An award-winning contemporary dance artist is premiering her first full-length work at the Shadbolt Centre in May.
Femme Fatales, created by Meredith Kalaman, is onstage May 3 to 6 at the Shadbolt.
Kalaman, the two-time winner of Canada’s prestigious Chrystal Dance Prize, created Femme Fatales over the course of three years. For her performance, she’ll be joined by Kate Franklin and Felicia Lau in the production that explores how inherited gender roles and behaviours impact individual identity.
“Kalaman’s choreography casts a spell with her vivid imagery, using historical references from childhood nursery rhymes to remnants of the witch-hunt era, to dive into the heart of the paradigms that form how we think and act based on our gender,” a press release explains.
The Chrystal Dance Prize is awarded annually by Dance Victoria to foster international collaborations for independent Canadian dance artists.
Kalaman’s first Chrystal Dance Prize win was in 2015, when she was granted the award to partner with German dramaturge Gabi Beier to expand her work on Femme Fatales – which was first performed as a work-in-progress at the 2014 B.C. Buds Spring Art Fair.
She continued to develop the work while in residence at Dance Victoria and at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts. Then, last month, Dance Victoria announced that she had received the 2017 Chrystal Dance Prize (with a total award of $24,500) to tour the production to Berlin this coming August.
“It is a true fulfilment of the work for me to have it presented in both North America and Europe, given that the early source material for the work is based on the history of the witch-hunts in these two places,” Kalaman said in a press release. “I look forward to seeing how the work resonates on both continents, to further unpack the message behind Femme Fatales.”
Femme Fatales runs Wednesday, May 3 to Saturday, May 6, with shows at 8 p.m. Tickets range from $15 to $38. See tickets.shadboltcentre.com or call 604-205-3000.
