Dances for a Small Stage returns with a renewed vision and fresh venue
Cultivating emerging talent and making dance affordable are just some of the reasons Julie-anne Saroyan brought back the popular program of short works on a tiny stage
Nasiv Kaur Sall.
Cori Caulfield.
Dances for a Small Stage 2.0 takes place July 16 and 17 at Please! Beverage Co., with Happy Half Hour at 7 pm, show 7:30 pm. Small Stage Summer Splash at the Shipyards 5th Anniversary Celebration takes place July 20 at 2:30, 3:30, and 4:30 pm at the foot of Lonsdale Plaza
LAUNCHED IN 2002, Small Stage made its name taking dance performances to pubs, legions, lounges, and even a Ukrainian community hall on perogie night.
Its Dances for a Small Stage events were buzzy shows that packed houses in cabaret-like settings, mixing styles from contemporary to flamenco to burlesque on its pint-sized platform, and introducing audiences to emerging talents. Some of them—Crystal Pite, Kirsten Wicklund, and Joshua Beamish, just to name a few—would go on to make the national and international scene.
Later, cofounder, artistic director, and creative producer Julie-anne Saroyan would take Small Stage to bigger spaces—including outdoor pop-up performances at Granville Island, Uptown New Westminster, and Robson Square, and also digital and virtual-reality creations.
But now, seeing a pressing need to cultivate a new generation of emerging dancers, Saroyan is returning to intimate indoor shows—with cocktails. In a two-part production this month, Small Stage takes to funky Mount Pleasant distillery Please! Beverage Co. on July 16 and 17 with a program of five-to-seven-minute dance works on the signature 10-by-12-foot stage. That’s followed by outdoor popup performances at the Small Stage Summer Splash at the Lonsdale Plaza on July 20.
“I feel, after the ‘fire’—the pandemic—that we really need to look at the ecology of the community again,” Saroyan tells Stir of Small Stage’s indoor return. “I felt that the role of Small Stage in the ecology of the community is perfect right now—to do that work of having new artists inject some new energy.”
Saroyan says she’s worked to hold on to some of the old traditions of the original Small Stage nights while also reinventing the event for a new era—hence the “2.0”. She’s made the previous happenings’ informal preshow chats more of a focused part of the evening.
“I want to make a really strong connection between the artist and the audience—to bridge that gap,” says Saroyan, who emcees the event with theatre artist and producer Cory Philley.
Small Stage aims to reconnect artists as well. Saroyan feels that some of the legacies in the professional dance community—the “generational learnings”—have been lost. And so she’s put together a distinctly intergenerational program of artists that will also help bridge the Small Stage of the past with the present.
Claudia Moore.
AJ Simpson.
The lineup at Please! Beverage Co. covers a vast array of experience and styles, the dancers ranging in age from their 20s to 70s.
Iconic Vancouver dance artist Cori Caulfield makes a notable return to Small Stage; the longtime teacher and choreographer with Coriograph Theatre has danced around the world, notably in duets with Crystal Pite in the earliest days of Kidd Pivot. Claudia Moore, performer, curator, and artistic director of Moonhorse Dance Theatre, has been a force on the Canadian dance scene since the late ’70s, performing with the National Ballet of Canada, Desrosiers Dance Theatre, and Toronto Dance Theatre, while also founding Older & Reckless, a performance series for mature dance artists. Vancouver’s Lesley Telford not only creates contemporary works for her own Inverso Productions, but has choreographed for Ballet BC; she had a long dance career with Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, Compañia Nacional de Danza in Spain, and Nederlands Dans Theater. Nasiv Kaur Sall is a Canadian-Punjabi multidisciplinary artist and Arts Umbrella grad who has worked with the likes of Kidd Pivot and Out Innerspace Dance Theatre. Jessica Keeling’s experience spans musical reviews in Tokyo Disneyland, West Side Story at the Stratford Festival stage, Helix Dance Project productions, and film work. AJ Simpson, meanwhile, is a Mestiza actor, writer, and filmmaker who also trains in flamenco with Mozaico Flamenco.
Presenting separate works at Please! Beverage Co., those artists will appear together in a structured group improvisation at the free outdoor performance at the Shipyards in Lonsdale Quay, Saroyan hints.
Julie-anne Saroyan.
“I think it’s important to go back to connections in the studio, and that includes collaborations,” Saroyan explains.
Back at Please! Beverage Co., Saroyan is sizing back to several dozen seats. “Yeah, we got a little big in the past,” the producer admits with a laugh of the event’s packed early-aughts editions. “When we were getting sold out, I think that was a little too big.”
Instead, Saroyan wants to hone in on one of the things that Dances for a Small Stage did best: giving artists instant feedback on new works at an early phase in the creative process when they needed it to move a piece forward. That’s been a piece that she’s seen missing from the scene since COVID times.
“We’re holding fast to a lot of old systems that weren’t working before the pandemic,” she allows, “and we need to change what we’re doing and become more adaptable.”
On the audience end, Saroyan sees a demand for more affordable arts events at a time when a lot of people are strapped for cash. Admission to Small Stage will be a retro $15, with the outdoor Lonsdale event free.
“Professional dancers in the community: we need to see that,” says Saroyan. “We need to see high-calibre work and high-calibre artists. And we need to have free things and paid things.” She adds with another laugh: “And so I’m trying to do it all.” 
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