LEGACY PROJECT PERFORMANCES

EVOLUTIONS

Evolutions offers a new tour concept: a transcendental and transformative adventure for audiences, with the fluidity and distinctiveness associated with Margie Gillis. In each show, Margie will be accompanied by nine Legacy Project dancers. Audiences will be offered an entirely singular experience, depending on the composition of the group performing. Spectators will be transported through a selection of works from Margie’s prolific repertoire, both in solos and group dances, interpreted acknowledging the individuality of each dancer’s experience. Every show will include new choreographies and a Margie Gillis solo performance.

HISTOIRES D’ISOLEMENT

This new selection of solos was created during the pandemic, in collaboration with the dancers of the Legacy Project of the Margie Gillis Dance Foundation.

Histoires d’isolement is the result of the challenges, joys and weaknesses of the uncertain world of confinement. The life of the performers was the starting point for each painting. The topics that emerged from this research are isolation, overwhelming responsibility, the desire to help others, the search for deeper strength, suspended time, the explosion of frustrations, the passion for spring and new growth, the search for a soft heart, abandonment and vulnerability. The need to dance was deeply felt.

Memories poured out of us in urgency. Margie codified them into “crystals” or “poems” that captured the essence of our individual and collective lives during the pandemic. The need to understand and reveal this “New World” through the wisdom of experience was painfully deep.

THE PULL OF THE SEASONS

In this playful and boisterous new work, Margie Gillis celebrates Nature. A call from the heart to her home province of Quebec, where each season unfolds fiercely, each one more vibrant than the next and shaping who we are. Add into the mix, a long and fruitful collaboration with renowned improvisational singer Rhiannon. Working between their homes in Montreal and Hawaii, Margie also drew her inspiration from ‘Big Island’. Here Nature is personified and honored. Pele, the Goddess of volcanoes, dance, and fire, and creator of the Islands, is the symbol of life. And so, this joyful, angry, fragile, formidable, loud, and precious piece was born.

Nature is embodied by 10 dancers and an improvisational singer; all flying and flowing through the stage to offer us both a delicate and rambunctious, dazzling landscape.

An ode to life and to Nature in all its dimensions, where wit and audacity come together in a poignant performance.

LITERATURE OF THE BODY

Sensual and evocative movement that guides us into embracing our humanity. Under Margie Gillis’ artistic direction, the Legacy Project dancers reunite to bring you Literature of the Body, a poetic and somatic, impactful program. Through two group works, the audience is treated to the inner workings of our soul’s journey, while shining a spotlight on the poetry that resides in the art of dance.

Notions of vulnerability, forced social change, loss and disruption, and the joy and sensuality of life, all feature in this assemblage of works. Coming from a ceaseless well of inspiration, Literature of the Body is a must-see, a gift from the world of dance.

Two stories are told. The first faces the hard truth that 1/3 of the world’s population are refugees and with Climate change that number is expected to explode. Who are we in this statelessness? Who are we homeless and unmoored? The second is from the world of James Joyce, who wrote the inner workings of a woman: Molly Bloom. Her world, her community, and her husband all start off in traditional gender, but what follows is a river run of gender mixing. Wild and wonderful this towns woman and her connection to nature win the day in a cacophony of coming to YES.