Life Moves: Finding space in Northern BC’s Prince George - Vancouver Ballet Society
By Jenn Edwards
Since the pandemic, there’s been a trend of artists leaving urban centres for less crowded, more affordable places. Canadian dance artist Shelby Richardson was ahead of the curve, having moved to Prince George, a town in British Columbia’s Northern interior, in 2015. Since then, she’s been challenging the notion that innovative art can only come out of big cities through her company, Method Dance Society, Prince George’s first professional dance organization.
Richardson grew up in North Vancouver, BC, where she studied ballet and contemporary dance. After high school she moved east to Toronto to attend the Ontario College of Art and Design, where she focused on art history and curatorial practice. During these studies, she often found that dance was missing from the conversation: “There was a huge lack of acknowledgement of dance history, and its trajectory in relationship to other mediums, like visual art and music.” It was in Toronto where Richardson first embarked on collaborative, multidisciplinary work, hungry for more crossover between dance and other artistic mediums.
But she missed the West Coast. In 2006, she took a job in Vancouver, dancing for Josh Beamish’s MOVETHECOMPANY in its early years. At the same time, her interest in Indigenous art and culture led her to earn a Masters of Anthropology from the University of Victoria. “I’m interested in how culture creates a context for art, and how art creates culture as well, and how those things feed off each other,” she says.
Richardson presented her Masters’ dissertation while seven months pregnant. Soon afterwards, she and her husband made the decision to relocate to Prince George in order to live somewhere more affordable for their growing family (she now has three boys). Richardson credits moving North with giving her the breathing room needed to build the life and career she wanted.
In just a few short years, Method Dance Society has become an emerging force in the Western Canadian dance scene. The company employs seven local dancers and one who commutes an hour from Quesnel. Method also collaborates virtually with guest artists, such as dancer Jenna Magrath, a Prince George native who lives in New York City. Magrath acts as a satellite participant in the company, joining in rehearsals digitally or creating solo material to be integrated later, and performing in person for a few shows per season. In post-COVID work culture, artists based in different cities are accustomed to collaborating virtually, helping Method be part of a larger dance scene.
With under a million residents, Prince George is a milling and mining town that sits geographically in the centre of BC, right where two main highways intersect, acting as a kind of gateway to the Far North. “It’s extremely industry heavy, and sports heavy,” says Richardson. The general population doesn’t get much exposure to the performing arts, particularly contemporary dance. “When you’re in a community that has never had a professional dance organization, their only context for dance is recital and competition. That’s very limiting.”
Richardson’s interest in combining dance with other disciplines helps to attract a broader audience. In May 2023, Method produced Community Moves, a four-day festival including stage and site-specific performances, and workshops. From an open call, local artists were selected and teamed up to create an array of multidisciplinary pieces integrating dance, visual art, theatre, music, and costume design. Richardson says, “The best part of Community Moves was watching other artists realize how dance can be a part of their practice.”
Another interdisciplinary piece, River Work, was presented at Dancing on the Edge in Vancouver last summer. Dancers Sam Presley, Sara McGowan, and Jenna Magrath bathed themselves in river water throughout the performance, joined on stage by Indigenous film and performance artist Keilani Elizabeth Rose, who co-created the work with Richardson. Spoken word from Rose, as well as an opening recorded monologue from Lheidli T’enneh Elder Violet Bozoki, ground the piece thematically, educating the audience about the displacement of Indigenous people away from a traditional sacred waterway in the area now known as Prince George.
Richardson is also working to bring high calibre touring dance performances to Prince George. This year she was named the first-ever Performing Arts Programmer for the local Community Arts Council. The council presents Proximity, a collection of short works by MOVETHECOMPANY in January 2024. In April, Ballet Kelowna performs a mixed bill, taqəš and Other Works.
Kicking off Method’s current season is Conversations in Six, November 9-10 at the Prince George Playhouse, featuring commissions to six choreographers, each with some connection to Canada’s Northern communities.
