NW NEW WORKS 2017: VANESSA GOODMAN/ACTION AT A DISTANCE
Jun 4, 2017
Countdown to the first weekend of the NW New Works Festival!
On Saturday and Sunday in the Mainstage Showcase, Vancouver, BC-based Vanessa Goodman of Action at a Distance Society performs “Floating Upstream” — an exploration of having one’s head in the clouds where everything is simultaneously possible and impossible. Sound and visual design were created by frequent collaborator, Loscil (Scott Morgan), a composer, sound designer and multimedia artist living in Vancouver, BC.
For the 2016 edition of NWNW Goodman performed her work “Container”, a piece where heritage, culture and resilience came to life in a dance work inspired by Weimar cabaret. Reviewing the performance, OtB Ambassador and 17/18 Season Artist Dani Tirrell wrote, “[Goodman] is what others try to be when it comes to contemporary dance and performance. Musicality, physicality, spiritual, control, articulation, loss of control and joy. She could have easily been lost on the Mainstage, but she easily made the stage her willing and small partner.”
Action at a Distance Dance Society is a Vancouver-based contemporary dance company under the artistic direction of choreographer Vanessa Goodman. The priority of the company is to foster work that reflects the human condition, using dance to decode contemporary experience. It is the company’s goal to create immersive environments, working towards facilitating an engrossing experience for those who witness the work.
Vanessa Goodman is the Artistic Director of Action at a Distance, Co-Artistic Director of The Contingency Plan and an associate artist with Small Stage. Vanessa holds a BFA from SFU and was the recipient of the 2013 Iris Garland Choreographer Award and the 2017 Yulanda M. Faris Choreographers Program from the Scotiabank Dance Centre. Vanessa has worked with a number of Canadian choreographers and companies including; the plastic orchid factory, Justine A. Chambers, dancers dancing, Mascall Dance, Julia Sasso and dumb instrument dance. She has been commissioned by DOTE, The Gwaii Trust, Vancouver Biennale, Modus Operandi, Lamon Dance, Warehause Collective and SFU. Recently her work has been presented nationally and internationally by Northwest New Works, Risk/Reward, The Chutzpah! Festival, The Canada Dance Festival, The Dance Centre, The Firehall Arts Centre, PuSh Off, Small Stage and The Shadbolt Centre for the Arts.
Come see Vanessa Goodman/Action at a Distance, Waxie Moon, Nikola Tesla Projekt, and Kaitlin McCarthy perform in the Mainstage Showcase for the first weekend of NWNW.