MAINSTAGE 2026-27
Tuning
“Tuning” (56 mins) is a duet commissioned by Alexis Fletcher, created and directed by Vanessa Goodman, featuring dance artists Alexis Fletcher and Ted Littlemore/Ry Jackson. This new work focuses on how we tune to one another. In “Tuning” the performers create a live sonic and physical atmosphere using their voices to amplify the conversations of the body. “Tuning” was created with generous support from The Canada Council for the Arts, Shadbolt Arts Centre, Dancing on the Edge Festival and Action at a Distance
Created by: Vanessa Goodman in collaboration with the performing artists.
Performing Artists: Alexis Fletcher and Ted Littlemore or Ry Jackson
Lighting Designer: James Proudfoot
“THERE’S A MESMERIZING moment in choreographer Vanessa Goodman’s new Tuning when ethereal vocalizations echo into the space, dancers Ted Littlemore and Alexis Fletcher circling in an embrace at centre stage.
It’s a moving sequence where time stands still. And it’s a perfect example of the piece’s intimacy and connection, fuelled by the simple power of the human voice—of two people perfectly tuned into each other.”
—Janet Smith
Action at a Distance Dance Society
photo David Cooper
TRAILER
ARTIST BIO
Action at a Distance Dance Society is a West Coast-based contemporary dance company creating on the stolen ancestral and unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples, including the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Stóō, səl̓ílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations. Directed by choreographer Vanessa Goodman, the company is internationally recognized for creating immersive, research-driven performance works that investigate intimacy, perception, and the human condition through embodied and sensorial practices.
Since Goodman assumed artistic leadership in 2015, Action at a Distance has built a robust international touring history, with works presented by major festivals, producing organizations, and cultural institutions across Canada, the United States, Europe, and South America. The company has developed a distinct interdisciplinary approach that merges choreography, sound, architecture, and visual design through generative performance systems, creating immersive environments that prioritize sensorial engagement and relational encounter. Across all projects, performance is understood as a shared act in which audiences actively shape meaning through their presence and participation.
Presentations in Canada have included PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, DanceHouse, Simon Fraser University Woodward’s, Music on Main, The Firehall Arts Centre, The Dance Centre, Chutzpah! Festival, Shadbolt Centre for the Arts, SummerWorks Performance Festival in Toronto, BC Movement Arts Society on North Vancouver Island, Crimson Coast Dance Festival in Nanaimo, ArtSpring on Salt Spring Island, Living Things Festival in Kelowna, Fluid Festival in Calgary, Brian Webb Dance Company in Edmonton, La Rotonde in Québec City, MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels) in Montréal, CINARS Biennale official programming, Kinetic Studio in Halifax, and Dance Made in Canada Festival in Toronto.
Internationally, the company’s work has been presented by On the Boards and the Seattle Symphony in Seattle, Risk/Reward Festival and Third Angle in Portland, OFFSET Dance Festival in Brooklyn, EstroGenius Festival in New York, Celebrity Series of Boston, Switch Lab in Bucharest, L1danceFest in Budapest, Moving Balkans in Zagreb, Biofriction / FACTT in Lisbon, Fabrik Potsdam, Tanz Bremen and Internationale Tanzmesse NRW in Germany, Spellbound Contemporary Ballet in Italy, the National Center of Dance Bucharest and Stere Popescu Hall in Romania, Vitlycke Centre for Performing Arts in Sweden, Antistatic International Festival for Contemporary Dance and Performance in Bulgaria, Festival Internacional de Danza Contemporánea de la Ciudad de México in Mexico City, and the Bienal Internacional de Dança do Ceará in Brazil.
Action at a Distance is distinguished by long-term artistic collaborations with internationally renowned artists, including Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw, lighting designer James Proudfoot, multidisciplinary artist Brady Marks, choreographer Simona Deaconescu, and composer and sound artist Scott Morgan / Loscil. These collaborations have become central to the company’s internationally recognized artistic language, which moves fluidly between dance, installation, sound art, and speculative performance practices.
The company has been artist-in-residence at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Cultivamos Cultura / BioFriction in Portugal, Harbourfront Centre, Dance Victoria, The Dance Centre, and Shadbolt Centre for the Arts. Under Goodman’s leadership, the company has received numerous honours and awards, including the Isadora Award, the Yulanda Faris Choreographers Program, the Iris Garland Emerging Choreographer Award, and multiple Chrystal Dance Prize distinctions.
Recent international touring for BLOT – Body Line of Thought includes a presentation at the Internationale Tanzmesse NRW Mainstage in Düsseldorf, followed by an extensive European tour with support from Perform Europe, featuring performances in Serbia, North Macedonia, Albania, Croatia, Slovenia, Italy, Austria, Hungary, and Romania.
