DANCE COLLECTION DANSE

Gadfly
The Evolution of Form
Valerie Calam, Paul
Kus, Simone Bell,
Ofilio Sinbadinho,
Apolonia Velasquez
and Andrew Chung
in Velasquez and
Sinbadinho’s Klorofyl
Photo: E.S. Cheah
BY SORAYA PEERBAYE
A multi-year grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation has allowed DCD to undertake several new initiatives – one being to
address the gaps in the DCD archives. We will be working with one group from three dance genres currently under represented in
the archives: urban, Asian and aboriginal. The objectives of this program are for DCD to assist each group with archival preservation
techniques; provide a notator to create a score of a selected choreography; and, publish a feature article in the DCD Magazine.
Gadfly is the first of the three.
Ofilio Sinbadinho still remembers
one of his first meetings with a
presenter – barely five years ago,
near enough for the memory to be
fresh and sharp. He and partner
Apolonia Velasquez, artistic codirectors
of Gadfly, were seeking
opportunities for their first production,
Klorofyl – the title perhaps an
apt metaphor for two urban dance
artists who were – or were seen to
be – young and green. They showed
the presenter a trailer; she watched,
cool, and then turned off the screen
and asked them to explain the
premise of their work. “It was like a
quiz,” Velasquez interjects, before
Sinbadinho continues: “We were
like little kids, excited to talk to her.”
Finally she said, breezily, “This
street dance stuff … it’s just the
flavour of the month; it won’t last.”
Sinbadinho found the presence
of mind to address her prejudice
without anger, but ultimately the
most resounding argument is
Gadfly’s success – and that of street
dance itself, which can celebrate a
more than thirty-year history in both
Canada and the United States. The
form has unapologetically thrust
its way forward through Canadian
innovators such as RUBBERBAN-
Dance Group, which preceded
Gadfly by nearly a decade, and Yvon
“Crazy Smooth” Soglo’s Bboyizm.
There have been succeeding waves
of new artists and groups, with
distinct intentions: Break It Down
(Jon Drops Reid, Toronto), Tentacle
Tribe (Elon Högland and Emmanuelle
Lê Phan, Montreal), the 605
Collective (Vancouver), and Luca
“Lazylegz” Patuelli (Montreal),
who this year delivered the message
on behalf of Canada’s dance
community on International Dance
Day. And these are only a very few.
No. 75, Fall 2015 39