About Coming Out of Chaos:
A Vancouver Dance Story
Coming Out of Chaos: A Vancouver Dance Story is an archival research and oral history project that looks back at the collaborative work Coming Out of Chaos (1982) to unravel its influence and its place in the emergence of contemporary dance in Vancouver from the 1960s to the present day. The project consists of seventeen oral history interviews with the original Coming Out of Chaos members, as well as dance critics, dance historians, administrators, creative contemporaries, and current dance practitioners, to build a multi-perspective understanding of the work, the era, and its resonance in Vancouver contemporary dance today. The final project takes the form of a multi-media story told in four chapters, a historical timeline of contemporary dance in Vancouver, seventeen oral history interview transcriptions, and four virtual exhibitions featuring archival materials from the institutional archives of Karen Jamieson Dance and the personal archives of Savannah Walling and Terry Hunter, Linda Rubin, Susan Berganzi, and Jennifer Mascall.
![Coming Out of Chaos Performance. [L-R] Peter Bingham, Lola Ryan, Savannah Walling, Jennifer Mascall. 1982. Photo by Chris Randle. Costumes by Susan Berganzi. Susan Berganzi Archives.](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6102f6fcb864c868a091548b/f7b8b27f-2df0-4354-bdef-d2860eb23bca/Coming_out_of_Chaos_1982_web.jpg)
Coming Out of Chaos Performance. [L-R] Peter Bingham, Lola Ryan, Savannah Walling, Jennifer Mascall. 1982. Photo by Chris Randle. Costumes by Susan Berganzi. Susan Berganzi Archives.
Rehearsals for Coming Out of Chaos began in late 1981, and the work premiered in Spring 1982 as a three-day run at Waterfront Theatre on Granville Island in Vancouver. The production toured to Vancouver, Victoria, Quebec City, Montréal, Peterborough, Toronto, and Ottawa, concluding in Summer 1982. The original Coming Out of Chaos members consisted of Karen Jamieson, Jennifer Mascall, Peter Bingham, Lola Ryan (transitioned from Peter Ryan), Savannah Walling, Lola MacLaughlin, and Ahmed Hassan, with early choreographic contributions from Barbara Bourget and musical contributions by Elyra Campbell. Coming Out of Chaos was initiated and commissioned by Grant Strate, then-Director of Simon Fraser University's Centre for the Arts who encouraged Karen Jamieson to withdraw from Terminal City Dance Research to begin a new journey as a solo artist, which catalyzed the creation of Karen Jamieson Dance Company in 1983, amongst other seminal performing arts organizations and companies.
![Coming Out of Chaos Performance. [L-R] Lola Ryan, Savannah Walling, Jennifer Mascall, and Peter Bingham. 1982. Photo by Chris Randle. Costumes by Susan Berganzi. Karen Jamieson Dance Archives.](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6102f6fcb864c868a091548b/1634191584218-A9SLO4DAP2COI4J52TB3/1-Coming_out_of_Chaos_1982_Chris_Randle_photo_09.jpg)
Coming Out of Chaos Performance. [L-R] Lola Ryan, Savannah Walling, Jennifer Mascall, and Peter Bingham. 1982. Photo by Chris Randle. Costumes by Susan Berganzi. Karen Jamieson Dance Archives.
Coming out of Chaos: A Vancouver Dance Story was researched and co-written by Emma Metcalfe Hurst and Charlotte Leonard.
Emma Metcalfe Hurst presenting Coming Out of Chaos: A Vancouver Dance Story at A Vancouver Dance Story: Chaos Edition, hosted at The Dance Centre. October 30, 2021.
Emma Metcalfe Hurst and Charlotte Leonard presenting Coming Out of Chaos: A Vancouver Dance Story - Oral History, Networks of Archival Support, & Community Archives for the Association of Canadian Archivists (ACA) Hybrid Conference on June 16, 2022.
Emma Metcalfe Hurst’s presentation of Coming Out of Chaos: A Vancouver Dance Story - Community Archives, Oral History, & Networks of Archival Support for the 2022 Art Libraries Society of North America Conference in Chicago, IL.
