By Monique Salez
Monday Magazine contributor
Turn up the volume and warm up those dancing feet!
Dance Days celebrates its 10th anniversary in January and the cake is a multi-layered expression of dance in our beautiful city. Starting as an audience development initiative, Dance Days has now grown into its role as a community event where everyone involved in Victoria’s dance culture can show, watch and share their work with the greater public.
The jam-packed online calendar for Jan. 18-27 is a feast of free classes, workshops, showings and a presenter roundtable, as well as a few not to be missed ticketed performances. From introspective to audacious, reserved to flamboyant, just for fun to professional level, Dance Days is open to serve the large, diverse and expanding community of studios, dancers, choreographers and producers on our wee Island tip.
That inclusivity is due to the fact “this is a festival that the community programs,” offers Stephen White, executive director of Dance Victoria, which co-ordinates the events.
Each year the diversity of offerings increases.
We’re now seeing dance classes for people 55-plus and the All Abilities Dance group, each disproving the outmoded idea that dance is only for the young and able-bodied.
One ticketed performance of note is MAN, a piece by Norwegian choreographer Solvi Edvardsen asking the question “What does it mean to be human?” Performed by choreographer Sudesh Adhana, who is also offering a contemporary class and a lecture on the work, this presentation happens Friday, Jan. 25 at the MacPherson Playhouse and is sure to be engaging.
This dancer’s final pick will be to join fellow audience members on Jan. 26 for a Choreography Walk, part of the annual Rough Cuts series. Starting at the Atrium Building at Yates and Blanshard streets, the moving audience will travel for 60 minutes and pass through four different performative works that will invite us “to reconsider how we move in and are moved by the world around us.” Send an email to rsvp@dancevictoria to reserve your spot.
Be moved, be a mover and let Dance Days be an opportunity to meet new folk and shake loose anything still clinging from 2018 to move joyously into 2019.
Monique Salez is owner/operator of Raino Dance in Victoria.
