Nearly 60 artists from the Gibsons Dance Centre provided a preview of the studio’s upcoming competitive season for a percipient audience on March 8. The spring showcase lineup, presented at the Heritage Playhouse in Gibsons to a full house, included an ensemble number designed by two student choreographers who recently toured Sunshine Coast elementary schools during Pink Shirt Day.
“The amount of choreography I’ve gotten to do this year has really showed me how much I love it,” said Connor Dixon. Dixon worked with Nevaeh Power to create the anti-bullying dance To Build a Home. Members of the studio’s youth company formed geometric patterns by shifting their body weight onto the shoulders and forearms of fellow dancers, divided into opposing factions, then finally united with heads bowed in an evocation of harmonious civility.
“I enjoy dancing myself, of course, but teaching and choreographing has been really special,” added Dixon. “So it’s really exciting that my own choreography gets to be part of the show alongside all our other talented teachers.”
The program highlighted group numbers that will be featured at upcoming events like the studio’s first competitive engagement: the Coastal Dance Festival on April 12 and 13. The eclectic range of styles ranged from a contemplative ballet setting of Portia’s exhortation to Shylock (“The quality of mercy is not strained,” she counsels in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice) to the infectious Bob Fosse-infused rolling boil of the jazz number Steam Heat.
Three soloists demonstrated the studio’s commitment to a wide variety of disciplines: Nova Hodgins performed the contemporary number Keep Marching On, fixing the audience in her gaze while her limbs undulated with fluidity reminiscent of wind-powered locomotion. Adrina Peever’s rapid-fire dexterity energized spectators during her hip hop solo, while Ella Hoath circled her way — by turns upright, recumbent, and supine — through the spotlight in a piano-accompanied ballet number titled Rain.
Nevaeh Power (who performed in ten dances herself) also arranged Hodgins’s solo in addition to collaborating with Dixon. “It’s the first time I got to showcase my own choreo, which I think is really special,” Power observed. “And we get to showcase all our new competitive dancers and show how we’ve worked. I love working with a group of kids and being able to find something that they can have fun doing and look good doing, creating patterns and using a bit of my creativity that I’ve been wanting to use for a few years now.”
Youth company dancers themselves collectively choreographed Scars to Your Beautiful, an uplifting anthemic routine that also toured local schools for anti-bullying day.
“Each student had their own say,” explained company member Caia Minatsis. “We all actually work pretty well together. We made groups and in the groups we choreographed a little piece then taught it to everyone else. The themes are all interrelated: fighting your fears and anxieties and preparing to face the world.”
For studio members like Minatsis, who plans to pursue university studies in kinesiology next year, and Dixon — signed to perform aboard Royal Caribbean cruise ships after graduation —, the dances stem from the vibrant learning community that shaped their skills. Dixon’s Grade 12 capstone project employed original choreography to embody mutual support and existential wayfinding in a 10-artist ensemble piece titled Unburdened.
“We have a really good sense of community backstage,” he reflected, “and we try to embrace the chaos to have as much fun as we can.”
