Maya Lewandowsky would like to bring you into her own fantastical world, just as she does with the dancers, designers and creative minds involved with her choreography for La Caravan Dance Theatre. La Caravan is offering up two of her previous works, Contrast and The Corridor.
While its shows have been performed at prestigious festivals, including One Yellow Rabbit’s High Performance Rodeo and most recently at the Guelph Contemporary Dance Festival, La Caravan has not presented a full program of its own work, until now. A compilation of two past works, Contrast and The Corridor, as well as a special gala performance on June 14, promises an evening to tantalize the senses.
“This is our first time that we’ve self-presented,” says Lewandowsky. “So far, we’ve had the luck to be presented by the High Performance Rodeo twice — which was fantastic — and Vancouver twice, and now we’ve been in Guelph. We’ve toured, we’ve done work, but we’ve never had the chance to self-present.”
The first work, Contrast, is described as a show about “the contrast between background and foreground, between shades and emotions, shades of light.” The costumes look nearly akin to sea creatures, contrasting the warmth of the skin to the cool colour of smooth blue fabrics. In comparison, Lewandowsky describes The Corridor as “the world in between.” “The Corridor is a transitional place, it’s a limbo, it’s the waiting room, it’s towards the light at the end of the corridor of a tunnel, and it’s a universe on its own. You think that there are exits and entrances to a different place, but you actually, all the time, have been staying in the same place.”
Lewandowsky describes the gala event, entitled Blast of Exoticism, as a provocative dance experience that includes champagne, appetizers, live music, silk acrobats, living statues, a raffle event and a chance for audience members to dance with the company after the performance. Lewandowsky notes that having the show in the Theatre Junction Grand is also a way for La Caravan to declare more of a presence in Calgary as a company of artists. “This is our benchmark to the next stage of being more acknowledged as an independent company,” she says, adding she would like La Caravan to grow more in the matter of sponsors and fundraising. “We never waited for anything to come to us before — we’ve always generated and created work and performed, but until now it was a complete self-investment.”
Lewandowsky is currently working with the City of Calgary to find a space to house the creative efforts of La Caravan. This home would generate company works, educate students in the performing arts and give an opportunity for dancers to grow within their careers as artists. “We plan to do a new piece, a dance opera,” she says of La Caravan’s upcoming season. “Comme Barbare is the teaser that we did at Alberta Dance Explosions this year. Because I use a lot of vocal work as a dancer and singer, I vocalize in every piece. Contrast especially is like this. Now I wanted to take it up another notch into working with composers, but with an edge in perspective.”
