Chapter 3
After Chaos
After Chaos is the third chapter of Coming Out of Chaos: A Vancouver Dance Story. It focuses on the experimental dance company EDAM at Western Front, as well as the various transitions and companies that followed after. This includes the emergence of MascallDance, Kokoro Dance, and Lola Dance in Vancouver. This chapter also addresses the development of The Scotiabank Vancouver Dance Centre as a centralized, physical home, and resource centre for dance communities in Vancouver, as well as its connection to Terminal City Dance Research.
After Coming Out of Chaos, Karen Jamieson founded Karen Jamieson Dance, and created Sisyphus – a work that would go on to be named one of the choreographic masterworks of the twentieth century by Dance Collection Danse. Pictured: Jay Hirabayashi and Karen Jamieson in Sisyphus, 1983. Photo by: David Cooper
Out of Chaos Comes Creation
“The only impact was that apart from Savannah Walling and Karen Jamieson, all the other members – Lola Ryan, Peter Bingham, Lola MacLaughlin, Ahmed Hassan, and Jennifer Mascall, were people who, after that piece [Coming Out of Chaos], asked us if we'd be interested in forming a new collective. I forget which one of them contacted Barbara [Bourget] and I. I think they liked working with each other. I don't think they particularly enjoyed the process of Coming Out of Chaos. It was actually quite chaotic, I think. EDAM was kind of born out of that chaos, I guess into another kind of chaos actually because EDAM was also fairly chaotic in terms of what we did, and how we didn't get along, and stuff like that.” -Jay Hirabayashi
New Beginnings
The last documented touring performance of Coming Out of Chaos was May 15th, 1982 at the Harbourfront Theatre in Toronto, Ontario. Following their collective debut, there was an unstoppable momentum in the air that each Chaos member seized – together and apart. Karen Jamieson went on to found Karen Jamieson Dance Company in January 1983. Savannah Walling and Terry Hunter began Vancouver Moving Theatre (VMT), an interdisciplinary company incorporated as a non-profit society under the name Special Delivery Dance Music Theatre in the Downtown Eastside, in October of the same year. Jennifer Mascall also acknowledges the nascent beginnings of EDAM (Experimental Dance and Music), a dance and music collective consisting of Peter Bingham, Barbara Bourget, Ahmed Hassan, Jay Hirabayashi, Lola MacLaughlin, Lola Ryan, and Jennifer Mascall. EDAM’s first performance took place at the Waterfront Theatre “…right in the middle of Coming Out of Chaos” in 1981. (1) Many accounts imply that EDAM emerged out of Chaos as a direct result of these artists coming together under Karen Jamieson’s vision, however artistic collaborations between these artists were also happening independently from Chaos during this time. Mascall recalls EDAM’s parallel development to Coming Out of Chaos:
“All of this was taking place during – or maybe there were gaps in the rehearsals of Coming Out of Chaos. We were meeting and talking about EDAM, and forming it, and all collaborating with each other in as many different ways as we could.”
Photo of founding members of EDAM: [L-R] Peter Bingham, Barbara Bourget, Ahmed Hassan, Jay Hirabayashi, Lola MacLaughlin, Lola Ryan, Jennifer Mascall. 1983. Photo by Chris Randle. Source: Dance Collection Danse.
1 - The exact dates of EDAM’s first performance are unclear. A handful of COoC interviewees counter Mascall’s recollection that EDAM was formed in 1981, asserting that EDAM was formed after the Coming Out of Chaos production later on in 1982. In an email from Jay Hirabayashi dated May 13, 2022, he recalls two works that could be considered EDAM’s first performances, both taking place in 1982. The first piece (title unknown) was technically the "first EDAM performance," and was “totally improvised … because we [EDAM] had never performed together before.” According to Hirabayashi it was a less formal production, but took place at the Vancouver Playhouse as part of the Sunday Coffee Concert series. The second piece “had a structure, although [was] also largely improvised” and was called The Silence and the Flies. This piece was organized by Ahmed Hassan and Lola MacLaughlin and took place in a venue on west Hastings St.
