada Council for the Arts, BC Arts Council, Presentation House Theatre, New Works, Vernon Performing Arts Centre, The Gordon Smith Foundation, Dancing on the Edge, InFrinGing Festival, Shadbolt Centre and Dance: Made in/fait au Canada. As a freelancer, I have most recently performed with Re:Naissance Opera, zoe | juniper, and Wen Wei Dance.
Belle Spirale is a platform for the work of many artists; through our collaborative processes we produce our own creations as well as commission original works by both emerging and established choreographers. We collaborate with exceptional dance artists and designers from the local, national and international independent community for all of these projects in order to continue building our diverse repertoire of poetic, relevant and engaging contemporary dance works. We believe in a hands-on and heart-centred approach to art making that supports the development of both our own creations as well as the work of other like-minded creative spirits. Belle Spirale is a 2023 recipient of the Chrystal Dance Prize from Dance Victoria. Belle Spirale also produces The Dance Deck, an outdoor, site-specific and multidisciplinary performance space and series at Sylvain’s and my home in East Vancouver. This platform is dedicated solely to the work of other artists in our community.I am fascinated by how exploring the movement potential of the human body becomes a way of accessing the inner landscapes of our spirits and psyches, and this is the primary motivation behind my physical practice and choreographic interests. I believe that dance is a unique vehicle with which to share, research, and discuss our humanity and a powerful and distinct tool for communication and connection.I acknowledge, with gratitude, my privilege to be working and creating on the unceded territories of the Coast Salish Peoples.

I use a lowercase “d” because I desire to navigate the world by easing into spaces. I go by my full name to acknowledge my maternal lineage. danielle Mackenzie Long, a queer emerging interdisciplinary artist, resides on the stolen and unceded territory of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh, and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm nations. They seek to use new media/film to liberate gender non-conforming dance artists to create work that surpasses gendered bodies through various means of visual presentation and audience access. Currently, their creative practice is being expanded through engagements with Vanessa Goodman, Festival of Recorded Movement, Co.ERASGA, and Lamont. Spaces they have been in recent residencies with include Toronto Dance Theatre (Tkaronto) and New Works. Occasionally danielle additionally studies Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice at the University of British Columbia with the aspiration to infiltrate and challenge the academic world by navigating it with an emphasis on curiosity, refusal, and rest.

Jamie Robinson is living on the unceded territories of the ʷməθkʷəy̓əm, sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and sel̓íl̓witulh Nations. She has studied at Modus Operandi Training Program and has worked as an associate artist to Company 605. She has interpreted and performed works for Company 605, Justine Chambers, and Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg. Her choreographic work has been supported by Toronto Dance Theatre, Adelheid’s re:research, Banff Centre for the Arts, The Dance Centre, and Dance Victoria. She was awarded The Iris Garland Emerging Choreographer Award in support of her most recent work, Paradise Replica. Jamie is interested in developing collaborative choreographic works embodying a dancer’s ability to choreograph itself. Using generative movement tasks, she hopes to challenge the traditional notion of the choreographer as the sole architect of movement. Striving to remove the hierarchical importance of the choreographer, inviting the dance itself to question the designated spaces in which it becomes seen as valuable.
About my current practice:
In the past few years, a challenging injury disrupted my dance career, marking the first significant break in my training in over a decade. This pause gave me space for introspection, prompting me to reconsider the guiding principles of my artistic path. Until that point, my practice seemed to unconsciously adhere to well-meaning expectations of what a dance artist moves like, acts like, and the career trajectory they follow.
Currently, my practice represents a deliberate effort to disentangle from these notions. I'm working to liberate myself from ideas that no longer align with my overarching aspiration: the pursuit of authentic sensorial experience shared with others and leveraged by my extensive history as a moving person. This exploration has encouraged me to pose questions about my own identity in relation to dance, dismantle the value system I possessed in relation to specific movement modalities, and pursue movement as a necessary and personal experience first and foremost. It is a departure form the path I was on, inviting a more genuine and meaningful connection with movement, self, and the collective exploration of experience through movement.

Janice Laurance's experience with disability art and justice has been strengthened by her work in the joint Arts Club Theatre Company/Realwheels Theatre production of “Crip Cabaret: A Reclamation!” (2023), All Bodies Dance performances “Parts of Me” (2020), “R-EACH” (2021) and “Rate of Change” and Kelly McInnes’s “Late Stage Remedy” project (2023), all presented during the Vines Art Festivals, Lumière YVR Festival (2022), as well as the solo ensemble short film Near/Far (2020). She has studied with All Bodies Dance Project, Naomi Brand, Carolina Bergonzoni, Harmanie Rose, Heather Myers, Andrea Cownden, Luciana Freire D’Anunciação, Ben Brown with MAMMS, danielle wensley, Rianne Švelnis, Heather Lamoureux, Rachel Helten, Marco Esccer, JaniPi Star, AXIS Dance Company, Dance for All Bodies, and many other dancers.

