Lamondance ramps itself up through pandemic, debuting two new virtual shows
Brazilian-born artistic director Davi Rodrigues keeps the energy and positivity flowing to move a rising dance company forward
Open Your Eyes is a mixed program by a slate of contemporary choreographers.
Davi Rodgrigues’s Before Dawn, at the VIDF, finds dancers navigating a symbolic ramp. Photo by Miles Clark
Lamondance streams Open Your Eyes on June 4 and 5. Vancouver International Dance Festival livestreams Before Dawn on June 18 and 19 at 7 pm, and on June 20 at 4 pm
TO UNDERSTAND the passion and vision that not only drives artistic director Davi Rodrigues’s creations but has helped push Lamondance Company through the pandemic, here’s an anecdote from his childhood.
Growing up in Brazil, he was obsessed with two things: English movies and Christmas. “When I was six or seven years old, I told myself, ‘One day I will live in a country where I will be able to speak English and there will be the Christmas lights and snow,’” he tells Stir. “If you have a dream go for it. And boom! I’m here!”
Of course, that journey didn’t happen quite as instantaneously as Rodrigues suggests. The artist spent years studying dance and creating work, including a role as director and choreographer at Brasilia’s Cia Criatividança, before arriving here in 2008 as a dancer and guest choreographer at North Vancouver’s Lamondance.
At the time, he did not speak a word of English. Twelve years later, he’s fluent (completely self-taught), he’s a Canadian citizen, and he’s taken the helm of the organization. In 2019 he helped incorporate the Lamondance Arts Society as a charitable organization.
That same year, the growing organization celebrated its 10th anniversary as a company and training ground for professional dancers, some of whom have gone on to perform for troupes in Germany, the U.S., and Brazil.
Lamondance was busy establishing itself as a strong voice on the contemporary dance scene here when the pandemic hit. But the same energy and optimism that got Rodrigues to Canada’s West Coast has helped him propel Lamondance through the pandemic against massive odds; “the struggle is real,” the artistic director says. This month, the company is streaming not just one, but two separate productions. This week sees the premiere of Lamondance’s own two-night mixed bill of work by Rodrigues and other well-known choreographers. Then, later in June, Lamondance is livestreaming a major new work called Before Dawn.
The past year has not been easy; the blur of Zoom classes, health inspections, ever-changing protocols, and constant advocating for the facility to be treated as more than a recreational program has been mentally and emotionally exhausting for Rodrigues. Even the perennially optimistic Rodrigues admits he’s had moments where he’s lost faith. That’s been exacerbated by the COVID-19 disaster happening in Brazil that he’s had to watch unfold from afar.
“My family and my mom have vaccines now, but there are still millions and millions of people who need help,” he says, “and it’s so hurtful to see the world the way it is now.”
As ever, though, Rodrigues is able to find the positive in a negative situation here. Virtual platforms have allowed Lamondance’s dancers to connect with international artists more easily than ever, he says.
That plays out in June 4 and 5’s Open Your Eyes program, which features a brand new work by New York City dance innovator Yoshito Sakuraba.
“We had our very first experience creating a piece remotely,” Rodrigues enthuses of Sakuraba\s large-scale group work, Valete. “Through Zoom, he created a whole universe.”
The rest of the filmed program is equally compelling, with Wen Wei Wang’s flowing, candlelit Crave; Ballet BC dancer Kirsten Wicklund’s haunting and meditative When Clouds Become Sky; plus, pieces by Heather Dotto and Dance/Novella—whose Ballet BC-honed Brandon Lee Alley and Racheal Prince are resident choreographers at Lamondance. The program also offers a behind-the-scenes documentary about the making of Before Dawn (for which Prince also acted as rehearsal director).
“The show is all about celebrating what we have,” Rodrigues says of Open Your Eyes.
Davi Rodrigues
As for the striking Before Dawn at VIDF, Rodrigues’s new full-length group piece features the dancers navigating two striking onstage ramps. The structures became a huge challenge as the dancers’ centres of gravity shifted, he relates.
Athletic, energized, and deeply human, it’s set to music that ranges from Nina Simone to Antonio Vivaldi. The piece’s central ramps have taken on a huge metaphorical significance in a year when not just Rodrigues and Lamondance, but the rest of the world, have faced an uphill battle.
“I always tell my dancers props are not just props—they’re an extension of your body or they are another being. We see these two ramps as life,” Rodrigues emphasizes. “In life you go up and you go down; sometimes it’s hard to climb your way to the top, and then something happens and you go down so fast.”
As usual, Rodrigues has taken a holistic approach to the piece’s look, designing the black-latex-like costumes, set against sleek white.
The title alludes to a new, brighter future as the world opens up again and arts hit the stage again. And it turns out the piece is the realization of yet another of the choreographer’s dreams.
“When I first moved to Vancouver, I went to see VIDF, and I was like, ‘Wow: one day I will see Lamondance perform here’,” he recalls. Receiving the invitation from artistic directors Barbara Bourget and Jay Hirabayashi for his company to take part in the festival made a lot of what he’d been through in the past year worthwhile. “It was one of those moments, experiencing the pandemic, where you get a call like that and it does change your life,” he says.
Rodrigues has even bigger hopes for Before Dawn when the planet opens up again. “I want to take this around the world,” he says.
And by now it's clear: if Rodrigues is already picturing that, it's only a matter of time before it happens.
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