EDAM
“EDAM was seven Artistic Directors, so it was seven cooks trying to make one broth. There’s no question about it, it was a very exciting time, but frustrating as hell, of course, for everyone.” - Lola Ryan
EDAM was established as a non-profit in 1982 by seven dance artists with unique approaches, perspectives, and styles to dance and music-making. The strange synchronicity of transitioning from Coming Out of Chaos, a piece performed and co-choreographed by seven dancers, to EDAM, a collective composed of seven Artistic Directors, lay in the number of participants present in each instance and their shared commitment to a collaborative vision.
“It was such a fertile environment. It was hard work, but you can't go wrong with having seven really strong opinions, and working through that, and having the respect that we have for each other. I taught staunch, contact improvisers ballet class. You know, it's absurd! But it really enhanced our own individual processes as well, it wasn't just the group. It opened my eyes to a lot of things that I didn't really know about. I'd never seen contact improv – I had no idea what that was!” - Barbara Bourget
The original members of EDAM were Peter Bingham, Barbara Bourget, Ahmed Hassan, Jay Hirabayashi, Lola MacLaughlin, Jennifer Mascall, and Lola Ryan. In the clips below, some of these original members present their differing accounts of the motivations and impulses behind the formation of EDAM.
For Jennifer Mascall, EDAM served as an opportunity to work collaboratively; an appealing prospect for her and an alternative to going at it alone as an independent artist:
“I felt there must be a way to not be stifled because you had to start a company, so that's why EDAM happened - to create a structure for independents. I didn't want to have my own company, and have dancers following only my direction. I wanted us to be working like equal artists together. We had to do something about that.”
Lola Ryan’s deep love of contact improvisation informed her participation in EDAM. She regarded the gathering of artists with such diverse backgrounds as a means of gaining notoriety for the art form and continuing to explore the role of contact within the broader historical and contemporary context of dance. Additionally, she realized that receiving funding would also be a way to support this new venture.
Barbara Bourget remembers the formation of EDAM taking place during “a pretty energetic time” and an affordable time as well, as she says, “part of the reason EDAM got together was because we were all rehearsing at the Western Front for $2 an hour or something.” Bourget recalls that when EDAM formed, its members were all in their thirties, and they referred to themselves as the “over-thirty dance company.” The combined energy of the time and the experience and willingness of its members to try new things contributed to EDAM drawing considerable attention, and receiving funding with ease.
EDAM’s ability to work out of the Western Front was a major contributor to its success, as well as its sense of participation in, and dialogue with, the local dance and artistic community.
EDAM’s formation did not mean that its members settled to create with only each other. On the contrary, Peter Bingham relates how even as a collective, the EDAM members pursued different projects and artistic avenues that led off in to many different directions.
Ahmed Hassan’s almost immediate departure to work with Desrosiers Dance Theatre, his frequent travel between the East and West Coast, and his MS diagnosis meant that his participation in EDAM was less concerted than some. Despite all of this, he fulfilled a collaborative role as a composer for EDAM and is fondly remembered by all who worked with him. Savannah Walling remembers this time with Hassan as follows:
“Soon after EDAM formed, he moved to Toronto for some really exciting composing with Robert Desrosiers dance company and other projects. We also were aware of him and his family raising his daughter, and the challenges of being a single parent. So many stories. So many threads. Even as Ahmed was slowly losing physical control, he continued to create and perform. A beautiful and courageous spirit.”
The Creative and Collective Process
The members of EDAM were no strangers to the collective creation process. Following Coming Out of Chaos, the challenges and opportunities of collaborative structures were well-known to its founding members.
Barbara Bourget remarks on some of the similarities between Chaos and EDAM: “I do remember in the Coming Out of Chaos process, there was a lot of talking, which was necessary because people didn't know each other all that well, how they moved, or how they thought. Within the EDAM structure, as a collective, there was always a lot of talking too.” While EDAM shared some of its foundational collaborative practices with that of Chaos, it differed in its more distributed approach to shared decision-making in all aspects.
