The Centre Culturel Franco-Manitobain will be hosting a celebration of innovative movement and music this week as the Young Lungs Dance Exchange celebrates twenty years of artistic exploration. In celebration of those twenty years, twenty artists from a wide variety of disciplines and experiences with the exchange will be presenting a wide range of works over the course of four days.
For D-Anne Kuby, whose association with Young Lungs stretches back to its inception, the evolution of Young Lungs, much like a dancer responding to their partner, has been a responsive one. “It just kind of goes, ‘What does everybody need right now? What does everybody want to do? What does everybody want to make?’” she explains. “Artists of all kinds... they just bring it all in and they mix it all up and throw it all out there to the world.”
One of the artists contributing to this year’s celebration is multidisciplinary sound artist Dasha Plett, who received an open invitation to contribute to this year’s iteration of Young Lungs. “That’s something that I love about Young Lungs Dance Exchange is the spirit of adventure and openness that feels like is a through line through everything they do.”
That adventure inspired Plett to perform a piece of expanded cinema called Final Destination Girl, wherein live performance is incorporated into the practice of making a film in front of an audience. Plett will use this unique medium to share a story about a teacher she had as a child that became involved in a cult-like community of faith healing. “I’m sort of describing [the show] as a one-woman true crime investigation into her own life live on stage,” Plett elaborates.
Kuby, meanwhile, will be sharing a 12-minute-long dance piece that goes in a loop alongside collaborator Zorya Arrow. The loop will be interrupted by improvised prompts that each performer will have to respond to, creating a singular performance for each iteration of it.
“The word ‘exchange’ just fills me with this sense of sharing,” says Kuby, speaking not only of her performance, but the nature of the collection of works that Young Lungs will be sharing. “We feed each other, basically. We feed each other with openness and questions.”
“I think a lot of us who feel like the theatre in its more traditional forms feels like it’s a little constrained want to push a little bit beyond that,” Plett adds, noting that Young Lungs is one of the best organizations in Winnipeg to support that push. “We want to be doing live performance. We want to be performing text. We want to be using our body in creative ways that aren’t necessarily dance but aren’t necessarily theatre.”
The Youngs Lungs Dance Exchange runs from June 26 to 29 at the Centre Culturel Franco-Manitobain on Provencher Boulevard. For tickets and more information, audiences can visit Young Lungs’ website.