The River

1998

About

“Some people will experience The River as a spectacle they have stumbled upon on an evening walk while others will immerse themselves in the collection of street and theatre performances that combine to create a multilayered, multi-dimensional artistic event. All who come in contact with The River will experience a unique and enriching event.

More than 100 people have collaborated in the creation of this journey that is both a piece of art and an outreach to the community. We are working toward a greater recognition of dance as a potent force for positive social change. As artists, we strive to connect people in our community to each other and to the history and culture of their surroundings.

We would like to recognize two groups in particular for their invaluable participation in The River. The Brewery Creek Historical Society, who has contributed to the project with research and knowledge about the last one hundred and fifty years and the members of the S’pak’wus Slulum Dancers who have provided information on the tradition that was prior to the European settlement and added a deeper perspective with details about the human and animal life as it was through thousands of years.

We hope you will enjoy the journey.”

- From The River program handbill, April 30-May 10, 1998

The River was about rivers and connection between the reality of a real and physical outdoor river and the different reality of "the river within", the network of body systems carrying the energy and images that fee our spiritual life.

The River traces the memory of Brewery Creek through the landscape it once flowed freely for centuries. It's shape is still visible in the streets and alleyways of our city, defining our neighbourhoods .

Karen Jamieson Dance together with the S'pak'wus Slu'lum Dancers of the Squamish Nation, the Brewery Creek Historical Society and other community groups created a processional performance to honour the layers of history and memory of the now buried waterway Brewery Creek.

The entire performance took place over two weeks. From April 30th to May 3rd, 1998 The River began at the headwaters of Brewery Creek in the Mountainview Cemetery, traveled down to where the creek became a vast swamp, northward to the ravine where it once cut a deep swath of land and finally into the mudflats of False Creek. From there it traveled across the sea to the Roundhouse Community Centre.

The People

Choreographer: Karen Jamieson

Composer: Peter Hannan

Company Dancers: Shinn-Rong Chung, Laura Crema, Allan Dobbs, Caroline Farquhar, Peter Hurst, Hiromoto Ida, Karen Jamieson, Rulan Tangen

S'pak'wus Slu'lum Dancers: Bob Baker S7aplek Lanakila (Squamish), William Nahanee, Rosie, Ian, Morice

Photographers: Vincent Wong, Susan Berganzi

Site Designer: Paula Jardine

Costume Designers: Susan Berganzi (original creations), Christine Hatfull (re-purposing, re-creation)

Masks: Sanford Williams (Mowachat)

Props Design: Taryn O'Gorman & Marina Szijarto

Lighting Designer: Gerald King

Set Designer: Terence van der Woude

Historical Guides: Charles Christopherson, Bruce MacDonald

Music: Dave Branter, Nicolas Coulter, Russel Shumsky (with The Community Orchestra), Robert Baker, William Nahanee and other members of S'pak'wus Slu'lum

Assistant Director: Kay Huang Barnes

Field Marshall: Susan Bartsch

Design Consultant: Catherine Hahn

Stage Manager: Jan Hodgson

Production Assistant: Jerry Longboat (Cayuga/Mohawk, Turtle Clan from Six Nations of the Grand River)

Volunteer Coordinator: Pamela McKeown

Technical Directors: Adrian Muir, Dusty Rhodes

House Technician: Lorraine West

Production Manager: Jay Rankin

Publicity: Ryan Mullins, Koralee Nickarz

Graphic Designer: Michela Sorrentino

Community Performers: Megan Anderson, Robin Archibald, George Bayne, Brooke Buchannan, Robing Campbell, Yvonne Chartrand, Jan Cong, Joanne Diggan, Eric Epstien, Colleen Fox, Cindy Garmaise, Marilyn Golub, Jamie Hodgson King, Jane Knight, Samantha Laturno, Joelle Lemmen, Diane Loewen, Joyce McBryde, Kuei Ming, Jason Nowlan, Jennider Parker, Marsha Ramsden, Anna-Kana Schofield, Janet Stollar, Sharleen Suseziwez, Ian Theaker, Monica Tse, Bill Williamson, Anthony Yan, Andrea Zimmer, Carmen Angelucci, Myf Bakker, Quinton Bennett, Linsey Burlton, Brandon Chalmers, Missy Christinson, Tracey Dietrich, Rhonda Eager, Jose Fonseca, David Garfinckle, Audrey Gilmour, Dora Ho, Honey Joy, Naomi Kolinsky, Reena Lazar, Agasel Lindowan, Susan Mah, Courtney McNeill, Linda Namen, Tyler Olsen, Amber Pikula, Eva Riccius, Michael Seniuk, Shiela Stuart, Nicole Tehibault, Monica Trejbal, Tamara Unroe, Joe Wilson, Bret Young

