Giant Dumpling Sealed Secrets Keeper

Giant Dumpling Sealed Secrets Keeper by Dreamwalker Dance

June 24 – July 22, 2023 

Open to everyone during gallery hours (12 – 6 PM, Weds – Sat)

Centre A Reading Room

– 

Dreamwalker Dance is producing the Giant Dumpling Sealed Secrets Keeper, an installation art piece of a “giant” dumpling set upon a red tablecloth. As people pass by, they’ll notice a small slot opening in an otherwise tightly sealed ‘package’. Didactics will share tidbits of info about the significance of dumplings and the colour red in Chinese culture. There will also be a passage about the metaphor of the dumpling as a sealed receptacle for invisible or ‘silently’ held contents. Simple prompts will invite passersby to sit and reflect upon what has been held silent within themselves followed by an invitation to write, gesture, mark, speak into or stomp upon a square of paper to release a story, a secret, a memory or perhaps a burden that they are carrying that they wish to release. The paper can be folded (or crumpled) and placed in the dumpling through the slot. 

The dumpling will be in ‘residence’, collecting anonymous offerings in various spaces across the region until the end of August, and then ‘released’ through a ceremonial fire during Light Up Chinatown in September. 

This community activation is an extension of Dreamwalker Dance’s Firehorse & Shadow, a performance piece which is premiering at Left of Main in Vancouver’s historic Chinatown May 4th-6th. 

Collaborator Johnny Trinh describes the Giant Dumpling as “a manifestation of how we carry precious things, similar to how we create and consume dumplings.”

About Members of Firehorse & Shadow: 

Andrea Nann is a contemporary dance artist, arts educator, founding artistic director of Dreamwalker Dance Company, and creator of Conscious Bodies Methodology, an embodied community practice. Andrea creates activations to reach across distance, to experience others in celebration of possibility, diversity, connection and belonging; believing that dance and intentional actions can shift attitudes and ways of being, tuning us into what makes each of us distinct, to what we share, and ultimately how we can live together in wonderment and peace. Through her work Andrea enlivens Dreamwalker’s invitation to awaken and experience oneself in relationship with Self, Others, Environment and All that Is.

Annie Katsura Rollins is a Chinese/Japanese/English/Irish theatre maker, arts researcher and community artist. She incorporates ethnographic research and apprenticeship into her work, with particular interest in traditional puppet forms in Asia and their intersection with ritual practice and community building. She was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to canvas Mainland China for the last remaining shadow puppet artists in 2011 and named valedictorian in 2019 for her PhD on the possibilities of preserving intangible performative culture at Concordia University. Annie lives in Toronto and co-curates at Concrete Cabaret, an experimental performing object collective, and is a community arts manager at MABELLE Arts.

Sarah Chase has performed her dancestory work across Canada and Europe. She also toured with both Benôit Lachambre’s Dance par B. Lieux, and with German choreographer Raimund Hoghe. Her many works created for Canadian artists include Toronto Dance Theatre, Peggy Baker, Andrea Nann, Theatre Replacement, AntonijaLivingstone, Montreal Danse, and Marc Boivin. She is the recipient of the Jacqueline Lemieux Award for Excellence from the Canada Council for the Arts, and received the Prize of the Festival at the Munich Dance Biennale. The solos she created for both Peggy Baker, and Andrea Nann won Doras. She is an associate dance artist of the Canadian National Arts Centre.

Cindy Mochizuki creates multi-media installation, audio fiction, performance, animation, drawings and community-engaged projects. She has exhibited, performed and screened her work in Canada, US, Australia, and Japan. Recent exhibitions include the Nanaimo Art Gallery, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Vancouver Art Gallery, Frye Art Museum, and Yonago City Museum. She received the Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Award in New Media and Film (2015) and the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation for the Visual Arts VIVA Award (2020).

Wen Wen (Cherry) Lu is a multimedia artist interested in exploring the hidden, the small and the forgotten through installation, illustration and animation. Taking inspiration from family history, she seeks to combine it with the present experiences of culture, nature and community to create something that questions.

Kelsi James (she/they) is a white queer and asexual theatre creator, producer and performer, currently working on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh. Kelsi has a degree in Musical Theatre (Sheridan) and a certificate in ASL & Deaf Studies (VCC). Kelsi is honoured to have had their work performed nationally and internationally, in over 30 ‘Canadian’ cities, and most recently in Manila, Philippines as part of the Asian Consultation on Gender. Kelsi is passionate about new work and its capacity for tender, human-to-human social change.

Accessibility: The gallery is wheelchair and walker accessible. If you have specific accessibility needs, please contact us at (604) 683-8326 or [email protected]. 

Centre A is situated on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. We honour, respect, and give thanks to our hosts.