Dance Performance: feral beauties

Choreographer Maxine Heppner with Oriah Wiersma, Junia Mason & Eric Cadesky.

Experience an immersive, site-specific dance performance, conceived by Maxine Heppner, in which her choreography responds to the exhibition Glorious Catastrophe | Gillian Iles.

As you move through the gallery in a small group, you will encounter dancers embodying aspects of the complex tensions between humans’ urbanity, wildness, and precarity in contemporary times. The music’s auditory landscape underscores the fragile balance between civilization and wilderness. This intimate, evolving encounter invites viewers to reflect on their own place within the natural order, highlighting both the beauty and sometimes folly of attempts to shape the world around us—even as it shapes us.

Cash bar available before and after.

Choreographer: Maxine Heppner, celebrated senior dance & inter-medial artist & educator, is an explorer of collective action, since the 1970’s. Her massive ensemble (audacious) & intimate works (“fresh” “deeply human”) have been honoured by awards, commissions, & citations including 4 Doras, Chalmers Fellowships, & many critic choices & best-of’s, from companies, festivals, organisations, communities & the precious trust of colleagues in Canada, Far East Asia & Europe. Maxine’s multi-heritage, & international career has led to her dedication to somatic intelligence & collaboration as fundamental to human expression & interaction. This dedication spans from grassroots collectives such as IGAC (Intergalactic Arts Collective) to highest profile International festivals like 2024 Olympics, 2006 European Cities of Culture, to co-founder of the Canadian Alliance of Dance Artists & International Network for Cultural Diversity. Her Across Oceans Arts platforms facilitate collaborative art-making for elite artists & community players across viewpoints, generations & heritages. Yet she remains an independent continuously challenging norms while embracing fierceness, honesty, delicacy and the need for beauty. For more, visit: www.acrossoceans.org.

Oriah Wiersma’s  multidisciplinary artistry emerges from the soma & finds expression through dance, acting, circus, music, & writing, & is described as “highly visceral”, “beautifully haunting”, & “deeply stirring”. Some of her choreographic/stage work includes:” layers”  her multidisciplinary solo commissioned for Young Lungs Dance Exchange festival, the national tour of her solo “isn’t this where”, and “The Spirit Garden” R. Murray Schafer’s epic outdoor musical drama. Oriah can be found performing alongside bands or interpreting for various choreographers. She has worked with Maxine Heppner since 2023. On screen Oriah has appeared in national commercials & music videos: Gone Baby Gone (Aysanabee), Always a Romantic (ZINNIA), Life (Shannon O’Donovan) & Once I Knew (Ptarmigan).