VIDF welcomes aerial and dance artist Gabrielle Martin as new festival manager

Having travelled the globe with Cavalia and Cirque du Soleil, the performer returns home, keen to work with ground-breaking Vancouver International Dance Festival  

SPONSORED POST BY VANCOUVER INTERNATIONAL DANCE FESTIVAL

From the Vancouver International Dance Festival to Cirque du Soleil, Gabrielle Martin makes a return to the VIDF as festival manager.

Ever since the Vancouver International Dance Festival (VIDF) launched in 2000, it has programmed a spectrum of kinetically exciting work that broadens definitions of the form. Coproduced by Vancouver dance icons Jay Hirabayashi and Barbara Bourget, the festival is always seeking fresh ways to celebrate and disseminate live dance performances. To that aim, it’s excited to announce the appointment of Gabrielle Martin as the new festival manager.

In some ways, her role marks a full-circle moment. After studying somatic movement and contact improvisation and performing fire manipulation and stilt walking, Martin left Vancouver in 2006 to study contemporary dance at Concordia University in Montreal. Her first professional contemporary dance performance (Chrysalis, a butoh-inspired aerial dance duet, with the company Floating Seed) was at the VIDF in 2009. She later went on to perform over 1,400 shows as an aerial dancer with Cavalia (performing aerial rope, bungee trapeze, bungee dance, and harness dance numbers from 2011 to 2015) and Cirque du Soleil’s TORUK – The First Flight. During her time with TORUK (2015 to 2019), she was the principal female character, Tsyal, and performed a solo aerial silks number.

Gabrielle Martin performed in Cirque du Soleil’s TORUK.

In September 2020, Martin relocated to her hometown. For her, it’s the perfect time to turn her focus to the contemporary dance milieu in Vancouver; as international touring has been halted by the pandemic, the value of cultivating local performing arts and supporting local artists is more pronounced. 

Martin also produces her own aerial dance choreography (with husband and fellow Cirque du Soleil alumnus, Jeremiah Hughes) through Company Ci. They most recently toured their work to Edinburgh Festival Fringe and Montréal Complètement Cirque.

Through years of touring, Martin honed her ability to work collaboratively to present high-calibre performances in ever-changing, fast-paced environments. While still passionate about performance, she came to feel that her work on stage was one-dimensional and wanted to be more engaged in cultural production and the world of contemporary dance. 

Having recently completed a certificate in circus dramaturgy at the Centre National des Arts du Cirque in France, Martin is currently completing her MA in Arts and Cultural Management from Rome Business School. In this potent time of challenge and opportunity for the industry, she is excited to be working with the VIDF to find new ways to showcase and share live dance performances for audiences and dance professionals alike.

Since the VIDF was first created with the objective of putting Vancouver on the international map of dance, it has presented nearly 300 dance artists and companies, including 172 from B.C. and 154 BIPOC, to more than 85,000 people. The VIDF mission is to build audiences and appreciation for equity seeking contemporary dance artists and marginalized contemporary dance practices through its progressive, diverse, ground-breaking programming.

In 2021, the VIDF is presenting monthly livestreams March-June. For more information, see VIDF.