Free Pop Up Dances kick off New Works' boosted 30th season of making artists feel seen and heard
Array of talent hitting Granville Island, from hoop dancers to cutting-edge contemporary voices, captures the inclusive approach of an incredibly multifaceted organization
Chengxin Wei
Alex Wells
Raven Grenier
“Nick Gold”
New Works presents Pop-Up Dances on Granville Island September 23 to 24
WHEN PEOPLE ASK dance artist and program director Amber Funk Barton what New Works does, her first answer is “Everything!”
The company, which is expanding its programming to celebrate 30 years, has long served up a mix of performances and mentorship that’s unique to the dance scene here—and sometimes hard to sum up.
For its 2023-24 anniversary season, that blend includes the free Pop Up Dances happening across Granville Island this weekend, plus free workshops in October, peer-based learning, explorations of XR technologies, a visual-art exhibit, and world premieres on local stages. Behind the scenes, the organization’s New Works Help Desk offers a free service where staff answer questions and help connect artists to resources and community partners.
“What we really do is support artists, whether that’s through residencies, a cohort program with mentoring, or a more robust presentation series,” Barton explains. “It always comes back to how to support the community. It’s making artists feel seen and heard and validating that they have challenges and what they do is hard.”
Amber Funk Barton
The program director brings deep roots to that conversation. For 13 years, until 2021, she ran her own dance company, the response.; she has also worked across choreography, instruction, and mentorship. Barton was drawn to New Works not just because she’s depended on its support and presentation offerings in the past, but because new executive director Jason Dubois came to her with an idea of refreshing the organization while paying tribute to the legacy launched 30 years ago by Barb Clausen.
“I am one of the rare breeds where my whole career has been in the Lower Mainland, so I have my own lived history of being trained as a dancer in Vancouver and seeing the history of the dance community in Vancouver,” says Barton, whose education spanned Goh Ballet and Arts Umbrella. “So I have a unique connection and a love affair with this part of the world….Coming to New Works as someone who has been visible in the community and working, I can bring that experience of what it means to be an independent dance artist and what it means to run a company and to reflect that back to them: ‘You’re not alone.’”
The goal of blending tributes to the past with an eye to the future bear out vividly in the Pop Up Dances September 23 and 24, encompassing 30 free performances in unusual site-specific spots (presented in partnership with CMHC Granville Island and Culture Days). To revive the pop-up series that started back in 2007-08 but had faded, along with some other events, by the pandemic years, Barton and her team have invited five veteran New Works artists, and five who are new to the format to perform.
That means you’ll see Chengxin Wei and Raven Grenier at Dundarave Print Shop; or butoh-infuenced Salome Nieto and Mexican multidisciplinary artist Carla Alcántara at Ron Basford Park; and contemporary names like Company 605 and Kelly McInnes at Arts Umbrella. (You can find the full schedule here.) Dance fans can catch the shows on their own, or, in a fun new twist, join Nick Gold (one of performer Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg’s personas), as he guides groups to each of the five site-specific performances (departing Ron Basford Park at 12 pm, 1:30 pm, and 3 pm on Saturday and Sunday.)
Barton brought firsthand experience of performing in the pop-ups to the idea of bringing them back to the New Works roster. “It was always a hit,” she says. “It was always fun as an artist to do something different in a different way.”
Next month, the blend of old and fresh New Works presentations continues. In partnership with the Roundhouse Community Centre, Dancing Through the Decades (October 21) is a day of free dance workshops with the likes of V’ni Dansi, CoERASGA’s Alvin Tolentino, and OURO Collective’s Cristina Bucci (with support from Dance West Network). At Scotiabank Dance Centre, the photo-art exhibition Ripple Effects: 30 Years of New Works opens the same day and runs to November 18, profiling 30 voices who have impacted the organization over the past three decades.
In its main 2023-24 ticketed presentation series, New Works boasts four productions, including three world premieres. Things kick off November 30 with The Biting School at the Annex, with the new Persian-myth-inspired Zahak, the Serpent King. In the new year, watch for a New Works partnership with PuSh International Performing Arts Festival to present Naishi Wang and Jean Abreu’s Deciphers (January 26 to 28), and the premiere of OSMOSi: 422 Unprocessable Entity by interdisciplinary artist Nancy Lee in April (with Vancouver New Music). Later that month, New Works then joins forces with The Dance Centre to present The Falling Company’s new Family Room, following that emerging company’s residency in 2022.
“I want to believe when it comes to programming that if you’ve invested in the artist at some sort of beginning or mid stage, you can support them through to the big, shiny premiere,” says Barton of her team’s vision.
As ever, New Works uses its connections to put together a range of venues for its season. “I grew up in the day where the person is always at this theatre and always at this time,” Barton says. “Here we don’t have our own theatre, so we have to get creative about how we can have that season. We always try to see what is possible.” And for Barton, maybe that’s the best way to define what New Works does: it opens doors to possibilities for artists, and helps them achieve their potential. As she puts it: “I just love the idea of implicitly trusting the artist. They don't need to prove anything to us.”
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