Dance comes full circle in Mary-Louise Albert's Solo Dances/Past into Present
As well as taking the stage again at 65, she’s giving three works to a new generation: Vanessa Goodman, Livona Ellis, and her daughter Rebecca Margolick
Mary-Louise Albert takes the stage with daughter Rebecca Margolick. Photos by Max Berkowit (left) and Sylvain Senez
The Dance Centre presents Mary-Louise Albert’s Solo Dances/Past into Present from November 19 to 21; it streams online from December 3 to 17. See COVID-19 safety measures here
DANCE ARTIST Rebecca Margolick has a faint memory of watching her mother, Mary-Louise Albert, perform Allen Kaeja’s searing Trace Elements 20 years ago.
“It was the last live show she did, and I was nine years old,” Margolick tells Stir. “There was a very striking scene where she lit candles on the stage. And of course I remember her fiery movement.”
Now, two decades later, Margolick is performing the same work. It’s part of an evening of solos created for her mother by Canadian choreographers; none has been performed in 20 years. While Margolick takes on Kaeja’s piece, Ballet BC dancer Livona Ellis is taking on EDAM cofounder Peter Bingham’s Woman Walking (away) and Action at a Distance innovator Vanessa Goodman is tackling idiosyncratic solo master Tedd Robinson’s (oLOS). Albert herself, at 65, will dance a new solo called premiere of Empreintes by Serge Bennathan as part of the show.
Twenty years ago, Albert, who performed for influential local troupes like Judith Marcuse Dance Company and Anna Wyman Dance Theatre, could not have fully predicted her daughter would have become a professional dancer herself. Margolick would go on to graduate from Arts Umbrella, study dance at NYU, and then take the stage for companies like Sidra Bell Dance New York.
What’s it like now, taking on a work specifically created for her mother?
“Totally trippy!” Margolick says with a laugh, then struggles to put the experience in words. “I think the trippy part was putting the movement in my body, and it felt like my mom doing it, but it still felt like me. I guess I feel like she was in my body.”
Margolick explains she and her mother have, until this show, never really confronted what their similarities or differences were as dancers in such a direct way. Their careers had never overlapped.
“At a certain age you feel you’re becoming more like your mom,” she says. “She’s a very, very intense performer and that’s connected with me a lot. She also has a really unique way of using her hands—and I realized I was doing that as well!”
Now, as their careers circle in on one another, the pair will also perform on the same program for the first time. The evening of works is all about the cycles of dancers in the arts world, and about one generation’s gift to the next generation.
Albert, who recently retired from her post at the helm of Vancouver’s Chutzpah! Festival, says, “An aspect that was always nagging at me was that these solos had ended with me. I moved on and the choreographers moved on. And I thought, ‘It would be really great to give these to other dancers; it’s an opportunity to work with choreographers of my generation.’”
Albert, who programmed a vivid dance lineup at Chutzpah! and now oversees the new BC Movement Arts Society in her new home base in seaside Sointula, had also noticed a trend away from dancers who were exploring their own choreography commissioning works from others.
“I think it’s very important to have work in your repertoire from artists other than yourself,” she observes.
And so the project began, two years ago, before anyone had an inkling of a pandemic, with Albert first showing dancers Goodman and Ellis the pieces before the dancers went to work with the choreographers themselves.
Livona Ellis (left) in Woman Walking (away) and Vanessa Goodman in (oLOS). Photos by Sylvain Senez
In Margolick’s case, however, Albert thought it was best to step back and let her work directly with Kaeja first.
His emotionally and physically intense piece, set to recordings that include Germans talking about experiences during the war, is a dark rumination on the apathy that allowed the Holocaust to happen. “Unfortunately it resonates today, with fascism, and people turning their heads and saying ‘It doesn’t have anything to do with me,’” Albert says.
Kaeja ended up changing parts of the work for Margolick. “He definitely wanted to make it my own,” she says. “If something felt unnatural, we’d shift it a bit....But I also think he was interested in revisiting the piece and revamping it to reflect what he’s gone through in his choreographic journey.”
Margolick says she was “pleasantly surprised”, later in the project, to find out Albert would dance on stage as well.
Her mother tells Stir that Bennathan came up to Sointula, where they rehearsed in the historic Finnish Hall. Bennathan has done his own works exploring the idea of a mature dancer returning to the stage, and Albert, who had worked with him via Chutzpah! and other projects over the years, knew he “understands that aspect of going back”.
Here again, Margolick, who’s returned to the West Coast from New York City to find refuge during COVID, sees life and art circling back.
“It’s been really beautiful to see her dance again, and there’s been this amazing flip,” she says. “I’ve been helping her in the studio--I’m giving my mom notes instead of the other way around.”
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