Built-in to this idea of collaborative practice was a sharing of the various roles and responsibilities necessary for the company’s operation. Administrative and decision making duties ordinarily circumscribed to a company manager were taken up by the group as a whole, for better or for worse, and each matter was given immense thought and consideration, no matter how small. Several EDAM members recalled a conflict that emerged about purchasing a cash box for the company. This tendency to engage in long, often argumentative conversations is remembered by Jay Hirabayashi as follows:
“We argued for four hours about whether or not to buy a cash box, you know, to spend $7 on a cash box. I can't remember arguments before that, but I just remember it was a long argument. It seemed like we always had arguments about everything: about what show we were going to do, who was going to be in it, if there was a tour, everybody had to go on the tour, even if they were only doing a three minute piece. Things that, to me, weren't that practical. I guess I was more worried about costs and things like that.”
Performance and Documentation
EDAM received a grant to create its first work, Run Raw: Theme and Deviation in 1983. While not their first performance as a collective, Run Raw was the first to be funded by the Canada Council, and incorporated athleticism, improvisation, and collaborative creation – all hallmarks of the emerging EDAM ethos. The dance consisted of all of the EDAM members except for Ahmed Hassan, who was away in New York working and studying the berimbau, and who was replaced by Salvador Ferreras as the composer (Pepper, 2007). Barbara Bourget described Run Raw as “harrowing in so many ways.” The training process for this piece was rigorous and the performances were extremely intense, exerting, and exhausting. The piece aimed to push the body to its limits through endurance and olympian-like physical trials (Pepper, 2007). On opening night, Barbara Bourget even broke her wrist – 30 minutes before the performance ended! – and kept going with her arm dangling by her side. Dancer Debra Brown stepped in as Bourget’s understudy for the following performances. Jay Hirabayashi also recalls injuring his right ankle, tearing ligaments in his ankle bone, after Lola Ryan did a backwards roll over it during the final Run Raw performance. Coming out of the gates, EDAM showed itself to be an explosive and daring new force of raw energy and experimentation on the dance scene.
A takeaway from reflection on this early work is the question of documentation, or lack thereof. It is an unfortunate reality that much of the work EDAM created during these years was never properly documented or preserved, or else remains hidden and digitally inaccessible. Lola Ryan talks about how documentation was not a priority at this time of fertile creation and experimentation:
“Thinking about documenting and recording the work was the very last thing we thought about – even at EDAM. We didn't care about posterity or legacy or a solid body of work. At least I didn't. Possibly others did, but I can only speak for myself. I wasn't looking at it in those terms at all.”
The consequence of this is that work from this time is not well-known to those who weren’t there to experience it firsthand. Jay Hirabayashi comments on the impacts of these omissions and the role of transmission that has allowed the work to be remembered:
“I have one tape from '80, '85 maybe, but a lot of the more interesting work was not documented. If you weren't there, you wouldn't know what we had done. And largely, it's the people – Jennifer [Mascall], Lola [MacLaughlin], ourselves [Jay Hirabayashi and Barbara Bourget], and Peter Bingham, and the training that we've done when we branched off and did our own work. I think there's been more of a transference through that, with the dancers that have worked with each of us. Some have danced with almost all of us.”
The next work following Run Raw: Theme and Deviation was a mixed bill entitled True Lies in August 1983 at the Western Front. EDAM/MADE was another legendary multi-media performance that took place at the Western Front in 1985.
Of EDAM/MADE, Jay Hirabayashi says:
“It was way ahead of its time. I mean, that's the thing, I think EDAM did a lot of that stuff. We did EDAM/MADE (1985), which was fifty performers, a four-hour show. It was actually the same show done twice, but the pieces would move. The first time it was done, a certain piece of choreography would be in the EDAM studio on the first floor, and then it would go into the Lux [Theatre, at Western Front] in the second two hours. Then on the way up, there were spoken word poets and stuff happening, and musicians everywhere. It was kind of like the whole building became a venue. I thought it was pretty innovative.”
