VancouverGREATER VANCOUVER EVENT
DanceHouse: Compagnie Catherine Gaudet
DanceHouse presents Compagnie Catherine Gaudet’s ODE, a dance work examining conformity, performative positivity, and individual expression through an ensemble of eleven performers.
- Date and time
- Location
- Vancouver Playhouse · 600 Hamilton St · Vancouver · V6B 2P1
- Organizer
- DanceHouse
About this event
DanceHouse presents Montreal’s Compagnie Catherine Gaudet in ODE, following the choreographer’s Les jolies choses (The Pretty Things). Eleven performers march in lockstep and chant “love”; what begins as an anthem slips into desperation and chaos. The work examines an industrial happiness complex built on therapy language, self-help and new-age talks, showing relentless positivity as a means of control and social violence. It also evokes incantation, procession, confession and a secular prayer for a gentler world. Enforced harmony makes deviation dangerous. As voices break and bodies falter, demands for obedience crush individual need and expression; exhaustion remains, alongside a fragile hope rooted in shared struggle.
The October 23, 2026 performance begins at 8 p.m. at Vancouver Playhouse, 600 Hamilton Street. Running time is 55 minutes without intermission, suggesting an approximate finish of 8:55 p.m. A pre-show conversation takes place at 7:15 p.m. in the Upper Lobby; Friday’s performance is followed by a social in the Salon.
Choreographer and artistic director Catherine Gaudet won the 2022 Grand Prix de la danse de Montréal and holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in contemporary dance from UQAM. Her distinctive choreography looks beneath social convention at unconscious impulses and tiny physical movements that reveal hidden feelings. Exploring psychological complexity and contradictions, her work combines raw, precise physicality with dramatic tension, absurdity and black humour.
Box office: Monday–Friday, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.; 604-801-6225; boxoffice@dancehouse.ca.