Queen Elizabeth Theatre
Ballet BC teams up with Vancouver’s Contemporary Art Gallery and British visual artists John Wood and Paul Harrison for a unique, cross-disciplinary art and dance work to premiere in early 2016.
CAG x Ballet BC
John Wood
Paul Harrison
Dancers
Artists of Ballet BC
This project will be a first for all involved, marking a significant and transformative partnership between each institution as well as an exciting and key opportunity for all artists.
While work by Wood and Harrison is often discussed in its relationship to dance and a shared language employed, this project will mark their first collaboration with a dance group. As such it is a major development in their practice. As trust and support, and cause and effect are played out through simple material and conceptual gestures, the artists question and ultimately affirm a human position in the world that is essentially positive.
Since Wood and Harrison’s first collaboration in 1993, their work has evolved from single shot ‘studies’ filmed against neutral backgrounds to longer pieces in which a sequence of actions unfold within constructed locations that have more implicit meaning and contribute to greater narrative complexity. Pieces maintain a strict internal logic, with the action directly related to the duration of the work. Inside this ‘logical world’ action is allowed to happen for no apparent reason, tensions build between the environment and its inhabitant, play is encouraged and the influences on the work are intentionally mixed.
Work