Organizing an international dance project is no easy feat. At the close of a two-night performance at the Heritage Playhouse last week, a tired and very happy Dominique Hutchinson, artistic director of DSdanse, thanked the audience, especially the parents of dancers and the many contributors to Canada and Belgium, United in Dance that marked a high point in a project that had been two years in the making.
Fourteen young women from Belgium, Cie Ph/f/ase and Junior Cie, recently arrived in Gibsons, led off the show with a lengthy piece, Faces in the Mirror. The energy never flagged throughout and the 21 Canadian dancers from the DSdanse troupe matched the energy with their own performances. Audree Hutchinson and Lily Riggs soloed in dances of their own composition while both groups came together for a finale choreographed by the visiting Saskia Goerghebeur, Anse Warmoes and the dancers themselves.
Several pieces were familiar from previous shows of DSdanse, including the wildly original Delusion. Fourteen dancers portray inmates in the asylum in an excellent but disturbing presentation that reminds us that movement and even jerky body language is also dance in its most starkly simple form.
The focus for this show was on dances that commemorate soldiers in the First World War, and it is these works that the group will take to Belgium to perform during ceremonies in honour of Canadians who fought and died there. The original pieces took up the second half and were moving in their expression. Cie Ph/f/ase performed an interesting narrative piece, Amanto, in which dancers carried images of their loved ones on stage and offered them up to the battlefield. A soldier sat throughout the dance, playing chess with the symbolic pawns until, one by one, each was knocked off the chess board, never to return.
In Flanders Fields was danced to the famous poem by John McRae and the poignant Run was choreographed by Audree Hutchinson.
On the weekend the Belgian and Canadian dancers appeared again in the Gibsons Sea Cavalcade parade, their energy undiminished, and gave a performance in Winegarden Park.
The project, organized by the Sunshine Coast Youth Dance Association (SCYDA), will embark on the next stage of their journey to Belgium in August where dancers will attend commemorative events in honour of the 100th anniversary of Canada’s role in World War I.