EDAM/MADE involved heavy audience participation through improvisation, widespread interactive installations, and large numbers of performers distributed all throughout the space (Pepper, 2007). Peter Bingham recalls how EDAM/MADE (1985) included “a video installation piece” and “a big Evelyn Roth net hanging over stairs, people who would climb around over it.”
Hilda’s Valiant was another innovative piece that debuted in February of 1985. Jay Hirabayashi expands:
“Hilda's Valiant was a piece with Peter Bingham and somebody else. There was a dancer named Hilda Nanning who had a Plymouth Valiant and it was a wreck, so they cut it up and just hung all the parts from the ceiling so that it became a set. We called that piece Hilda's Valiant because it actually was her car. That was [performed] in EDAM's studio downstairs [at Western Front].”
These examples demonstrate how EDAM was working on the cutting edge of contemporary dance – inspired, energized, and deeply experimental across forms, materials, and mediums.
Resignations
The passion and drive that gave rise to EDAM also contributed to its demise, as one by one its original members began to resign owing to considerable tensions, conflicts, and creative and ideological differences.
Jay Hirabayashi recalls how the argument described in the clip above led to a larger philosophical conversation, shedding light on the many ideologies and concerns informing EDAM’s everyday choices through the differing viewpoints of its members:
“It devolved into an argument about if you actually use currency, whether you are taking part in this whole capitalist system that exploits people. Unless you start going back to bartering, exchanges of services or goods for other services and goods, then this element of capitalism is always going to be there, but going to this bank or that bank is not going to really make much difference. Anyway, I think we eventually did go to a Canadian Bank of Commerce or someplace. I just wanted to go to the bank that was closest because for me, it was just depositing money and writing cheques.”
Lola Ryan describes how “Ahmed was a very political person,” and how “…his concerns were not just dance concerns, they were more social concerns as well, which I really respected.”
Jay Hirabayashi’s practical mindset seemed often to be in direct opposition to his more conceptually-minded colleagues. The question of choreographic credit was also a frequent topic of dispute. Hirabayashi and Barbara Bourget’s decision to leave EDAM and form their own company was even more strongly set in motion by a piece called Bach to the Future, performed at the Amiga Pavilion as part of Expo ‘86. Hirabayashi shares this turning point:
“It was the accumulation of the frustration. Barbara and I, I think, did half of the choreography that came out of those first four years of EDAM. We were more versatile, so we were in two thirds of all the work, so we were doing a lot of the work, and I was doing a lot of the administration. The straw that broke the camel's back was when we did a piece called Bach to the Future (1986) for Expo ‘86. Barbara was picked to be the choreographic director, not the choreographer, but it has to be built from the input of all the performers. Her role was to put the piece together. I call that choreography myself, but the performers objected to that.”
Bach to the Future was a commissioned piece that was a collaboration with two computer programmers from Victoria. Jay Hirabyashi describes how the piece used “five moveable rear projection screens” and the programmers “…hung two black-and-white surveillance cameras from the ceiling which saw the floor in grayscale pattern. Then they programmed that still pattern into different hotspots. Movements in these hotspots would then trigger MIDI signals to this Apple II computer… They used a piece of Bach's music, some piano fugue, and they made it so that the parameters of tempo, rhythm, and pitch would slowly decay.” As for the dancers, Hirabayashi recalls, “There were six dancers and if they heard the rhythm go off, they were assigned to go to certain places on the floor, and just gyrate, and move crazily, and stir up the greyscale, and then that would bring the pitch back to the right pitch… Once they got it back, they had to run back to wherever they had left off in the choreography and jump back into the piece. We were dressed up as superheroes with really hot, padded muscle - costumes with masks – extremely hot.”
Hirabayashi reveals the reception of this piece, the consequences of Barbara Bourget’s role as choreographic director, and the resulting fall-out of their resignation from EDAM in 1986:
Following Hirabayashi and Bourget’s departure, Lola Ryan and Jennifer Mascall also left by the end of the 1989 season. Later that same year, Lola MacLaughlin unexpectedly resigned, shortly after working with Peter Bingham to write a grant application for Canada Council Funding (Pepper, 2007). This last minute change forced Bingham to rewrite the grant in the eleventh hour, which he did and was successful.
