In Show Gone, Ame Henderson and Matija Ferlin question the nature of endings
The Dance Centre and Vancouver International Dance Festival coproduction concludes a triptych spanning over 15 years
Ame Henderson (left) and Matija Ferlin in Show Gone. Photo by Noel Pendawa
The Dance Centre presents Ame Henderson Projects and Provincija’s Show Gone, with the Vancouver International Dance Festival, at the Scotiabank Dance Centre on March 13 and 14 at 7 pm
FROM THEIR FIRST duet together, Ame Henderson and Matija Ferlin have been focused on how shows start and how they come to a close.
In their 2009 production The Most Together We’ve Ever Been, the dancers enter the stage around 40 times. Any attempt at gaining momentum soon grinds to a halt as they disappear back into the wings for a moment, before beginning anew. In a 2015 companion piece, Out of Season, they perform a chain of gestures over and over again for an hour, caught in a ceaseless cycle of movement.
Now, with a final installment in their triptych, called Show Gone, they’re exploring the concept of endings. As blackouts consume the theatre, the performers are shrouded in darkness again and again, and must navigate the space by instinct. Speaking to Stir in a Zoom call, alongside Ferlin, Henderson notes that the show is quite the sensory experience for viewers, as their eyes are constantly adjusting to the changing light levels.
“We decided to work with blackouts as a way of thinking about how something ends theatrically, as a kind of motif,” she says. “And so this show has many, many blackouts. We end over and over and over again….A blackout generally doesn’t take as much space within the time of a show as it does in this show. It’s a bit obtuse, how much we use the blackout—and so the audience is in the dark for a lot of the time, in a kind of after-image of what has just happened.”
Vancouver Island–born Henderson and Pula, Croatia–born Ferlin met in the Netherlands in 2002. Then early-career dancers, they were both enrolled in the School for New Dance Development at the Amsterdam University of the Arts—Ferlin as a full-time student, and Henderson as a short-term guest, having just graduated from Montreal’s Concordia University.
They quickly hit it off and began collaborating on choreographic projects. Henderson moved to Toronto, creating the wonderfully over-the-top dance concert /Dance/Songs/, in which Ferlin was a performer; and Ferlin soon returned to his hometown. The distance didn’t impede their friendship, though. As Ferlin recalls, being in Canada in the early 2000s allowed him to form many of his most foundational connections, and his connection to Henderson was no exception.
“A lot of those relationships stick to my heart, and they’ve been really enriching to me as a person,” he says. “In moments, for sure, you don’t know what you do with this ocean in between you. But somehow people who need to stay in your life, they stay in your life as they enter. And so Canada has offered me a lot of love, and really some important people for my life that I’m really thankful for.”
Ame Henderson (left) and Matija Ferlin in Show Gone. Photo by Noel Pendawa
In the eight years between premiering Out of Season and starting on Show Gone, Ferlin and Henderson didn’t see each other. So, before choreographing a new piece together, they had to spend time catching up. They talked about how the pandemic had affected them both; about Henderson’s partner and child; about Ferlin’s new space in Pula.
Re-establishing that familiarity with each other’s lives was integral to developing Show Gone, says Ferlin—and more importantly, to continuing their friendship.
“It’s me being supported by Ame’s idea of risks…but somehow with an idea of knowing that on the other side, there is somebody who can actually catch you if you’re falling,” he explains. “You take different steps during the process, because you know that you are not alone in it. So it’s very generous, it’s very trustful.”
In the piece, Ferlin and Henderson are outfitted in black from head to toe, their heads adorned with great big bowler hats that riff on Victorian undertaker attire. In combination with lighting designer Dario Družeta’s frequent blackouts, this creates a feeling of finality.
But as the pair note, it can be difficult to define an ending. In the theatre, it’s very clear: the lights snap out, the curtain closes, the audience leaves. In everyday life, though, endings are far more flexible. So attempting to contain that within the confines of a black-box theatre has offered the dancers a welcome artistic challenge.
When they bring the work to the Scotiabank Dance Centre on March 13 and 14, care of The Dance Centre and the Vancouver International Dance Festival, there will of course be an ending. Just expect it to be one that invites reflection on what that means in the context of an ever-flourishing 20-plus-year friendship.
“This work—which for me is about, with my whole body, just really noticing what it means to feel loss and to grieve—is paradoxically very enlivening,” Henderson affirms. “We need to do that also in kinship connections. We need to be with loss and grief and change in our community. And something really big did happen to all of us in those COVID years. It’s changed the way that we gather, it’s changed the way that we can mourn and grieve. And it just feels so important to make an offering that starts with this very personal thing between Matija and I.
“This is what we did to try to understand how to feel alive again, or to feel a sense of future possibility,” she continues. “We needed to really be with our pain and our loss and our grief around how the world has changed, our families have changed, our artmakings have changed, and how we’ve lost people. And I’m just totally touched by the ways that that very personal risk that we’re taking to make a performance out of that has actually had an impact on the people that we’ve been able to share it with.” 
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