Dance Centre's Body-Scan: Sweet Gyre

January 24, 2013

Two of Canada’s most exciting and provocative dance artists, Su-Feh Lee (Vancouver’s battery opera performance) and Benoît Lachambre (Montreal’s Par B.L.eux), will join forces with Juno Award-winning musician Jesse Zubot to explore the human body in a bold new work, Body–Scan: Sweet Gyre.

Scanning the body and mining the minutiae of our everyday lives, the piece magnifies familiar senses into a shifting landscape through which personal histories, memories, and desires pass.

Lee and Lachambre are internationally acclaimed for their rigorous, daring, and theatrical work. The upcoming performances will be a rare opportunity to see these two riveting performers on stage, dancing to Zubot’s original score.

Body-Scan: Sweet Gyre has grown out of Body-Scan, a work for six dancers created in 2008 by Lee and Lachambre which premiered in Brest, France and toured to Paris and Montreal, also featuring a score by Zubot.

“Benoît and I have quite different choreographic approaches,” explains Lee, “but we both have an intense interest in how we inhabit our bodies, and how our bodies inhabit space and the environment. This interest speaks to a concern about the sustainability of the human body. If the body is a microcosm of the universe, then how can we live in this body as we live in this world: available to it not use it up, sell it off?”

Su-Feh Lee is a Malaysian-born dancer, choreographer, dramaturge and teacher. Before moving to Vancouver, she lived in Paris where Lari Leong served as an important influence. In Canada, her teachers have included Peter Bingham and Linda Putnam. In addition to dance and theatre, Su-Feh has studied and practiced Chinese martial arts for more than 25 years and currently studies Baguazhang with Master Yang Guo Tai. In March 2008, her solo The Whole Beast and her collaboration with Benoît Lachambre, Body-Scan premiered at the Festival Les Antipodes.

Su-Feh’s latest works, Jung-Ah and Su-Feh and Everything, are collaborations with BC artists, dancer/choreographer Jung-Ah Chung, and electro-acoustic composer Barry Truax respectively.

Benoît Lachambre is a Montréal-based choreographer, dancer, improviser, teacher and artistic director of his own company Par B.L.eux, founded in 1996. Benoît has been a part of the international dance community for the past 30 years. He began his career in jazz and modern dance with companies as Les ballets-Jazz de Montréal, Pointépiénu, and Toronto Dance Theatre.

In his works, Benoît explores the dynamics of communication and perception. Par B.L.eux is devoted to contemporary and interdisciplinary choreographic creation, and the close connection to an international network of artists. The company has toured around the world.

Benoît received the Jacqueline Lemieux Award from the Canada Council 1999 and two Dora Mavor Moores for best performance and best choreography in 2001. Benoît has also participated in several films, one for which he has won a Moving Pictures Award in Toronto in 2003. Between 2005 and 2008, he was associate choreographer at Scène Nationale de Brest, France. His second creation for the Cullberg Ballet High Heel Too will be presented in March at the Kulturhuset de Stockholm.

The Dance Centre presents the Global Dance Connections Series: Body-Scan: Sweet Gyre (Premiere)
Dates: February 14 to 16, 8 pm
Post-show artist talkback on February 15
Venue: Scotiabank Dance Centre, 677 Davie Street, Vancouver
Tickets: $30 adults; $22 students and seniors; available online or by phoning Tickets Tonight at 604.684.2787

For more information on the series and subscriptions, visit The Dance Centre online or phone 604.606.6400.

All photos by Yvonne Chew.