Thank you to Karen Jamieson, Barbara Bourget, Jennifer Mascall, Peter Bingham, Lola Ryan, Savannah Walling, Susan Berganzi, Barbara Clausen, Linda Rubin, Jay Hirabayashi, Terry Hunter, Max Wyman, Kaija Pepper, Peter Dickinson, Amber Funk Barton, Josh Martin, and Darcy McMurray, as well as Peggy Baker, Debashis Sinha, Chris Randle, Michael Goldberg, Rod Roodenberg, Richard White, Brandon Wolfe Scott, City of Vancouver Archives, Simon Fraser University Archives, Western Front Archives, VIVO Media Arts Centre / Video Out Distribution, and UBC Arts Co-op Office for your support in realizing this project.
The creation of Coming Out of Chaos: A Vancouver Dance Story would not have been possible without funding from Canada Council for the Arts, BC Arts Council, and City of Vancouver.
Awards
City of Vancouver Heritage Award for Living Heritage
On May 15, 2023, Coming Out of Chaos: A Vancouver Dance Story received a City of Vancouver Heritage Award for Living Heritage! The award ceremony took place at the Hollywood Theatre in Kitsilano. Check out a list of the winners here.
Worldwide Books Award for Electronic Resources
On April 4, 2024, Coming Out of Chaos: A Vancouver Dance Story was awarded the Worldwide Books Award for Electronic Resources from the Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA). The convocation ceremony took place at the 52nd Annual ARLIS/NA Conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. More information about the award can be found here.
From our team
“It is not enough to preserve, arrange, and describe archival materials for the future. We must find new and creative ways to activate the archives; making them engaging, accessible, and relevant in the present, while also honouring and respecting the dynamic lives of the people, interactions, stories, and memories captured within them.”
— Emma Metcalfe Hurst
“What is exciting about Coming Out of Chaos: A Vancouver Dance Story archival project is that it places the lens firmly and with intention on the Vancouver dance community at a certain period of time, on a very specific era. We see interconnections and entangled roots. We are made aware that artists–certainly dance artists–don’t operate in a solitary state, but are constantly influencing and being influenced by the entire matrix, the ground out of which they are emerging and growing from.”
– Karen Jamieson
Emma Metcalfe Hurst, Creative Director of Coming out of Chaos: A Vancouver Dance Story & Dance Archivist
Charlotte Leonard, Dance Archivist
Clare Asquith Finnegan, Archives Manager
Karen Jamieson, Artistic Director & Choreographer
Pamela Tagle, Managing Director
“Having worked closely with this archival material for years, I could see the story that these documents were trying to tell. To be able to activate these archives and to tell this story from all of these different perspectives transcends my original expectations and provides an opportunity to step into a different world. Dance archives are situated in a unique position where they exist on paper, but are also lived and recorded through visual, sound, and embodied experience; this project brings together all of these components by creating a narrative which the audience can become fully immersed in.”
– Clare Asquith Finegan
“Through my involvement in this project, I’ve come to greater appreciate and understand the nature of archives as living entities, capable of emoting, memorializing, and telling stories that will transcend time. However, as other living beings, they cannot exist in isolation, and must be continuously seen, heard, and interacted with to evolve and shape the discourse.”
— Charlotte Leonard
About Karen Jamieson Dance
Karen Jamieson’s vision is to reveal the power of dance as an art form with potential to transform, engage, captivate, heal, and to impart knowledge available only to the dancing body; believing the power of contemporary dance transcends cultures, languages, histories and traditions by connecting us all at a very primal level.
Karen Jamieson Dance under the artistic direction of Karen Jamieson was formed in 1983. Karen has created over 100 original dance works with original scores by over 20 respected Canadian composers, performed in Canada, Europe, Japan and the United States. Her work, Sisyphus, was named one of the 10 Canadian choreographic masterworks of the 20th century and multi-year projects with the Haida village of Skidegate B.C. and with the residents of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside are recognized nationally as groundbreaking in the field of community engaged and cross cultural dance.
Contact Us
Mailing Address:
Level 6 - 677 Davie Street
Vancouver, BC
Canada V6B 2G6
Get in Touch:
Email: admin@kjdance.ca
Tel: 604-687-6675
Karen Jamieson Dance acknowledges that our dancing takes place on the ancestral, traditional, unceded, and occupied Indigenous territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations, and is actively working towards integrating Indigenous traditional knowledge protocols in our archival practices and projects.