On December 2 and 3, Mile Zero Dance (MZD) presents Family Dinner: The Lexicon by Justine Chambers (Vancouver) as part of MZD’s Dance Crush series.
Family Dinner is at once a performance, rehearsal, embodied recording, a choreographic exploration of a shared meal and conversation with dinner guests. Derived from essence; essence of habit, social cues and personal histories, the work functions as a palimpsest – each performance written upon the one before – leaving its trace within the shared vocabulary of the performers.
Family Dinner: The Lexicon is the choreographic culling of each Family Dinner performance to date, created for the stage. While Family Dinner prioritizes what is felt over what is seen and offers a co-creation with dinner guests, The Lexicon proposes choreography as a method for archiving gesture. The 300-some gestures have been sourced from the people present at each dinner. The bodies of the performers are used as imperfect recording devices to hold each dinner guest in the memory of the work. The Lexicon re-organizes and categorizes the inventory of dining gestures to create a living catalogue of movement.
Created in collaboration with dancers from Edmonton and Vancouver including: Katrina Smy, Jeannie Vandekerkhove, Jesse Gervais, Krista Posyniak, Josh Martin, Aryo Khakpour, Kate Franklin, and Alison Denham.
Family Dinner: The Lexicon
Saturday, December 2 and Sunday, December 3
7:30 PM (door), 8 PM (start)
Spazio Performativo, 10816 95 St, Edmonton, AB
$20 (non-member), $15 (member)
Tickets available through Eventbrite or at the door
About Justine Chambers
Contemporary dance artist Justine Chambers’ interests lie in collaborative creation and re-imagining dance performance. Drawn to the movement of all bodies, and focusing on the dances that are already there – the social choreographies present in the everyday – she has been creating performance projects throughout Canada since 2000. Her work has been presented at Agora de la Danse, Canada Dance Festival, Dancing on the Edge Festival, Festival of New Dance, The Western Front and Dance in Vancouver.
