605/the response in Kitimat

Thanks Anna-Marie Carstens, MiBC Dance Outreach Coordinator in Kitimat, for this!

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The 605 Collective and the response. came to Kitimat on September 27th for their “Hero and Heroine” and “AUDIBLE” performance on Wednesday, September 29th. On the afternoon of the 27th, Josh Martin and Shay Kuebler already led a workshop with dancers from Dance Kitimat. The dancers enjoyed the “cool moves” and did their best to get it right. Dwight Magee from fineartsgrafics (http://www.fineartgrafics.com/ ) stopped by to take pictures of the workshop in progress. After the workshop they had an informal chat with the dancers.

Tuesday morning, Lisa Gelley and Maiko Myauchi worked their magic with Rick Jones’ high school musical theatre class. This group of 30 or so aspiring young actors will be performing the Wizard of Oz in January 2011. The students found this workshop very useful, because they will have to learn some choreography for the show and many are non-dancers. Some students were a little shy, but the majority had a blast and a few demonstrated astounding moves that even the experienced dancers hadn’t seen before!

The Wednesday evening of the performance, I was a little worried, because it had been decided that this contemporary dance show would fall outside of the regular Kitimat Concert Association Season as en “Extra”, in other words, we could not count on the 70 or so Season Ticket holders to attend. The final count was 120 which was not bad. It constitutes about 1.5% of the total population of Kitimat, but Michael Jeffery from the KCA said he definitely prefers weekend shows, as the turnout is always much better on a weekend.

Everyone enjoyed the performance, even those who had never been to a dance performance before. You know it was good when a 16-year old guy says to you after “Hero and Heroine : “Wasn’t that kinda short?”, even though it was about a 40 minute performance. For him and many others, this was their first exposure to contemporary dance and they were impressed. The highly demanding and very energetic “AUDIBLE” was definitely also a hit. The audience was very impressed with the dancers’ skill and stamina.

After the ball was set rolling for the post-show chat, members of the audience asked questions directly to the dancers. A marathon runner, clearly impressed with the dancers’ level of fitness, wanted to know how many hours per day they trained. “AUDIBLE” also sparked discussion about modern day impersonal high-tech communication and how different it was from ways of communicating in the past. It became clear that this type of communication came quite naturally to the under 20 crowd while older people still found it strange.

After the post-show chat, the dancers and crew attended a post-show reception with members of the Kitimat Concert Association. This is a KCA tradition with lots to eat and drink and a great opportunity to interact with performers in a social setting.

It was great to have the dancers in Kitimat. Like the previous MiBC tours, they helped to blaze the trail for future contemporary dance shows in Kitimat. We are looking forward to the next season and outreach planning has started already.