Eternal Gestures 2025
The Dance Centre
Presents the Global Dance Connections series
The World Premiere of
Co.ERASGA’s
Eternal Gestures
Performer: Alvin Erasga Tolentino
Choreographers: Margaret Grenier, Starr Muranko and Michelle Olson
Lighting: Tory Ip
Thursday & Friday, October 9 &10, 2025 at 8pm
Post-show talkback October 10
Scotiabank Dance Centre, 677 Davie Street, Vancouver
Tickets: $37/$28 students and seniors (+ $1 facility fee)
Info & Tickets: thedancecentre.ca
A visionary World Premiere from Co.ERASGA, Eternal Gestures is a trilogy of evocative solo works commissioned from Indigenous Coast Salish-based choreographers Starr Muranko, Michelle Olson and Margaret Grenier, and performed by Artistic Director Alvin Erasga Tolentino. This poetic work uplifts the voices of Indigenous women, asserts our deep connection to the land, and speaks to truth, healing, and the decolonization of art. Tolentino's captivating performance becomes both a spiritual journey and a vessel for knowledge-sharing. This milestone production celebrates Co.ERASGA’s 25th anniversary and reaffirms the company’s fierce commitment to cross-cultural, experimental dance which explores identity, ancestry, and the environment.
An established choreographer, Tolentino is also renowned as a performer with a distinctive stage presence, and has created many solo works over the past three decades. This new commission will see him focus on interpreting the works of three Indigenous female choreographers. “Through this project I hope to honour and celebrate the knowledge and legacies of Indigenous women as matriarchs, grandmothers, mothers and sisters - their care and nurturing of the world,” says Tolentino. “It is important to amplify their creative voices, to be danced and to be embodied for the world to see.” Eternal Gestures shares his reflections as a mature artist, a migrant visitor, and a settler living on Coast Salish territories.
The Choreographers:
Margaret Grenier is of Gitxsan and Cree ancestry. She is the Executive and Artistic Director for the Dancers of Damelahamid. She has produced the Coastal Dance Festival since 2008. Margaret’s multimedia choreographic works bridge Gitxsan and Cree dance forms with current expressions.
Dancer/choreographer and educator, Starr Muranko is of mixed Cree (Moose Cree First Nation), German and French ancestry, a mother, and Co-Artistic Director with Raven Spirit Dance. As a choreographer she is most interested in the stories that we carry within our bodies and Ancestral connections to land that transcend time and space.
Michelle Olson is a member of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation (Yukon),the Artistic Director of Raven Spirit Dance, and instructor at Langara College’s Studio 58 Acting Program. Her work as a performer and creator embraces the arenas of dance, choreography, theatre, opera, dance education and community arts.
Vancouver’s acclaimed dance company Co.ERASGA celebrates 25 years of dance making and presentations across the globe. Renowned for its cross cultural and experimental works, Co.ERASGA’s remarkable dance contributions to Vancouver include over 20 original full-length productions, community engagements and Asian voices advocacy. Led by acclaimed Filipino-Canadian Alvin Erasga Tolentino, the company's ongoing programming supports and contributes to the development and enhancement of contemporary dance and continues to seek new and challenging projects that provide opportunities and cross-cultural issues in today’s society.
Eternal Gestures is made possible and generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, BC Arts Council, BC Gaming Commission, City of Vancouver, Hamber Foundation and The Dance Centre/Global Dance Connections Series.
Media Sponsors: Stir Vancouver, OMNI TV, City TV, and Georgia Straight.
A heartfelt thank you to Co.ERASGA’s individual members, donors and sponsors.
Media Contact: Jodi Smith, JLS Entertainment
604.838-9844 jls@jlsentertainment.ca
———
Spanning over two decades with a track record of distinct, diverse repertoires, hybrid dance projects and community engagements, Co.ERASGA continues to be a pillar of dance generating artistic voices that amplifies diversity, ancestry, redress and decolonized arts and cultural practices, vision and intention. "Eternal Gestures" is Co.ERASGA's important visionary work to date in anticipation for its 25th anniversary arts season programming.
The commission, collaboration and endeavoured project with contemporary Indigenous Coast Salish based choreographers Michelle Olson, Starr Muranko and Margaret Grenier will see several phases of knowledge sharing, studio research, development and creation between 2024-25 with Alvin Tolentino. The completed full-length solo project will unveil to a world premiere on October 9 - 10 at The Dance Centre in 2025.
Tolentino personally chose to work with the three distinguished choreographers to continue and deepen his artistic relation to each artist and to be guided and influenced further by Indigenous art land base practices, preservation of heritages and greater understanding toward the need and importance of Indigenous and contemporary arts making and offering for our time.
We respond to and continue our learning and humble work towards the "Truth and Reconciliation" by recognizing, collaborating and uplifting the important roles and knowledge of Indigenous women, sisters, mothers and matriarchs. It is important to amplify their creative voices to resonate, to be danced and to be embodied for the world to see.
Alvin Erasga Tolentino's creation and interpretation of solo work spans three decades as one of his important dance legacy in contemporary dance praxis. The new commissions will see him focus solely as the interpreter to the visionary works of three Indigenous choreographers. Throughout this process of meeting new challenges, he will also learn, expand and reignite the positional working discovery between choreographers and dancer.
For Tolentino the project goes beyond the embodiment and expression of dancing but also towards personal inquiry, spiritual journey and offering as a matured artist, a migrant visitor and land settler living in the Coast Salish. It is through meaningful activity, art making and community relational as such that he is able to continue to ask the question of migration and continuity, give back and honor the land he inhabits.
