Dance Novella's When the Walls Come Down expresses Deaf experience in multifold ways, as part of International Dance Day
Racheal Prince and Brandon Alley perform with Deaf artist Caroline Hébert at The Dance Centre’s all-afternoon celebrations
Dance Novella’s Racheal Prince and Brandon Lee Alley in When the Walls Come Down. Photo by iiii portraits
The Dance Centre presents Dance Novella’s When the Walls Come Down at the Scotiabank Dance Centre on April 29 at 5 pm. The show is part of International Dance Day events, which run from noon to 5 pm at the centre
WHEN THE WALLS Come Down has broken rich new ground for former Ballet BC artists Racheal Prince and Brandon Lee Alley, in a dance work that relates the deeply personal experiences of a Deaf woman growing up, while integrating ASL and other multimedia forms of storytelling.
The two-year process saw their new company Dance Novella debut the piece digitally last year at VIDF. But the artfully expressive work is finally going to premiere in its live form during International Dance Day events at The Dance Centre on April 29.
Reflecting on the journey, Prince tells Stir: “Brandon and I talk about it all the time: this collaboration was the most educational and fruitful that we have ever experienced as artists. And I really appreciate all the things that have come before this. But I had never worked so closely with another community, and I just can't believe the learning and growing that happened in this process. It was eye opening. And it was difficult.”
The pair could not have foreseen the scope of the journey they were about to embark on when they first became interested in ASL. Like so many other Vancouverites who were glued to TV COVID updates during pandemic shutdowns, they first became fascinated with the expressive artistry of Dr. Bonnie Henry’s ASL interpreter Nigel Howard.
“That was really our first inspiration: the way Nigel seemed to have the real urgency—more urgency that Bonnie Henry even did,” Prince recalls. “Even if you didn't know sign language, you said ‘I get that.’”
Unfamiliar with the Deaf community, Prince and Alley started with the general idea of integrating ASL into choreography. They reached out to Howard, who put them in touch with the community, which eventually led to them connecting with the Sound Off Festival—and eventually meeting and collaborating with Deaf artist Caroline Hébert.
Caroline Hébert performs via ASL in When the Walls Come Down.
They worked closely with the artist to find a way to tell a fictionalized version of her own story through movement, music, lighting, and projections. The piece traces a Deaf girl’s experiences growing up in a household where her parents never learned to sign; the pressure she faced to give up her baby as a Deaf mother; and the slow process of finding her community and a sense of self.
“We felt, a lot of days after rehearsal, very inadequate and not like we were doing a good job,” recalls Prince, who embarked on basic ASL courses with Alley. “We realized this is a whole other culture and we really do not understand. And this is two years now and there’s still so much more to learn. So we’re really grateful to Caroline for her generosity in working with us on this project. We’ve been challenged in ways we never would have been if we’d just stayed in that bubble.”
“She was very generous in showing her story in rehearsal,” Alley adds. “She’d bring up a story every so often about her experiences and it would be completely eye-opening, and sometimes it would bring tears to eyes of people in the room. It could be a really hard process to deal with in the moment. But talking through things brought us together as well.”
The dance artists, who perform the work with Hébert, have taken artful liberties with the story. Alley, wearing bowler hat, appears as a sinister “Shadow” character throughout. (Watch for the haunting character, dressed head-to-toe in black, in the trailer below.)
“The Shadow became a metaphor for these very dark things, and she did share this recurring dream she had about being stuck in a house, with someone holding her back —being stuck and not being able to move forward,” Prince explains. “The shadow in some ways represented those people who try to push us down–but also the side of us that's self-doubt–those negative things as a human that we can let grow inside ourselves.”
The ASL blends with English voiceovers, so that When the Walls Come Down becomes accessible for both hearing and Deaf audiences. But Dance Novella has also worked hard to make the theatrically charged production experiential on multiple levels.
The duo partnered with five animators at Vancouver Film School, challenging them to build projections that would express the music and the rhythms being heard by hearing audiences. The lighting by James Proudfoot, too, reflects the feeling of the score.
In addition, the show is offering eight SUBPACS for Deaf audience members. The vest-like tactile audio platform allows its wearers to feel the vibrations and pulses of the score. Alley, who has trained as a sound engineer, customized some separate music expressly for the platform.
In all, the unique show will bring disparate communities together—a bit like this small but ambitious new dance company hopes to do, well into the future.
“At Dance Novella, we’re not that interested in just aligning ourselves with other dancers,” explains Prince, who’s devoted herself fully to the project, while Alley continues to dance for Kidd Pivot. “We really want to bring other people into the room. We’re looking at diversifying the room and allowing a platform for other voices to shine—and to really have agency over the work.”
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