DanceHouse launches online Digidance series with Deborah Colker’s Dog Without Feathers

Brazilian standout evokes the natural beauty and environmental destruction in Capibaribe River region

Dog Without Feathers. Photo by CAFI — *Dog Without Feathers.* Photo by CAFI

DANCEHOUSE HAS long brought Vancouver arts fans the cutting edge of the Brazilian dance scene.

Now it’s announced that it will open the online Digidance series with the Canadian broadcast premiere of celebrated Brazilian choreographer Deborah Colker’s Dog Without Feathers, streaming September 29 to October 11.

Featuring 14 mud-and-dust-covered dancers, the work is inspired by a poem by João Cabral of the same name, offsetting the beauty of figures emerging from the animal and elemental world with the environmental destruction they wreak. It draws on the natural surroundings of Northeast Brazil’s threatened Capibaribe River region and is saturated with the sounds, landscape, animals, plants and people of the area.

Digidance is a national initiative formed in response to COVID-19 in 2020 between four Canadian dance presenters: DanceHouse (Vancouver), Harbourfront Centre (Toronto), the National Arts Centre (Ottawa), and Danse Danse (Montreal).

Eartlier this month, DanceHouse announced it would be hosting an ambitious hyrbrid season, with a full roster of live shows for 2021-22 at the Vancouver Playhouse and SFU Woodward's.

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Janet Smith

Janet Smith is founding partner and editorial director of Stir. She is an award-winning arts journalist who has spent more than two decades immersed in Vancouver’s dance, screen, design, theatre, music, opera, and gallery scenes. She sits on the Vancouver Film Critics’ Circle.

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