Vancouver International Dance Festival, various venues, March 7-29. For more information and complete schedule visit vidf.ca.
The idea of bringing together a ballet company and an international dance company was something Chan Hon Goh, director of the Goh Ballet, wanted to see happen for Vancouver.
"I feel that we should have the impact and also the experience of hosting dance groups from all over the world," says Goh.
Goh Ballet will be performing a collaborative production with the Guangdong Modern Dance Company of China at the Vancouver International Dance Festival on March 7 and 8. The production consists of three performances. Voice After, choreographed by Liu Qi and performed by Guangdong, was inspired by the poetry of Bei Dao depicting ocean waves, seagulls and an underlying storm surge. Goh Ballet will perform the second piece in the program, Walpurgisnacht Ballet.
"We're really thrilled to put on stage a work by George Balanchine, not many companies actually have his repertoire," says Goh.
Goh says they acquired Walpurgisnacht, which consists of 23 dancers, for the company's 35th anniversary last June.
Mustard Seed, also choreographed by Qi, is the final piece in the program and combines dancers from both companies.
"It will involve 10 dancers from Goh Ballet and 12 dancers from the Guangdong Modern Dance Company, they're working together with the choreographer," says Goh, adding that the dancers only met last week.
Goh, a West Vancouver resident, was inspired to collaborate with Guangdong on a trip to China three years ago, when she took in one of their performances.
"I spoke with their artistic director Willy (Tsao) and he had expressed a keen interest to collaborate with Goh Ballet and showcase his company here in Vancouver," she says. "We discovered that Vancouver and Guangzhou are sister cities so it made the possibility even more significant."
Goh says they originally thought of featuring Guangdong on a Goh Ballet program.
"But I thought given the wonderful connection and wanting to reach out to even a broader, more diversified audience, I approached the Vancouver International Dance Festival," says Goh, of the festival's founders Jay Hirabayashi and Barbara Bourget. "I said 'What do you think about this idea?' and right away they embraced it and they have been supportive of it."
Bringing together both companies proved to be an interesting feat, helped along by the use of technology.
"A year from the concept of this collaboration, I then met the choreographer and heard about some of her ideas," says Goh. "Then when I came back I was able to provide for her some of our dancers through video, so that she would get to know our dancers because we all knew the creative process would be very quick."
Goh says Qi then rapidly put together the choreography.
"The actual physical part of the creation didn't happen until around the 10th of February," she says. "The choreographer came. ... and started to give her stylistic combinations and vocabulary to our dancers."
Goh adds that the Guangdong dancers arrived on Feb. 22, when "the solidifying and putting together of the piece started."
"This is a really exciting venture for everyone involved, particularly the artists," says Goh. "They come from culturally different backgrounds but also stylistically very different backgrounds so it's very interesting to see how differently and how wonderfully they're discovering the movements off of one another. The creative process is really great."
Goh says that besides the dancers' backgrounds, there is not really an east versus west aspect within the choreography.
"I'm not sure we can actually say that it is a difference of east and west, versus just a difference of style and choreographic voices because of the influences that this choreographer has been exposed to and her own imagination," she says. "She brings to the work a very new and different way of moving the body, of partnering skills. So she's been adding a different way for the dancers to interact with each other and I guess we can't separate that between the east and west."
Goh says what does comes into play is each dancer's cultural background.
"I think when it comes to the difference of east and west it's probably more felt within the relationship that the dancers are building," says Goh. "I think there's always such a strong connector and a strong common language but maybe in how steps are approached, maybe in the number of repetitions, that's a difference between how that company works and how we work here."
Goh knows the intricacies of dancing well. She joined the National Ballet of Canada in 1988 and became principal dancer in 1994. She danced her last performance with the National Ballet 15 years later and became director of Goh Ballet Academy and Youth Company in 2010.
"My previous experiences have really taught me how to look for collaborative opportunities, for how to build a dancer in his or her development to become an artist," says Goh.
"What does a young dancer need, what artistic input would one need in order to grow to the next stage of maturity and be able to be a better dancer."
Goh says she had a wonderful time rising through the National Ballet and leading it for several years.
"I have first-hand knowledge as well as experience to know how you shape a path for dancers and how you try to find individual success for different dancers," says Goh.
After the dance festival is finished, the Goh Ballet will be heading into rehearsals for their next production at the Vancouver Playhouse in June.
"Its called Aurora's Awakening and it's an adaptation of Sleeping Beauty and its original choreography done by our own faculty members on the entire academy," says Goh. "So you will have young ones from as young as seven years old right up to our graduating students."
Goh herself plans to travel across the country to eight major cities, imparting her experience on young dancers.
"I will be conducting, for the first time ever, a national master class tour," says Goh. "It's going to speak and cater to dancers between the ages of 12 to 18 and they must have had an amount of training before. I want to have a chance to get to know them but also provide access so that they can train with me and hopefully give them some insight as to what it takes to become a professional dancer."
The Goh Ballet also collaborates with other professional dance companies on a regular basis. Goh says members of another company are invited to dance with them every year for their annual performance of The Nutcracker.
"Every year I bring in artists from other companies to guest appear with us," says Goh. "We've had New York City Ballet, the Royal Danish, National Ballet of Canada, American Ballet Theatre, a lot of the major companies come and guest appear with us."
But Goh would like to see another large-scale collaboration in the future.
"I'm certainly hoping for more opportunities like the one that we're doing here with Guangdong where it's that creative process, and sharing the stage potentially in a full length work," she says. "I just hope that we will be able to introduce to audiences the importance of collaborations like this."