Kate Franklin has been an independent contemporary dance artist for the past 20 years. She has spent this time training, performing, producing, administrating, educating and creating. She has performed in works by nearly 50 different choreographers/creators/directors over the course of her career so far. After graduating from Quinte Ballet School in 1999, Kate spent a season in the Mentor Program at Ballet BC and a season as an Intern Dancer at Toronto Dance Theatre. She spent the next decade in Toronto/Tkaronto, collaborating and performing with numerous companies and choreographers, most notably ProArte Danza, Kaeja d’Dance, Yvonne Ng, Company Vice Versa (Valerie Calam), Zata Omm Dance Projects (William Yong), and Matjash Mrozewski, amongst others. She was a core member of Dusk Dances for several years. Her choreography was commissioned by training programs such as YMI Dancing, Quinte Ballet School and Canadian Contemporary Dance Theatre, companies such as JD Dance and platforms such as At the Wrecking Ball, and Porch View Dances. Kate was a mobilising force in the Toronto contemporary dance community. She worked with Series 8:08 for many years, as the administrator of the Alternative Technique Class Program. She co-founded (with Tina Fushell) Ambitious Enterprises, a company that produced five At the Wrecking Ball programs of interdisciplinary dance over ten years (from 2002-2012). With Kate Holden, Franklin founded firstthingsfirst productions in 2005. Together, the Kates commissioned and performed an impressive number of original works from independent Canadian choreographers including Marc Bovin, Kate Alton, DA Hoskins and Emily Molnar, and produced three evening-length mixed programs between 2007 and 2013. Kate received the 2014 Dora Mavor Moore award for Outstanding Female Performance for the solo Gotta Go Church, choreographed by Valerie Calam. Kate has taught contemporary dance all over Canada since 1997, in studios, public schools, pre-professional training programs, University dance programs, community dance groups, and to professionals at GMD (Toronto), the Training Society of Vancouver and company class for the dancers of Ballet BC. Since 2012, Kate has lived in Vancouver on the unceded and traditional territories of the Coast Salish Peoples. She is in her eighth season as Associate Director of Modus Operandi, a post-secondary contemporary dance program, where she teaches and mentors a group of 25 exceptionally talented young dance artists. She works as a dancer with Company 605, Tara Cheyenne Performance and Justine A. Chambers, amongst others. She particularly enjoys dancing for choreographers and filmmakers who are her former and current students (Avery Smith, Jamie Robinson, Oksana Augustine and Satya Mari). Her own choreographic work has been shown most recently at the EDAM Choreographic Series and Dancing on the Edge. Kate is now, as she was 20 years ago, a passionate, open-minded, optimistic and curious dance artist. She loves improvisation, collaboration, making dance education more joyful, and empowering the dance artists in her community, one interaction at a time. Kate Franklin Website to link: http://www.katefranklin.ca/

Soft Currents at International Dance Day 2024

Ryan Jackson is an emerging artist based on unceded, ancestral, and occupied xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh, and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ lands. The primary modalities they explore in their practice are dance, theatre, and song/sound – interested in the possibilities of blurring and converging forms. Ryan finds joy in exploring the many characters and selves that pop up when dancing, and is excited about movement as an embodied vessel for worldmaking; where our bodies – being and being part of many ecosystems – contain complex worlds of interconnected mechanics, capable of composing and decomposing stories through movement. They have had the pleasure of performing works by Yin Yue, Zahra Shahab, Rob Kitsos, Brandon Alley, Niuboi, Spenser Theberge, Nicolas Ventura, and b solomon, among others. His work has been presented in Edmonton, Vancouver, and Oxford (UK), at Nextfest, What Lab, Boombox, and DANSOX. He is currently training at Modus Operandi Contemporary Dance Program.

I am Kevin "Shazam" Li, a street/contemporary dance artist, choreographer, and teacher based in so-called Vancouver, on the unceded territories of the xwməθkwəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh, and Səl̓ílwətaʔ Nations. My journey in dance began in 2009 after moving from Hong Kong to Vancouver, where I fell in love with street dance. Starting with SOULdiers in 2010, the only Canadian company teaching authentic hip hop and street dance culture at the time, I trained in various styles, learning from local teachers as well as street dance originators from out of town. I was also performing and entering battles with my crews at the time, Free Agentz Krew and Technicru. After three years with SOULdiers, I focused on tutting, animation and flow arts, eventually becoming the only tutting teacher in Vancouver. This led to my role on the American fantasy TV series The Magicians, where I developed the spell-casting choreography for five seasons. In 2014, I joined Modus Operandi with no contemporary dance experience. Over the 4 years of professional development, I've collaborated with artists such as Shay Kuebler, 605 Collective, and Justine Chambers. Since graduating, I have worked as a movement coach/choreographer on Apple TV series SEE and theatre production Sparkle Bunny: The Last Raver Dancing. I have taught at studios, training programs, and institutions such as Harbour Dance Centre, Kill The Lights, Higher Ground, and Modus Operandi. I have also been doing work for the underserved communities through teaching for the New Works Share Dance Program and facilitating/interpreting for All Bodies Dance Project. I have also continued my passion for street dance and expanded my practice through various online training programs such as Soulbotics Mentorship Program, Funk in Focus, Reality Check, and DxP Jookin Tutorials. As a dance artist, I explore new avenues, such as organizing an exhibition dance battle and researching the intersectionality of ballet and Memphis jookin. Selected as one of the first mentees for the New Works XR Pilot program, I delve into extended reality technology in dance. Last year, I performed as a living statue at the Edmonton Fringe Festival. I co created and performed work in progress The Lichenized Movement as a part of the Earthen Bodies collective. My interest lies in the intersection of different dance forms, styles, elements, and cultures, with a desire to bridge communities through exploration.