Reviews

“Persevering in the largely thankless belief that dance can address local concerns and still be good, Karen Jamieson scored a hit this summer with The River, a project that took its inspiration from an all-but-forgotten east-side stream called Brewery Creek.”

- Michael Scott
“Dance’s best in a less-than-best year”
The Vancouver Sun, December 28, 1998

“In Jamieson’s unruly, exciting project, the parade of drummers, onlookers, dancers, banner bearers and ribbon twirlers actually created a sense of a river moving. Where water once met a bottleneck at the beaver dams, the crowd meets the impediment of a small school yard gate. Instead of wavelets, people eddied around, waiting for a chance to go through the spillway. Jamieson and her troupe also explored three other sections of the now buried and culverted stream.

The performance is vintage Jamieson: smooth flowing, rooted to the earth, elliptical in meaning. Six dancers set up a counterpoint to Hiromoto Ida, who represents an outsider – a non-dancer perhaps. As the six roll and stretch, rising and falling like standing waves on water, occasionally vocalizing, Ida is drawn into their community. His character becomes slowly inculcated to the power and mystery of dance.

Late in the performance, Jamieson herself takes the stage in a seated solo that reminds us of the sheer power of her dancing voice. Her command of her body, her narrative intentions, her very presence is absolute. The last of her generation of dancemakers in Vancouver to hold centre stage, her mastery there remains unmistakable.

The piece concludes in a cross-cultural apotheosis. Jamieson, now masked in a labret-lipped simulacrum of herself, holds the raised stage, while her dancers affirm their unity as a dancing tribe.

Special congratulations to composer Peter Hannan for his brilliant score for tape and live percussion. Hannan uses samples of speech – some identifiably Jamieson’s own voice giving performance notes – to create a soundscape as coruscated as the surface of a stream.”

- Michael Scott
“Karen Jamieson’s River flows with original spirit and bounce”
The Vancouver Sun, May 9, 1998

"...a lament for the buried stream.. performers clamber over garbage bins, fling their bodies off metal garbage doors, and drape their torsos over cement barriers...the choreographer has become accustomed to instilling joyous awe in people who happen to pass by her dancers in the street. Jamieson has earned a reputation for choreography that's rooted in the primal, the archetypal; her vocabulary draws from natural, primitive movements. She has a gift for taking ordinary gestures and injecting them with mystery and magic."

- Gail Johnson
“Dancers Keeping a Stream Alive”
The Georgia Straight, May 7, 1998

"The show began last week along four site-specific performances along the path of Brewery Creek, a stream that once ran from high on Mount Pleasant to False Creek before it was erased several decades ago...the movement of The River can coalesce into striking images with a delightful suddenness. In one early scene, for example, three dancers, moving independently, come together on the floor, arching their backs in unison and spinning around. It's as unexpected as seeing a fish jump from a glassy lake and as quietly thrilling."

- Chris Dafoe
“Playful River leaps to life”
The Globe and Mail, May 9 , 1998

“At the beginning of Gustav Mahler’s The Moldau, the music imitates the source of the great rivers, rising as a small spring and gathering momentum as it journeys to the sea. The River, Karen Jamieson’s new dance, conveys the same sense of implicit enormity.

For the Karen Jamieson company, The River may be about dancers searching for their current of creativity. For me, it has forever altered my perception of the neighbourhood. It has peopled the place of the dead with a living entity that the pragmatic name of Brewery Creek cannot begin to describe. I hear The Moldau.”

- Louise Phillips
“Jamieson’s River rises to epic levels inside and out”
The Vancouver Courier, May 10, 1998