BodyTraffic at the Norman and Annette Rothstein Theatre at Vancouver's Jewish Community Centre, part of the 2014 Chutzpah! Festival (Feb. 22-March 9). Showtimes: Saturday, Feb. 22 at 8 p.m.; Sunday, Feb. 23 at 2 and 7:30 p.m. (featuring a postperformance talkback); and Monday, Feb. 24 at 8 p.m. Tickets: $28/$24/$20. chutzpahfestival.com
For dance company founder Tina Finkelman Berkett, there is nothing more important than helping her dancers grow and develop artistically.
To ensure that goal continues to be achieved, it's imperative that they're exposed to choreographers who have something creatively specific to offer as well as who present them with a unique challenge.
The success of that approach will be exemplified this weekend when Finkelman Berkett's company, BodyTraffic, takes the stage at the 2014 Chutzpah! Festival. The annual Vancouverbased international Jewish performing arts festival opens tomorrow and runs to March 9, offering 16 days of dance, world music, theatre and comedic performances.
Finkelman Berkett founded BodyTraffic, an award-winning LA-based repertory dance company, with Lillian Barbeito in 2007.
"We were both in Los Angeles, transplanted from the East Coast, and at the height of our careers and really feeling like LA was not a place where we were able to continue on the path that we were each separately on in terms of investing in a contemporary dance career that was fulfilling and that was challenging," says Finkelman Berkett, who serves as the company's coartistic director. "That kind of work was not happening in L.A. and so we started BodyTraffic in an effort to bring internationally renowned choreographers to L.A. to make work on a Los-Angeles-based group. We're a repertory company, we're commissioning works by choreographers with very distinctive voices."
BodyTraffic plans to showcase three of those distinctive voices this weekend as the company is slated to perform a new commission by Hofesh Shechter and two Canadian premieres by Richard Siegal and Barak Marshall at this year’s Chutzpah! Festival.
Finkelman Berkett is dancing in all three works. She and her company mates arrived in Vancouver last Saturday and have been spending long days working with Shechter to complete the choreography on his piece thanks to a Chutzpah! Festival residency.
Finkelman Berkett is grateful to Mary-Louise Albert, artistic managing director of the Chutzpah! Festival, for the opportunity.
"The fact that she believes in our work and she believes that we should be given time in a theatre to finalize the piece and to work out the technical aspects, that's a huge vote of confidence. We're thrilled to have the opportunity to be here and to be working on what we love," she says.
The Israeli, Londonbased choreographer's new work is described as taking a dark look at the powers that steer us in today's society and was created for six dancers - three males and three females. It also features a soundtrack composed by Shechter.
"The style and the movement vocabulary, really none of us have ever dabbled in, but we just dove in so wholeheartedly and we really have pushed ourselves to achieve what Hofesh wants. To hear Hofesh say that we are presenting his work in the way it was intended, means the world to us," says Finkelman Berkett.
"It's been wildly fulfilling as a dancer to push yourself to feel like you're exploring some new ability in your body. You're finding further extremes that you didn't think you could reach, both emotionally and physically," she adds.
BodyTraffic was featured at the Chutzpah! Festival two years ago, performing a work by Barak Marshall, also Israeli, and based in L.A. The work, Monger, had been created for the Suzanne Dellal Centre in Tel Aviv, Israel and they were the American company chosen to mount it. This time around, Body Traffic commissioned a new work by Marshall and will open their Chutzpah! Festival performance with his And at Midnight, the Green Bride Floated Through the Village Square. Finkelman Berkett plays the green bride in the piece, created for the entire 10-member company. The work is based on the neighbours of Marshall's mother's family in Aden, Yemen.
BodyTraffic will close their Chutzpah! Festival performance with o2joy, which has "become kind of like our calling card," says Finkelman Berkett. "It's something that we love to share with audiences because we feel like they really get a sense of our personalities. They really get a window into the family that is BodyTraffic," she adds.
Created by Richard Siegal, an American who lives in Paris, France, o2joy is completely different from the other works on the program and is an upbeat piece for five dancers, centered around American jazz standards.
