Dance as a form of prayer: Co. ERASGA's Offering returns, this time for live performances
Choreographer Alvin Erasga Tolentino’s collection of solos for seven dancers, including Marc Arboleda, gets new life on-stage
Contemporary dancer Marc Arboleda. Photo by Yasuhiro Okada
The Anvil Centre and Co.ERASGA present Offering at the Anvil Centre October 15 and 16 at 8 pm and October 17 at 2 pm.
THE 20th ANNIVERSARY of Alvin Erasga Tolentino’s dance company, Co.ERASGA, happened to fall smack dab in the middle of the pandemic. The local performer and choreographer wasn’t about to let COVID-19 quash the celebrations, however. Amid extraordinarily challenging circumstances for the arts world, Tolentino ended up choreographing a collection of solos for a program called Offering. It premiered in November 2020 via a livestream performance at the Anvil Centre.
Now, Offering is back, only this time out it’s the real deal, the work returning to the Anvil for performances in front of live audiences.
Performed by seven diverse local artists, Offering is a response to the need and desire to keep dancing during pandemic-related isolation, anxiety, and physical distancing.
“I began asking the dancers: what do we do in this kind of crisis for the arts?” Tolentino previously shared with Stir. “How do our bodies relate to the pandemic? How can we continue to be artists in this time when everything is so difficult and keep art alive?”
Contemporary dancer Marc Arboleda, who studied contemporary dance at Simon Fraser University, is among the performers who seek to answer those questions through kinetic expression. With training in contact improvisation and several somatic movement practices, he has found that staying optimistic about the future has been a way to cope with COVID-19.
“It’s been challenging, but I’ve found a problem-solving mindset to be helpful,” Arboleda tells Stir.
“For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved the physicality of dance and the aesthetics of human movement,” he adds. “Like the other solos in the show, my solo partly explores the idea of an ‘offering’ as well as the idea of ‘dance as a form of prayer’.”
Joining Arboleda in Offering are dancers Joshua Ongcol, Olivia Shaffer, Antonio Somera, Alison Denham, and Marissa Wong. The entire collection is set to an original atmospheric score by composer Emmanuel Mailly, a long-time collaborator of Tolentino’s.
For the artists, having the chance to bring the show to the stage after its online run is a welcome opportunity—an offering of sorts in itself.
“I’m as excited to perform it for a live audience as I was to perform it for a virtual audience, Arboleda says. “It’s great to be able to perform for different audiences in different venues.”
For more information, see http://companyerasgadance.ca For tickets, see: www.ticketsnw.ca.
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