In new dance solo Accumulation, Alvin Erasga Tolentino taps into human consumption's alarming effect on the environment
World premiere from Co.ERASGA incorporates a live soundtrack by Emmanuel Mailly, and sculptural work by visual artist Marc Gerenton
Accumulation. Photo by Yasuhiro Okada
Co.ERASGA presents Alvin Erasga Tolentino’s Accumulation at Performance Works on Granville Island from November 9 to 11 at 8 pm
A RECURRING THEME in Vancouver dancer-choreographer Alvin Erasga Tolentino’s work is his relationship to the environment.
When he founded his company Co.ERASGA in 2000, his first full-length piece, Sola, reflected upon the cycle of nature, a force at once simple and incredibly complex. Twenty-three years later, the artist has come full-circle with the world premiere of his new solo Accumulation.
Wearing a sculptural costume crafted from debris, human-made objects, and natural remnants—twigs, plastic bags, metal wire, torn paper—Tolentino moves heartbreakingly across the stage, shifting through moments of fragility and distress as a human, animal, and plant. While nature has always manifested itself in the artist’s work, it shows up with urgency in Accumulation.
“It’s so much more revealing right now with the situation that we’re in with the environmental crisis,” Tolentino says. “I mean, it’s everywhere, right? And so I think the connection that I had in Sola is returning for a much bigger and more impactful relationship now with Accumulation.”
Alvin Erasga Tolentino.
Tolentino’s 19th full-length piece for Co.ERASGA is a close collaboration with two French artists: composer-musician Emmanuel Mailly, and sculptor-visual artist Marc Gerenton. Mailly has worked with Co.ERASGA for years, contributing sound design for projects spanning 2018’s Collected, Traces and Still Here and 2020’s Offering. When the composer introduced Tolentino to his friend Gerenton back in 2018, Tolentino took a particular interest in the way Gerenton uses repurposed objects to create corporeal figures.
From there, the artists played with attaching repurposed objects to Tolentino’s body to create a moving sculpture. New York-based costume designer Meagan Woods was invited to help improve the sculpture’s wearability, and conceptualize how it would fit into a dance work. Once all the interdisciplinary components fell into place, the piece began to take form with Tolentino’s choreography and movement.
“Really here with Accumulation, it’s understanding that the body in relation to nature is not separate,” Tolentino says. “If anything, it’s more of a one-to-one crisis, you know? Whatever happens to nature, we feel it in the body.”
Tolentino’s costume transforms throughout Accumulation—it’s a moving spine that gradually collects more debris, exuding distress. Because the wearable sculpture is created in the moment as Tolentino dances, it is constantly evolving each time the piece is performed.
Accumulation. Photo by Yasuhiro Okada
Mailly’s compositions play an important role in Accumulation’s atmosphere of distress, too. Played live with moments of improvisation, the soundtrack incorporates voice clips and object-created sounds to craft unusual environmental noises. Snippets of bird calls and the hum of insects meld seamlessly with suspenseful music notes.
“I would say sometimes there’s a sense of danger,” Tolentino says of the soundtrack. “There’s a sense of hopelessness. Sometimes it’s very shamanistic, you know, because we see the entire debris forest as a conversation to the public about how this is our reality. So it becomes kind of this monster, but also a mysterious presence.”
Over the following three seasons, Co.ERASGA is dedicating its creative power and resources exclusively to stories surrounding the environmental crisis. Pieces such as 2015’s Unwrapping Culture with Pichet Klunchun, a Thai classical dance critique of consumerism and the accumulation of junk, prove that the company has long been on the trajectory to in-depth climate exploration.
“We’re not big scientists. We don’t have a lot of resources to make such a massive change. But how can we do that in the arts?” Tolentino ponders.
Though Accumulation was delayed by a few years due to the pandemic, its subject matter is more important now than ever before. The idea of accumulation, Tolentino says, applies to everything that humans do. From eating, to processing materials, to buying objects, an overwhelming majority of everyday life circles back around to the environment.
“It’s a reflection,” Tolentino says. “It’s kind of a meditation into knowing that sometimes we feel we’re separated from our environment, but in fact, we are not, we’re one with it. I think we’re easily distracted by that notion of consumption, right? And so how do we make that point? I think we can never have enough messages about that.”
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