A Listening Dance attunes us to our streets' everyday choreography, on International Dance Day
Dance artist and scholar Alana Gerecke’s unique audio tour reminds us of the way we move with others through urban spaces
The Dance Centre presents free programming for International Dance Day on April 29
REMEMBER THE AWKWARD dance during the early days of pandemic lockdown, when we’d veer onto the grass to distance ourselves from a passerby?
To scholar and dance artist Alana Gerecke it was a perfect example of “everyday choreography”—something she’s been exploring in her research and her art for many years.
“I think of everyday choreography as just how we move through a city on the daily—the pathways we take and how those bring us into relations with other bodies, passersby,” she tells Stir before her innovative new audio work joins a full roster of free programming at International Dance Day celebrations on Friday. “And that comes from a broader interest in finding a way to invite the audience into the movement and the experience of the movement.”
The result is A Listening Dance, running for free from noon to 6 pm on the sidewalks surrounding the Scotiabank Dance Centre 677 (Davie Street). Described as a “walking tour meets pod play meets kinesthetic poem meets small dance”, the participatory audio score streams through your smartphone and earbuds.
Through verbal prompts and spoken text, Gerecke invites participants to notice the subtle choreography that permeates our urban spaces and the forces of gravity of memory. You choose the route as you proceed through the guided experience.
The artist said the format was prompted by the pandemic and the way people were prevented from being together in a space.
“I started to think about what other opportunity there is for an immersive approach that would create a container for the audience to view the feeling of the dance,” Gerecke explains. “I'm not asking audiences to ‘dance’ in terms of virtuosic high kicks or something at all–I’m really interested in using audio cues…to attune audiences to the nuanced sensation of moving through everyday urban spaces.”
Gerecke says she also drew inspiration from contact improvisation’s “small dance” exercise: a simple meditation, held in the standing position, and noticing the “movement within stillness”, as the artist and academic puts it: “The small dance is already there,” she says, “in conversation with the ground and the gravity.”
In many ways, the piece responds to the pandemic–not just to the way bodies had to re-learn how to move through urban spaces together, but to the way Gerecke missed the connection of bodies in space.
“I took more notice of how we were moving through public spaces and just had a new awareness of the way we’re connected in any public spaces,” she explains. “We’re not just an entity that goes out there on their own but my choices impact you, potentially.”
To take part in The Listening Dance, head to the Scotiabank Dance Centre lobby with a smartphone or other portable device that has streaming capability. No registration required, and the duration is 20-30 minutes.
Elsewhere on April 29, head to Robson Plaza at noon to see Gladstone Secondary School’s program of Latin and hip-hop dance; take in shows by the likes of Dumb Instrument Dance (4 pm) and Shot of Scotch (6 pm) at the Scotiabank Dance Centre; and check out a full roster of streamed Digital Micro-Commissions from 1pm onwards via youtube.com/thedancecentrebc. See the full schedule of events here.
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