Eventually, In 1989, EDAM was incorporated and Peter Bingham became its sole Creative Director. This occurred in spite of his own brief resignation due to ongoing conflicts surrounding creative differences and one particular meeting, held at his own home, that he walked out of:
Under the creative directorship of Peter Bingham, EDAM has prevailed and flourished as a contemporary dance company with a mandate “to provide a stable and fertile environment for the development of contemporary dance. The company is deeply committed to the investigation of movement as an expressive art form.” True to its roots, EDAM continues to support and explore “many possibilities for creative expression within the kinetic arts through the creation and production of choreography and the practice and presentation of the art of improvisation. In addition to producing its own work, EDAM presents the work of guest choreographers and encourages collaborative projects with artists working in other disciplines.”
Eventually, the EDAM members all went their own separate ways. The following sections contextualize the emergence of their companies, their motivations, and their legacies today.
Peter Bingham and Andrew Hardwood. Photo by: Chris Randle. Source: https://www.edamdance.org/about
MascallDance
MascallDance was founded as a non-profit in 1982 as a way for Jennifer Mascall to receive payment for her work, and to work as an independent practitioner outside of the EDAM collective. Of this time, she says:
“In Ontario, around 1977, the provincial government accepted that people could be dance artists without dancing in companies. Grants had already been made available. In British Columbia, the granting bodies would only accept a non-profit society. So, in '82, I started a nonprofit society called MascallDance.”
It wasn’t until the end of the ‘80s however, when Mascall left EDAM, that she turned her efforts solely towards MascallDance as an independent, creative venture:
“Paul McNeil, who was a friend of Grant [Strate's], was a lawyer and someone who had been in the York dance department when I was there. He generously said he'd just do it for me. Anytime I did work outside of EDAM, I was paid through MascallDance – Commissions from TIDE, Halifax Dance, Mountain Dance, Dancemakers, touring grants for Scandinavia and Europe, etc. Then in 1989, when Lola [MacLaughlin] and I started working apart from EDAM, it was already there, active. So, it became my full-time focus.”
The impetus for the creation of MascallDance stemmed from a more practical motive – setting it apart from more inspired conception stories such as the Karen Jamieson Dance Society or Kokoro Dance Theatre Society. Nonetheless, it proved a fruitful vessel through which Mascall’s prolific work and vision was able to flourish.
To this day, MascallDance is actively producing works, hosting workshops, and facilitating the exploration of somatic movement inquiry and movement creation.
While Mascall was initially more interested in the collective experience, her decision to incorporate can be read as a sign of the times, which seemed to privilege the artistic vision of an individual creator over the collective. Looking back at Coming Out of Chaos, Mascall reflects on the idea of authorship, working closely with others, and the changing views around collaborative creation:
Kokoro Dance
As the story goes, Bach to the Future was the final straw that led to Jay Hirabayashi and Barbara Bourget leaving EDAM in 1986. That same year, they formed their own company together, Kokoro Dance Theatre Society, borne out of an irrepressible curiosity and desire to continue exploring modern dance, and Butoh – a form of dance theatre that rose out of post-war Japan:
While the company quickly emerged from this shared passion, it was not until six years later that Kokoro received any funding. This was in stark contrast to EDAM, which had no trouble securing funding right away. Jay Hirababayashi explains that this was a result of the marginalization of Butoh in the eyes of the Western dance world, and the perceived “strangeness” that had to be overcome:
One way of overcoming this lack of visibility and what Hirabayashi views as dishonesty within the Canadian arts and culture sector, was by creating Kokoro Moon, a publication that contained dance reviews and criticism. The first issue of Kokoro Moon was published in January/February of 1991. It served as a platform for honest assessments of artistic performances and allowed for a dialogue between artists, writers, and funders, both locally and across the country:
“We heard that the Canada Council really enjoyed reading it actually [laughs]. We were writing something that nobody was writing, and we were writing about Vancouver dance. People in the East were learning that there was all this stuff happening here. It was from our point of view, naturally, but it was descriptive. We were reviewing other dancers, other choreographers. As Karen Jamieson will tell you, it wasn't always nice. We still love each other though [laughs].” -Jay Hirabayashi
Kokoro Dance, like the other companies discussed above, is still at work creating dances and leading workshops in Vancouver. Their website reveals its mandate “to re-define the meaning of Canadian culture through teaching, producing and performing new dance theatre with an emphasis on multi-disciplinary collaboration and cross-cultural exploration.”