Lance Lim is a disabled interdisciplinary artist living and working on the unceded territory of the Musqueam, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. Lance Lim is a local artist who grew up in the Strathcona district, and his original movement background came from studying martial arts and Wu shu. As a former Wu Shu athlete, he competed in North American tournaments until he suffered significant injuries.
This brought him to study dance at Simon Fraser University. He had several student pieces displayed at student shows. In 1998, he was involved with the Chinese Cultural Centre and worked with other artists on Self Not Whole, a showcase of Canadian Asian artists.
He also has had his choreography displayed in Dancing on the Edge and, most recently, as part of the Heart of the City Festival. He is a teaching assistant and associate artist with All Bodies Dance Group.

Leelee Oluwatoyosi Eko Davis’ practice is rooted in the foundations of contemporary dance and intermedia creation methodologies. As a disabled, transgenderqueer artist of Nigerian/French/Algonquin descent, working in decolonial frameworks is central to their praxis. Being from Treaty 1 Territory, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Leelee has had the opportunity to train and work professionally across Turtle Island. Their artistic goals are to merge performance and life, stage and experience, building a bridge to revealing the human condition. They can most commonly be found, producing their own, however often collaborate across milieus. Leelee has had the profound pleasure of collaborating with artists and interpreting for choreographers such as Jolene Bailie, Dayna Danger, Raven Davis, Jesse Dell, Yannick Desranleau, Evalyn Parry, Vanessa Dunn, Audrey Dwyer, Reginald Edmund, Johnny Forever, Gambletron, Chloe Lum, Ryan MacNamara, Kate Nankervis, Alexandra Tigchelaar on works for theatre, film, and stage. Eko Davis also works as a program designer, facilitator, and consultant in the field of Social Innovation and Adaptive Change and is a Co-Artistic Director at the Toronto Dance Community Love-In.

Simran Sachar is an East Indian/Punjabi contemporary and street dance artist, choreographer, and actor based in so-called Vancouver. She ranges in Tap, Jazz, Modern, Contemporary, W*acking, House, and Hip-Hop. Her versatility allows her to train and perform all over the world with world-class contemporary choreographers and OG’s of various street dance styles. Her work upholds the value and distortion of memories, the effects of the people we experience, and our deepest desires shaping our own unique dance. Simran is a captivating anomaly in this industry. Simran’s latest film with XR technology premieres in 2024. Her first XR film, BETA बेटा was presented at Luna Arts Festival 2021 in Revelstoke. She is currently in the process of developing BETA बेटा into a live solo. In 2020, her first film ‘LUNACY’ was a part of the National Arts Centre time capsule and premiered at F.O.R.M Film Festival and won the Official Selection of the Audience Choice Award. Simran made her acting debut in 2023 as the lead and assistant choreographer in Alberta Theatre Projects showing of Bombay Black as Apsara. Most recently, Simran is the Winner of 2023’s Release Yourself Whacking Battle in Montreal at Artfulness Festival. Simran’s credits include Netflix, CW Riverdale, The Vancouver Opera, Dairy Canada, Fringe Manila, The Vancouver Art Gallery, Dancing On The Edge, OFF-Parcours Danse and more.

Natalia Martineau (she/her) is a queer emerging dance artist of Filipino and Canadian descent based in Vancouver, on the unceded Coast Salish territories of the xwməθkwəy̓ əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. She holds a BFA in Contemporary Dance (Hons) from Simon Fraser University. In the process of expanding the physical bounds of her dance practice, Natalia hopes to investigate how embodied sensations can reveal inarticulable truths about identity through movement. In her time at SFU, Natalia had the opportunity to choreograph and perform a number of works, as well as to perform in projects by Margarida Macieira, Shion Skye-Carter, Amber Barton, Henry Daniel, and Charlotte-Boye Christensen. Natalia is currently devising an original interdisciplinary work with musical duo Sapphire Haze, and is grateful to have recently participated in EDAM’s Fall 2023 Training Scholarship Program.