Co.ERASGA
Offering
Photo credits: Yasuhiro Okada
Co.ERASGA
Founded by choreographer and dancer Alvin Erasga Tolentino in 2000, Co.ERASGA has a distinguished international reputation with its vision of hybrid dance, diversity and collaborations with other artistic practices and multimedia. At the heart of Co.ERASGA is Artistic Director Alvin Erasga Tolentino, a Filipino-Canadian artist of remarkable commitment, talent and energy, whose diverse cultural background and heritage has been a driving force for much of the company’s work. In addressing themes that reflect Tolentino’s individuality, global awareness and ethnicity, Co.ERASGA exposes and explores issues of cultural identity, gender, hybridity, and promotes cross-cultural dialogue. Celebrating its 21st season, Co.ERASGA has created critically acclaimed contemporary dance productions that have toured to Asia, Europe, South America and Canada to over 50 different cities in the last decade: Full-length works that have included; SOLA, BATO/Stone, MINORI, Volt, She Said, Field, OrienTik/ Portrait, BODYGlass, PARADISE/Paradis, ADAMEVE/Man-Woman, Shadow Machine, EXpose, Unwrapping Culture, Collected, Traces and Still Here, Passages of Rhythms and Offering.
Offering
“Just like a prayer, Co.ERASGA’s offering comes at a time when the arts has never needed it more” Stir-Vancouver This collection of solo works, performed by seven of Vancouver’s finest and diverse dancers, aspires to honour the living practice of dance and dancing and the challenges of keeping this art-form alive during the ongoing pandemic crisis and isolation. How do our bodies relate, move and dance at this critical time of pandemic adversity? In this new creation, Tolentino asks each dancer to explore movement as a form of devotion and prayer – allowing the dance to transcend luminous energy. Each work individually and together as full-evening presentation, Offering becomes a performance ritual, evoking a spiritual reach for a universal interconnect, awareness, and healing for the world.
Photo credits: Yasuhiro Okada
Performance History of Offering
-2020 August 25-26 -Outside/We Dance at the Roundhouse Turntable
-2020 November 28-29 Premiere, Live Stream at the Anvil Theatre Centre
-2021 October 15-17 Remount, Live at the Anvil theater Centre
-2021 November 27 Dance in Vancouver Live at the Woodward’s Atrium
Project Details
Choreographer(s)/Creator(s) Name(s):
Co.ERASGA- Alvin Erasga Tolentino
Additional Key Artistic Collaborators:
Choreography: Alvin Erasga Tolentino
Dancers: Joshua Ongcol, Olivia Shaffer, Marc Arboleda, Antonio Somera, Hannah Richard, Marissa Wong and Alvin Erasga Tolentino
Composer: Emmanuel Mailly
Lighting: Jonathan Kim
Costume: Meagan Woods
Audience: General
Length in minutes: 65 minutes - Full-length work
Space required: This work is built for theatre but adaptable for live stream presentation.
Preparation required: A minumun of 1-2 days technical day in the theatre would be ideal but the production is adaptable to the circumstances of the venue.
General technical requirements: Lights, Sound and Theatre.
Availability: Fall 2022 (Sept-Dec), Spring 2023 (Apr-June), Fall 2023 (Sept-Dec)
Number of performers on tour including choreographer: 10
Number of support staff on tour: 1-assistant to the artistic director
Community Engagement Activities
The seven casts of Offering provides an exceptional wealth of knowledge of dance forms from contemporary, ballet, hip hop /street dance, improvisation and dance-theatre. We are thrilled to share all our dance expertise to different generations of community members we are able to access too. As working artists in time of the pandemic, artistic dialogues have been integral in our survival modes, a concept we have kept to share with the general public. Communication, lectures and conversation has been instrumental in our arts making and performance sharing. Artistic director Alvin Erasga Tolentino has led decades of community arts workshops and engagement from new immigrants, non dancers both young and adults as well as professional level dance practitioners.-Formats are all adaptable pending on the communities and participants available.-Fees are also negotiable and can be built as part of co-production fees.-Schedules can be arranged in ways that would support and balance the partnership of co-presentation production engagement and community outreach.
Contact: info@companyerasgadance.ca
Website: companyerasgadance.ca
Facebook: Co.ERASGA
Instagram: co.erasga