Hirabayashi and Bourget were also responsible for programming the first Vancouver Butoh Festival in 1998, which sought to introduce local audiences to the Butoh tradition, promote local contemporary dance artists, and present culturally diverse dance from around the world. The Vancouver Butoh Festival has since transitioned into the Vancouver International Dance Festival, with Jay Hirabayashi and Barbara Bourget at the helm as Executive Directors.
Lola Dance
Lola MacLaughlin founded Lola Dance in 1989 after leaving EDAM. The inspiration behind Lola Dance grew out of Lola MacLaughlin’s fascination with German Expressionism, her rich aesthetic sensibility, and the concept of total artwork (Gesamtkunstwerk), “…in which all theatrical elements come together to give the piece its meaning. In this spirit, the company [worked] with musicians, writers, stage designers and other accomplished visual artists. The company [explored] the relationship between visual and performing arts, with an interest in dance film and in the integration of media technology” (Danse Danse, 2005). Lola Dance’s mandate was to “foster a creative environment that [inspired] choreography and dancing.” In addition, “the company also [organized] educational activities, residences and workshops to stimulate the growth of the artistic community and enrich Vancouver’s cultural heritage” (Danse Danse, 2005).
An illustration of Lola MacLaughlin’s work can be seen in the following excerpt from Provincial Essays, a piece that was characteristically “informed and influenced by a profound sense of place, and a deep reverence and respect for the natural world, its patterns and logic” (Dance Centre, 2021). Maclaughlin was awarded the 2008 Isadora Award for this work, which premiered in 2007 (Canadian Encyclopedia, 2015).
Lola Dance ceased operations after MacLaughlin passed away from cancer in 2009, two decades after its original formation. MacLaughlin’s contributions and legacy in Canadian dance are recognized by her many achievements, including being the recipient of the Banff Centre's Clifford E. Lee Choreographic Award (1992), the Canada Council for the Arts' Jacqueline Lemieux Prize (1994), the Candance Creation Fund commission (2001), and the development of an award in her name, the Lola Award, seeded by the Lola Legacy Fund and administered by The Dance Centre, which is awarded, bi-annually, to a senior choreographer (Dance Centre, 2021).
Many artists who worked with MacLaughlin remember her as a disciplined, deeply intellectual, and visual artist with a poetic sensibility, an impressive knowledge of European dance, and a strong sense of design in her work. Peter Bingham talks about how her work exhibited “…a lot of form and movement choices. Form in the space that she was working in. She always had sets – one kind or another. And she had a kind of an insistence about the quality of the work that she was putting out.”
Lola Ryan remembers Lola MacLaughlin as an artist who was “very precise,” and “quite private, much more formal than I was.” Ryan recalls their connection and how “…we had something in common in the sense that we were always thinking about things, and writing and reading.”
In the clip below, Jennifer Mascall recalls the impact that Lola MacLaughlin’s work had on her; from her first viewing of MacLaughlin’s work Brain Drain in 1980, to their collaborative relationship that ensued:
The Dance Centre
As Chapter 1: Before Chaos revealed, Barbara Clausen, under Terminal City Dance Research, was a visionary for the creation of “a centre for dance information and exchange in Vancouver.” This vision eventually transpired into what is known today as The Dance Centre.
“I was handling Terminal City Dance Research with the board and with some grants, and then I got hired to go to the Canada Council in Ottawa. I wondered, “Where can I hand this off?” And exactly at the same time, there was a really important collective action on the part of the larger dance community to have a dance centre. I can't remember whose initiative it was, I mean I know who was initiating The Dance Centre, but basically, it made sense for this non-profit called Terminal City Dance Research to be converted, basically, into The Dance Centre. So, what I find lovely is that Terminal City survives to this day. I mean, they changed the constitution, they changed the name, but in fact, that's the original non-profit. So, I think that's exciting!”
