Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Dance Touring Letter of Intent June 30 2015

Call for Letter of intent for inclusion in Made in BC’s Online Dance Touring Catalogue
Deadline is June 30th 2015

Made in BC – Dance on Tour works with presenters around the province to connect their communities with professional BC based dance artists and performances
How to submit a proposal
This year’s submission process has 2 steps:
#1 Letter of intent (MUST be submitted prior to submitting a full application)
#2 Application form (this will be sent to you following receipt of your letter of intent)

Deadline: Tuesday June 30, 2015 Letter of Intent
Deadline: Monday August 17th, 2015 Application

Why we’re asking for a letter of intent:
Basically, we would like more interaction with our applicants. Having an idea of who will be applying, and what projects will be coming forward will help us plan appropriately.
We will contact you on or before July 31st to discuss your application. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions.

Office | 604-893-8830
Email | linda@madeinbc.org
Web | www.madeinbc.org

Please limit your letter of intent to 1 page, and include the following information:
1. Name / Title of work / Contact Details
2. Company name
3. Project Name & brief description, please include date & location the piece(s) premiered
4. State clearly if you would like to ONLY be included in the catalogue, as an advertising opportunity to local, provincial, and national presenters, or if you would ALSO like to be considered to tour the MiBC network
5. Brief Company profile

Please submit by email to linda@madeinbc.org

Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Made in BC - Dance on Tour hosts Joe Ink/Move It! in Terrace, BC



Hello from Terrace! We (Naomi Brandt and Anna Kraulis) flew here in mini plane on Sunday evening. We were greeted by our lovely host Lisa, who gave us the tour of the town.

Monday morning we began our residency at the Sportsplex with an adorable and rambunctious group of pre-schoolers, who were super keen to dance with us and share their moves. Highlights included the shape game, dance “painting” with body parts, and of course the always popular freeze dance.

From pre-schoolers we changed gears completely with a group of 30+ older adults, who were in fact equally enthusiastic and energetic! We really enjoyed their creative and playful spirits and openness to new ideas. They also love performing for each other and we plan to put together a informal "showing" for the last day. 

After finishing at the Sportsplex, we topped the day off with a hike up Terrace Mountain, complete with a beautiful view of the town and fall colours. On Tuesday, we continued our work with the pre-schoolers and older adults and also taught a great group of homeschooled kids. Tomorrow we look forward to sharing Move It! with dance students from local studios. Until the next time!  

Friday, May 16, 2014

Community Engaged Dance Artists/Facilitators

Community Engaged Dance Artists/Facilitators are invited to register to the Groups Dynamics Workshops with Kate Sutherland on May 21st and June 2nd. Places are limited, register early. The workshops are linked together and can be taken separately. 

Great Groups: Four frameworks for greater trust, synergy and joy
Get better at doing things in groups -- in your creative collaborations, facilitation practice, and more. In two experiential workshops, learn four simple, practical frameworks to boost your effectiveness in all types of group situations. Each of the frameworks brings a unique perspective. Together they are a comprehensive kit, allowing you to create better outcomes and have more fun.

May 21 2014, 5-9pm at 1015 Maple

June 2 2014 at The Dance Centre

It is free, with the support of Made in BC Dance on Tour, The Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation, the artists at 1015 Maple Field House Residency and The Dance Centre.
For more information on Kate Sutherland, visit her website:

Monday, April 14, 2014

Anna and Caroline's notes from Kitimat

We started Monday with an energetic group of grade 8 students at Mount Elizabeth Secondary School in Kitimat. How lucky for us that we all get to dance in the school's theatre, with a huge stage! Many of the students have prior dance experience, so we're having fun diving into the many facets of contemporary dance and we hope it will give them ideas to bring to their other dance practices. After our warm-up/technique section we're working on things like "movement conversations", shape duets (we are often greeted when we arrive with, "Hi! Can we do negative space?"), generating movement phrases in large groups, and introducing improvisational scores, which is new for many of them but a fun challenge.  We've also watched a few clips from some well-known contemporary dance companies from BC and beyond, and talked about things like gesture, and the many different kinds of styles that artists bring to contemporary work.

