The 17th annual Vancouver International Dance Festival will present 14 companies at various venues around the city from March 1-25. Highlights include San Francisco’s Alonzo King LINES Ballet, Japan’s Dairakudakan, and Denmark’s Kitt Johnson. The festival will offer an “eclectic balance of local and international groups,” says Barbara Bourget who co-produces the event with Jay Hirabayashi. “We not devoted to one mode of expression.”
Returning to VIDF a third time, Alonzo King LINES Ballet will perform the Canadian premieres of Shostakovich (2014) and SAND (2016) at the Vancouver Playhouse from March 3-4. Bourget, originally a ballet dancer, is drawn to the cultural diversity and rigor of the company and the impact of their productions. She says their works speak to the “heart, mind, spirit, soul” and “what it means to be a human.”
Dairakudakan, Japan’s longest-standing Butoh ensemble, founded in 1972, will present its latest work, Paradise, at the Vancouver Playhouse from March 10-11. Bourget and Hirabayashi have been fascinated by Butoh since they discovered it in 1982. Bourget says they felt they “had to learn more about its aesthetic” and its “reimagining of time and space.” Attending a workshop held by Dairakudakan in 2015 led to them engaging the company for its Canadian premiere two years ago. Bourget says the audience’s excitement was “palpable” during those VIDF performances.
Kitt Johnson, a solo performer, will make her third visit to the festival to perform POST NO BILLS at the Roundhouse Performance Center from March 23-25. Bourget says that Johnson is a strong artist whose work always “pulls her in.”
The Vancouver International Dance Festival will also feature free and inexpensive performances at the Roundhouse Exhibition Hall and the Woodward’s Atrium from March 9-25. Groups and artists will include Molly Mcdermott, Rob/Jane/Kim, Ouro, Mutable Subject, and KTL Company. For more information see here.
To purchase tickets for Alonzo King LINES Ballet, Dairakudakan, Kitt Johnson and other performances see here.
