To grow as a choreographer, Josh Beamish has had to venture into a dance world where he’s just one of many, instead of resting amongst Vancouver’s celebrated few.
The prolific contemporary dance creative has spent much of the last year and a half on arts council grants abroad, working in the hallowed halls of The Royal Opera House in London, where the internationally renowned, 84-year-old Royal Ballet and some of the most famous living dancers in the world call home. And while Beamish has made his name in dance circles from here to New York, in London he’s only a small part of a cabal of choreographers working with the prestigious company – a vaguely familiar face among a sea of elite athletes.
“Working at The Royal Ballet, they might have 20 different pieces going on at the same time in studios. It’s a totally different scale,” says Beamish, seated casually in rehearsal gear in the Westender office, bright-eyed despite just arriving home the night before. “Most smaller companies that I’ve worked with in Canada or the US, there might be maximum of, like, one other choreographer working at the same time as me. Or at Toronto Dance Theatre, there were four choreographers creating at the same time. But to go into a place where they’re literally creating something new with me, re-staging Romeo & Juliet, working on a piece with Hofesh Shechter, doing something new with Wayne McGregor, doing a Balanchine piece… [the dancer’s] minds are in so many different places at the same time. So, it’s been really valuable for me to learn how to get the most out of people in the shortest amount of time, and to be really efficient in what I’m asking.”
Beamish says one of the main goals of the grant application was to immerse himself in dance on a global scale. In 10 short years, Beamish has toured the world, received artistic residences at dance institutions like Jacob’s Pillow and worked with legends like the now-retired Wendy Whelan of New York City Ballet, but that left him emotionally exhausted and living out of a suitcase. This time in London has allowed him to set roots and establish himself in an arts culture that is supported in ways that Canadian artists rarely see.
“We don’t have anything in this country that’s funded on that level,” says Beamish, whose mom is a ballet teacher back in his hometown of Kelowna. “For example, the National Ballet of Canada has to rent [its] theatre. They don’t have their own theatre that everything operates in. [Whereas] The Royal Opera House is one entity. The dancers walk into the same building, they do class there, they do all their rehearsals there, they do their shows there. They have the same dressing room all day long. There’s nothing like that here, and that’s why I’m so happy that the Arts Council has recognized the value for me needing that experience – to really put myself in the scale of what is out there for dancers globally.”
Since arriving in London, Beamish has had three pieces performed at The Royal Opera House, has seen his work on the bodies of some of the world’s most dedicated classical dancers.
And he’s passionate about bringing that knowledge and experience back here. That’s why, for the 10th anniversary of MOVE: the company (the dance company Beamish founded when he was only 17) and to help kick off the Dancing on the Edge festival, the 28-year-old is expanding that legacy – bringing his new connections and latest work back to the city that launched his career. To celebrate, guest artists from San Francisco’s Smuin Ballet, Toronto’s Ballet Jörgen, Ballet Kelowna, a former dancer from the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, and most significantly, two dancers from The Royal Ballet, will take the stage.
“It’s so rare for Vancouver to experience stuff like having the guys from The Royal Ballet come in and perform,” he says. “The Royal Ballet just wouldn’t come to Vancouver. So on the scale that I can, I’m doing what I can to try to keep bringing stuff back here.”
On July 2, for one night only, the Vancouver Playhouse will be treated to Matthew Ball and Nicol Edmonds in Burrow, an erotic two-man duet that Beamish first unveiled in February at The Place and The Royal Opera House in London.
“I wanted to explore a relationship between two men in a way that was not violent, not sentimental, but emotionally complex,” says Beamish. “I feel like often there are hundreds of examples of complex male-female stories, but as soon as you get into male relationships, males are either combative or aggressive figures.”
In addition, former RWB principal Jo-Ann Sundermeier and Josh Reynolds of Smuin will perform a complex pas de deux from 2013’s Pierced, while Jörgen’s Cristina Graziano and Jedidiah Duifhuis of Ballet Kelowna will unite in a new, contrasting pas de deux that explores the vacuum of space.
Perhaps most poignantly, though, Beamish has also recruited long-time associates Heather Dotto and Cai Glover to help him reflect on the last 10 years in a world premiere work entitled The Other People in Your Party.
“Heather and Cai were founding artists of my company. We’ve known each other since we were teenagers,” says Beamish. “But rather than just presenting something I had made with Cai and Heather, I’m making something new with them. So it’s like, who are we all now? We’ve gone out into the world and done other stuff and are coming back together.”
With the piece, Beamish hopes to represent all the significant people from MOVE’s 10-year history in one intimate duet.
“Literally hundreds of dancers have been in the company over the years, from all over the world, and the canon of all my work would not exist without all of these people,’ says Beamish, “So, the challenge I’m giving myself is I want to find ways of referencing them, even if no one would ever pick up in it.”
And Dotto and Glover have been tasked with bringing them back through dance.
“Yesterday, I told Cai to pick a dancer in the company and think of movements that [reminded him] of them,” explains Beamish, “and then I inserted Heather into what he was doing and we made a duet out of it. Or, I would just say the name of someone, and they had to physicalize what that brought back.
“It was so interesting!” he says with a grin. “They would almost, like, change in their eyes first. I saw the eyes of these other people who I’ve loved so dearly and worked with so intimately through two of my longest term collaborators.”
• MOVE: the company’s 10th Anniversary Celebration is tonight (July 2, 8:30pm) at the Vancouver Playhouse, in association with the Dancing on the Edge Festival (July 2-11). Tickets $27-$42 available at Ticketweb.ca