Warming up on stage

Exploring negative space in duets

This week we also returned to Kitamaat Village for The Spirit of the Kitlope Dancers, who have an open practice most Mondays at the recreation centre. The Spirit of Kitlope is a traditional singing, drumming and dancing group, who perform locally and around the province.  We were very generously welcomed to participate in the singing and dancing, with leader Shelly Bolton giving some background introduction to each song and dance. There were about 15 drummers and about 12 of us dancing (Shelly told us that the group sometimes swells to 50 or 100 participants), and we were blown away by so many powerful and strong singing voices in the room. It was also exciting for us to dance with some of the kids from our workshop last week, and wonderful to meet people from different generations all taking part, from tots, to teens, to adults and seniors.  We stayed late, chatting and visiting, and heading up to the games room to continue a game of freeze tag (which has been cheerily ongoing since we arrived almost two weeks ago).

Graham, our friendly neighbourhood theatre tech

Time is whipping by surprisingly fast! As the week goes on it's nice to see our grade 8 group getting more comfortable in their skins and with the creative activities we're introducing. We have only 2 more days, and we're looking forward to what they will bring :)


The students choreographing each other

Friday, April 11, 2014

Salt Spring loves Shay Kuebler Dance!

Salt Spring loves Shay Kuebler Dance!

What a great journey we had with them! Last night, April 7, was an amazing performance, I knew it would be very good, but it was beyond my expectations! We had a close to sold out house, several bursts of spontaneous applause during the performance (very uncommon in
my experience), and, when it was over, the audience leapt up for a unanimous standing-ovation with nearly half of them staying for the post-chat. Working with
my community partners, we did a great promo campaign. We got the buzz going on the island.


For outreach, Shay taught a wonderful workshop on Sunday, getting us sliding across the dance studio doing moves we never imagined possible. Last month he had come to the island where he taught workshops at the high school and led “Dance Temple”, a sacred dance ritual.



Here’s an audience member comment that sums it up for everyone:

“What a fantastic show! I am thinking about it and all the questions it left me with. Deep, visually stunning, powerful, awesome!”
A reminder for all the other CEFs in the network who are presenting Karoshi :Shay needs lots of plates, start collecting them now!

Good tip: Steer this very friendly group of dancers towards the Frisbee-Golf park and the best local restaurants, then provide them with an enthusiastic audience, and everyone will be happy!

- Anna Haltrecht

CEF Salt Spring

Made in BC – Dance on Tour

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

A Visit to Kitimat!

Caroline and Anna here, reporting from Kitimat, where we're already halfway through week one of a two week visit!

We're spending our first week with the wonderful s
tudents and teachers of Haisla Community School in Kitamaat Village. Our mornings start with the grade 4-7s, about 20 kids: on the first day, after a group warm-up we asked them to introduce themselves with a name and a movement- and we loved seeing their sense of humour come out right away! We moved right into some contemporary dance skill-building such as tilts, floor chainees, arm patterns and turns, and the group was definitely up for the challenge. Then on to across the floor to get moving through space, and activities in mirroring and shapes including a "crystal" which spanned the entire room and then turned into a gang of superheroes, moving shape by shape from one end of the room to the other.


When the grade 4-7s return to their classroom, we meet with our next group, around 25 excited and energetic K-3s. We're having lots of fun exploring animals, freeze dance, and shape games. Believe it or not by the end of our first day we had already worked with almost all of the kids in the entire school- it is a fantastic group of energetic movers (including the teachers!). 

Today was our third day already, so we got down to business, practising a combo and small group choreography with the older kids (set to the likes of Katy Perry, Skrillex and Capital Cities) which we will present to friends and family on the final day.  The younger group is really starting to settle into our routine and is amassing some practiced moves for Friday's showing too.  We also heard that today is talent show day at the school, and some of the students will present the combo we've been working on! We were thrilled that they wanted to bring some elements of class into their other endeavours. 

We only have two more days at the school, it's gone by so fast- and lots to do before the final presentation on Friday!