Co. Erasga - Alvin Erasga Tolentino - Artistic Creator

Seeing is Believing!

It is mid-August, writing back to this blog. Summer heat has arrived in Vancouver after a long, wet June. Since I last wrote in May, we returned from a successful national tour of Orientik/Portrait. I was thrilled to meet some impeccable Asian individuals, movers and shakers in communities such as Montreal, Fredericton, Toronto and Winnipeg. Each has striven to value and persevere Asian heritage  perspectives and celebrations; overcoming struggles to do so in their respective cities in this country.

For me, the highlight of this recent tour across the nation was seeing the differing phases of generational and cultural backgrounds that are developing and progressing to be visible in the growing populations and pockets of Canada’s diverse landscape and meeting those involved. Sharing my creative work with these communities has been an eye opener; connecting to the individuals, knowing their stories, voices and contributions for survival and visibility from an ethnic and minority perspective.

I was determined to bring Orientik back to the road and tour in celebration of Asian Heritage Month as part of our 10th anniversary season despite struggles with deeply felt economic crisis brought on by the continued cut backs to arts funding from the BC government. Audiences across the country were full and receptive to the production making this a very worthwhile endeavour. Sharing the dance with such wide and warm audiences clearly shows the arts are appreciated and needed as much as ever in the other territories of Canada.

In July our visiting artist, Martin Inthamoussu returned to Vancouver and joined me in two days of five extravagant shows featuring dance and live music provided by the amazing ion zoo as part of the 22nd Dancing on the Edge Festival. Once again I've regained my faith in improvisational work; the ion zoo musical ensemble was tenacious and engaged sensibly with the dancers. For the first time in performance mode I was together with Martin, journeying to an unknown, intensely felt, sometimes ridiculously funny and poignant vignette of raw music and dancing. Live in Strathcona brought us all together to a new performance perspective, discovering and experiencing a potentially portable touring work for the future. Kudos to the 2010 DOTE festival which continues to survival, (and hold its torch as the longest running dance festival on the West Coast!), all amidst economic adversity and low attendee support even from its own dance community.

With July coming to an end, the last two weeks were spent in the studio with Martin; working on a new piece entitled Expose, a choreographic research and creation process triggered through the premises of EXPOSE versus IMPOSE.

The research has been philosophical, theoretical and physical. In the act of performance, or merely in a daily state of simple human gesture, exposing and imposing are back to back forces that can be an intent and an emotional trigger. Exposing reveals a force, complex and transmissible human connections, easily transporting, imposed meaning.  In dance, the passing and disappearing of movements are expose, expressing a range of meaning that easily transports an immediate or lasting imposed meaning and confrontation.

Expose is visible. Impose is physiological. Are the two inseparable? In the exposed world we live in, how much do we truly reveal, or that in revealing actually hide truths and reality? Expose will continue its journey and eventually complete its finality next spring at the Dance Centre in Vancouver.

On the home front, Co.ERASGA is delighted to welcome aboard Jason Queck during our 10th anniversary season. He is positioned as our new General Manager, finding re-fresh way into the company's daily operational system. Over the years operational and administrative management has continued to challenge, defy and define itself in the changing course and economic climate of any non-profit sector, creating its own creative learning grooves, sensitive and changeable.

In the weeks to come, I enter the next creative phases of SHADOW MACHINE, a work that I've longed to bring to life again since it was first put the public in 2000. The multi-media work will mark and complete our 10th anniversary season this fall and is presented in partnership with the new W2 Community Media Arts.

This summer in between all these activities, I had a break, a few days to breath, a chance to meander in a city the hearth of antiquity, Rome. In a crowded room, forced to be silent inside the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel, a pause, a gaze and contemplation of Michelangelo and Botticelli’s masterworks.

Inspired.

Art is Splendour, Seeing is Believing!

2010 marks our 10th anniversary season!

Incredible: how time has passed. Co.ERASGA sustains its vision, thanks to our many partners at home, nationally and abroad. We especially thank fellow artists, professionals and diverse audiences. Co.ERASGA achieved great partnerships and diversification in times of economical uncertainty, social changes and creative evolution.

We bring you a new website created by LAXA Internet Solutions under the assistance of Wil Laxa. Enjoy the new features and content. http://www.companyerasgadance.ca

As I write this blog I am en route by air to Montreal as we begin a two-week cross-Canada national tour in the remount of OrienTik/Portrait. This creation partners with the Asian Heritage Society in Vancouver, Montreal, Fredericton, Toronto and Winnipeg in celebration of Asian Heritage Month of May in Canada.

I am proud of Co.ERASGA’s creative life! This course of 10 years enabled us to empower the art of dance with original creations.

Happy Asian Heritage Month!
Happy Spring!

Stay tuned for many more adventurous creative dances!
And thank you for visiting us!

November brings an accumulation of work to complete or completed. October passed without writing anything here: uncompelled to express anything in writing due to lack of time. As November creeps to an end, I want to make up blogging for both months.

Planning can be sublime yet so orderly to attain progress as I struggle each month to meet my friendly deadlines.

As October and mid-November pass, I share my list with you:

• PARADIS was reprised for a half-hour version for 2009 Dance in Vancouver;
• Met Ion Zoo again in an hour of fabulous musicscape as my right shoulder still hurts from dancing the void of improvisation;
• Writing graaaants? (the grind of justifying my artistic pursuit and how to survive!); and - Re-visited Shadow Machine: dancing with rope, shovel and a new invention of sounds, visuals and more to come. Stay tuned, am sure to talk more on this in the months ahead.
• Gender, Yin and Yang, MAN and WOMAN, archetype? A daily studio work for Alison Denham and Billy Marchenski in the work ADAMEVE/Man-Woman. Consider intriguing and imposing questions on male or female movements. When do we recognize it, bodily relation and reaction? Can movements alone liberate the body from gender?
• Back in October on a grey Sunday afternoon stumbling together with Paraskevas was a lecture at Vancity Cinema by Arlene Goldbard brightly reminding her attendees that ART IS A SECRET OF SURVIVAL.
• Levy was born, a new nephew from my youngest brother.

Mid-November's heavy winds blowing in the air, Heavy rain falls fearlessly, Leaves on trees disappear and trees are naked again. Less light and more candles at home. I drink more hot teas and eat more soupy meals. My furnace is on and wool socks on my feet.

I encounter and contemplate on WABI-SABI, Meandering in the essence of transience, Imperfect, Impermanence and Incomplete. BEAUTY.