The Dance Deck brings artful performances to an East Vancouver backyard
Belle Spirale Dance Projects’ at-home public performances take place on cofounders Sylvain Senez and Alexis Fletcher’s patio
Sylvain Senez (left) and Alexis Fletcher. Photo by Garfield Crooks
Belle Spirale Dance Projects presents The Dance Deck Onze on August 17, 18, 24, and 25 in the backyard of a house in East Vancouver from 4 pm to 6 pm
WHEN STIR CATCHES UP with dance artists Sylvain Senez and Alexis Fletcher via Zoom, the two are sitting in the shade on their backyard patio near Napier Street and Commercial Drive in East Vancouver. For four dates each year, the space is not just your typical deck; rather, off come the table, chairs, and carpet and in goes the sprung floor. It’s The Dance Deck, where live multidisciplinary performances take place in front of an audience of 75 every summer.
Viewers are seated on chairs and bleachers in the couple’s alleyway driveway; their backyard fence gets removed, too, so there’s no barrier between the stage and the seating. A huge tarp goes over it all—shows are rain or shine—and once the performances have finished, everybody heads next door to the neighbour’s place for a by-donation dinner reception and drinks.
“It’s very East Van,” Fletcher says.
Senez and Fletcher, who first met when she was studying in the graduate program at Arts Umbrella and he was a hired photographer who did students’ headshots, worked together at Ballet BC beginning in 2005; they became a couple in 2008. They both went on to become principal artists and rehearsal directors with Ballet BC. They now have their own company called Belle Spirale Dance Projects. Their first Dance Deck was in 2015, and since then, they’ve hosted sold-out shows featuring some of the most exciting artists from Vancouver and abroad.
“Dance Deck from day one has always been a space and a platform we give to the community—independent choreographers, dancers, musicians…” says Senez, who also danced as a soloist with Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, Judith Marcuse Dance Projects, and Compagnie de la Citadelle (formerly Coleman Lemieux & Compagnie). “We stage-manage it, we produce it, we curate it, we put it all together, but it’s never self-serving. It’s always for the dance community and the music community.”
Fletcher adds that the idea stemmed partly from the pair’s love of hosting people in their home. They regularly rent out a room in their house via Airbnb and serve visitors breakfast. “It’s still a huge part of our lives,” Fletcher says. “We’ve been doing that since 2010 and we discovered this whole other side of ourselves creatively in that role, which is obviously completely different from being on-stage. We were really interested in what it would mean to host a work of art at this grassroots level and how does that feel different than this very large organizational structure that we were in with international touring that we had been so lucky to experience in our careers; what does it mean when you take all those things and zoom them into this really specific, and intimate, and totally stripped-down environment with shows happening during daylight in the middle of the afternoon? We discovered the joy of giving this platform for other people’s work to elevate others in all the ways we could and see other voices come up. We kind of discovered this part of ourselves as leaders through doing it.”
“The space is very special and very unique,” adds Senez, who, along with Fletcher, is an artist in residence at The Chutzpah! Festival. “Not only that, but nobody in Vancouver is doing this. There’s kind of a magic in it. Even though it’s a setting in East Van in a backyard, we really tried to create this sacred space and to cultivate an environment that has the same kind of sanctity you would have in a theatre.”
The backyard of Alexis Fletcher and Sylvain Senez’s East Vancouver home.
All tickets are by sliding scale donation or pay what you can, and proceeds from the show go directly to the artists and to production costs.
Adding to the success of The Dance Deck has been the couple’s neighbours on all three sides, who have been nothing but supportive of the venture and then some. The post-show dinner reception was their neighbour’s idea; they also insisted on hosting it from the get-go and opening their house to audiences. If it’s raining, the tables from the neighbour’s yard get moved to the 14-foot-by-18-foot deck, which, along with the viewers’ seats, is covered by a 40-foot-by-40-foot white tarp. The first year they held the backyard shows, a rainstorm roared in. They woke up at four in the morning to discover another one of their neighbours up on a ladder with a headlamp on making sure that the tarp wasn’t leaking.
“The idea has only been able to thrive because of them,” Fletcher says. “Their generosity and also their genuine passion for the idea has made it so much greater than it ever would have been if it was just the two of us. My parents help and Senez’s kids help put on the show.”
As far as curation goes, Senez and Fletcher are hands-off. They might end up giving artists a rough duration for their work or may request, say, a duet rather than a solo, but other than that, the creators have carte blanche. One year, Serge Bennathan did a full-length piece. “In terms of themes, we never dictate, we just say ‘please do what first and foremost serves your practice and feels inspiring in this space,’” Fletcher says.
This year’s lineup features up-and-coming artists and well-established professionals.
In a coup for Belle Spirale, internationally acclaimed artists Kevin O’Day and Alba Nadal are coming from Germany to perform a duet called Between Us that will have its North American premiere at The Dance Deck. O’Day is a choreographer, dancer, and director whose work will be familiar to local audiences from his two past creations for Ballet BC: Face to Face from 2010 and 2014’s Here on End. Nadal is formerly with Royal Danish Ballet and is currently a soloist at the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe. (They’ll be staying at Fletcher and Senez’s house while they’re in town.) “The work they’re going to be sharing has just premiered in Europe, so they will be reconfiguring this duet to this site-specific space,” Fletcher says. “It will have a new sensibility to it.”
The 2024 edition also features a new creation by generous mess, directed by Aiden Cass and Sarah Hutton, both known to Vancouver audiences from their work with Shay Kuebler’s Radical System Art. This premiere will feature Kira Radosevic in a duet performed by herself and Hutton.
Emerging artist Brenna Metzmeier, a member of Belle Spirale, will be presenting a new solo work that shines a light on her identity as a contemporary dancer and circus artist. “It’s the first time we’ve had a circus artist on this stage,” Fletcher notes. “This piece really explores some of her modalities and interest in floor acrobatics specifically. We’re really, really excited about having that new aspect of our curation this year.”
Opera Unbound comes in the form of a new composition by Kara Gibbs performed live by mezzo-sopranos Taryn Plater and Rachael McAuley. Co-directed by pianist Perri Lo, the work, “Floating Island”, features choreography by Rhiannon Beausoleil-Morrison and Emma Hall and performance by Elle Derkitt and Danae Harpham. “There’s nothing like that live-music element,” Fletcher says. “They’re so close you can really feel how the sound comes resonating through their bodies. Having opera here is very, very magical. Their work is also very much about female empowerment and has very, very important themes.”
After the show, it’s time to mingle and meet the artists. The by-donation dinner is either prepared by volunteers or is catered by a Commercial Drive restaurant.
“If the weather is good, the reception becomes a bit of a garden party,” Fletcher says. “People can hang out on the stage or in Roger and Leah’s yard next door. The bar is next door too.”
Adds Senez: “Once people come and experience it, you see it’s really, really special.” 
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