The first step in a journey that will take young dancers to Belgium had a successful debut last weekend at the Heritage Playhouse in Gibsons.
DSDanse Company, under the direction of Dominique Hutchinson, was on track with a few new dance pieces that honour Canadian soldiers in the First World War.
The show opened with some memorable pieces from past performances, including Take This Waltz, choreographed by the dancers themselves in 2011, and Delusion, a strangely demented piece from 2010 that conjures up nightmares.
Evangeline Larsen performed a solo and all the dancers took to the stage in a dynamic piece choreographed by Sylvain Brochu.
In the second half, a narrator set the scene 100 years ago in the early days of the war, asking the audience to reflect on the horror and the beauty of our past in order to build a bright future. Several dances, including Left Behind, Les femmes au pays were performed with heartfelt ease. In Flanders Fields used the famous poem by John McCrae to give tribute to those fallen who were laid to rest under a banner of poppies. Ode to Canada was a lively dance to the future.
In an interval between the dances, Anneka Bonser played the bagpipes while images of the men who fought in the Great War, as it was known, were displayed on a screen. Many of the vintage photos and stories were drawn from the memories of children and grandchildren of the soldiers, some of whom are now elderly, but still care to remember their heritage. The images of young men scrolled on and on, but represented only a small fraction of those who lost their lives.
The next part of the DSDanse journey will be a performance with visiting dancers from Belgium in Gibsons in July. The third part takes the Coast’s youthful dancers to Belgium in August to take part in the First World War commemorative ceremonies.