-Barbara Clausen
As Clausen recounts, the idea of a dance centre was supported by the local dance community, who had already disseminated a project proposal between 1985-1986 advocating for a centralized dance centre. Savannah Walling notes that early signatories included the following: Terminal City Dance Research, the BC Regional Office of Dance in Canada, Anna Wyman Dance Theatre, EDAM, Pacific Ballet Theatre, Paula Ross Dance company, Special Delivery Dance Music Theatre, Mountain Dance Theatre, and Judith Marcuse's Repertory Dance Company of Canada.
In August 1986, a special resolution was passed by the Terminal City Dance Society Board to change its name to the VDC Dance Centre Society. By 1985, credits for VDC Dance Centre Society-funded projects were assigned to The Vancouver Dance Centre. VDC Dance Centre Society’s name, non-profit, and charitable status gave the organization access to funding, and a grant was received to begin a feasibility study for the creation of a new Dance Centre. Joyce Ozier was hired to coordinate the one-year “Dance Centre” pilot project from 1985-86. In 1986, The Dance Centre was officially founded as a resource centre for dance professionals and the public in Vancouver and by 1987, Barbara Clausen was hired as the first Executive Director of The Dance Centre, after her two-year stint at the Canada Council. Clausen stayed in this position until 1991. Afterwards, Clausen went on to co-found New Performance Works Society in 1993 with Wendy Newman, Julie Poskitt, Gina Sufrin, Fran Brafman, and Janet Miller “as a vehicle for the development, production and presentation of contemporary performance-based work and to provide support and performance opportunities for artists working in the contemporary performing arts.” Through New Works, Clausen began programming Dance Allsorts in 1997, which was a series of diverse and multicultural dance forms. All Over the Map, an outdoor version of Dance Allsorts, started the following year.
The Dance Centre officially opened as a physical space in Downtown Vancouver in 2001, under Executive Director Mirna Zagar, who has been at its helm since 1998.
Today, despite her initial hesitancy to manifest The Dance Centre into a physical space, Clausen recognizes its actualization as a great success, which subsequently allowed a broad and diverse group of dancers to come together under one roof:
“Well, I think it has been a success, probably in spite of me because I'm the one that said building shmilding [laughs]. I mean the fact that that building exists right in Downtown Vancouver is pretty amazing. It's got beautiful studios. Anyway, one of the great accomplishments of The Dance Centre was putting the entire dance community together: the independent dancer, the culturally-specific dancer, the professional ballet company, all in the same place had a really wonderful effect on the community. It wasn't as separated and competitive as it was, because we're all in this thing together. I think that, for me, is the greatest accomplishment. When New Works was able to move into The Dance Centre, into an office–which is, again, one of those nice circular things that happened, I remember the first few weeks being in there and realizing this is not everybody, because not everybody can fit, but this is every kind of dancer, every level of professionalism and amateurism, which is very cool.”
-Barbara Clausen
References
Danse Danse (2005). Choreographer - Lola MacLaughlin. Archives Danse Danse. Retrieved January 13, 2022, from https://www.dansedanse.ca/pages_archives/0506_lolaA.html
Meyers, D. (2015). Lola Elizabeth Harris MacLaughlin. The Canadian Encyclopedia. Retrieved January 13, 2022, from https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/lola-elizabeth-harris-maclaughlin
Pepper, K. (2007). The Man Next Door Dances: The Art of Peter Bingham. Dance Collection Danse Press/Presse. https://books.google.ca/books?id=Wj5EHwAACAAJ
The Dance Centre (2021). The Lola Award. The Dance Centre at Scotiabank Dance Centre. Retrieved January 13, 2022, from https://thedancecentre.ca/award/the-lola-award/
Chapter Three: After Chaos is written and edited collaboratively by Charlotte Leonard and Emma Metcalfe Hurst.