The company also presented its slow-touring work, SOFT CURRENTS, this season, commissioned by Fluid Festival and Ballet Edmonton with performances at Contemporary Calgary and The Alberta Art Gallery. Touring engagements for the upcoming season additionally include presentations with L'Agora de la danse in Montréal, ArtSpring on Salt Spring Island and La Rotonde in Québec City.
Today, Action at a Distance continues to cultivate a globally engaged contemporary performance practice rooted in experimentation, collaboration, and embodied encounter. Through local and international partnerships, the company remains committed to creating transformative artistic experiences that foster intimacy, critical inquiry, and collective imagination across cultural and geographic boundaries.
Performance History & Upcoming Performances
Premiere:
Shadbolt Centre for the Arts, Feb 2022
Brian Webb Dance Company, Edmonton Trifo Theatre, Sept 2022
Dance in Vancouver Studio Showing, Nov 2024
Tanztage Fabrik Potsdam, Germany May 2025
Dancing on the Edge, June 2025
La Rotonde, Quebec City, March 2027
L'Agora, Montreal, March 2027
ArtSpring, Salt Spring Island, March 2027
Project Created by: Action at a Distance / Vanessa Goodman commissioned by Alexis Fletcher
Key Artistic Collaborators:
Performing Artists: Alexis Fletcher and Ted Littlemore or Ry Jackson
Lighting Designer: James Proudfoot
Performance type: THIS WORK IS BUILT FOR THEATRE
How do you define this work: Dance and live music
Length of performance: 56mins
Audience type: General Audience
Number of Performers on tour (including choreographer): 3
Number of Support Staff on Tour: 1
Availabilities: 2027 Spring Season (Mar - June),2027/28 Season,2028/29 Season
Project Details
Community Engagement
General Technical Requirements: Black Marley floor preferred; hazer; single panel of wallpaper hung upstage; two connections to the house PA through XLR cables for a vocoder and a hanging microphone (company provides microphones and vocoder). Full tech rider available upon request.
Required amount of time for tech set up: 6-8 hours
Soft Currents
Soft Currents is inspired by murmurations: vast flocks of starlings that fold, twist, and reconfigure in the sky through constant, responsive listening. This phenomenon—movement arising from shared attention and collective responsibility—forms a core value of Action at a Distance and grounds this tour-ready work.
Soft Currents is a task-based choreographic composition with original sound, shaped through a highly structured, co-authored score for a large group of dance artists. The score invites performers to attend to internal sensation—weight, breath, timing, and spatial awareness—while remaining porous to the presence of others and the surrounding environment. Text embedded within the score directs attention toward proprioception and sensory awareness, asking performers to locate a shared sense of time through the body rather than through external cues.
Working with headphones, each dance artist listens to a text composed by Goodman in collaboration with the group—heard only by the performers—which guides moment-to-moment choices, impulses, and shifts in attention. From the audience’s perspective, the work unfolds as a series of spontaneous eruptions and emergent compositions, moving between moments of collective unison and individual articulation. The choreography is generated in real time, producing a palpable sense of anticipation as the group continually recalibrates.
Soft Currents employs slow touring as both a creative and ethical framework. Rather than operating through transactional or extractive touring models, the work is developed in close collaboration with local artists and partner organizations in each location, allowing time and resources to circulate within the community. This approach prioritizes sustainability, shared authorship, and care, supporting local capacity while enabling the work to be shaped by the specific bodies, spaces, and conditions of each place. Each iteration is completed over approximately seven days and may be presented in a traditional theatre setting or adapted for site-specific contexts, indoors or outdoors, allowing the choreography to respond somatically to place.
Outreach Activities
Vanessa can teach workshops, or she can facilitate a process for the community where they build a work together over several days, and they can perform the work at site-specific locations. Please see "Soft Currents" link for details: https://actionatadistance.ca/softcurrents
Vanessa loves to exchange with people through facilitating workshops and classes. She has taught professional, pre-professional and community classes locally, nationally and internationally. She has recently taught at Simon Fraser University, Modus Operandi, The Vancouver Training Society and Lamon Dance. She has also facilitated for the Roundhouse Community Dancers, Trinity Laban’s Co-Lab (UK) and been on faculty at The Banff Centre for the Arts (Alberta).
Workshop/class description:
Throwing Bones, Shedding Salt
Exploring what is real and imagined, my class plays with the possibility of the body's capacity. Working with generative systems, we will work through anatomical organization and curiosity of state. This class begins with guided self-TLC to ground us before moving into folding, softening, sliding bones, expanding and compressing. Using scale and architecture to explore inner and outer landscapes, we will move through concave and convex systems to uncover different layers of ease and effort.