Dare to dream Rachel Browne’s legacy lives on through Winnipeg’s Contemporary Dancers By: Jen Zoratti Posted: 5:38 PM CST Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024 Last Modified: 9:01 PM CST Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024 Updates

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In 1964, choreographer, dancer and teacher Rachel Browne had a dream.

After retiring as a company dancer from the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Browne — born Ray Minkoff in Philadelphia in 1934 — believed Winnipeg could sustain a professional modern dance company. And so, she founded one.

In those early days, the doggedly determined Browne had to wear many hats: artistic director, choreographer, dancer, teacher, administrator, publicist and fundraiser.

But Contemporary Dancers, as it was then called, quickly became a cornerstone of modern dance in Canada, a vital launching pad for boundary-pushing choreographers and artists who, like Browne, had a dream.

Browne died in 2012 at the age of 77, but her legacy lives on. Winnipeg’s Contemporary Dancers is now this country’s oldest and longest-running modern dance company. And 60 years later, within the black box of the Rachel Browne Theatre, a new generation of WCD dancers will perform five of their founder’s choreographic works in Tribute to Rachel Browne, which opens Thursday and runs through Sunday.

“This is a spectacular showcase of an incredible body of work from one of our Canadian icons, who literally brought contemporary dance to Western Canada,” says Jolene Bailie, choreographer and current artistic director of Winnipeg’s Contemporary Dancers.

After Browne was forced to resign as WCD’s artistic director in 1983 by the board of directors at that time, she turned her focus to choreography, a particular passion for her.

She would go on to create more than 80 original works.

On Tuesday, the dancers are working on two of the show’s five pieces — the intimate 2001 trio Sending Love and the athletic 1994 quartet KJ4. Three solos — Mouvement (1992), My Romance (1990) and a piece from Fine, Thank You! (1990) — round out the program.

The juxtaposition between Sending Love, with its slow, sensuous movement, and KJ4, with its propulsive, rhythmic energy, illustrates the range of Browne’s vocabulary as a choreographer.

“Not just range, it’s also vision. Each piece is a complete idea, which is so beautiful to see. And then in the show, every work is wildly different and every piece of music is quite different,” Bailie says.

“There’s all of these elements that come together to create this synergistic exchange between the dancer and the work, the dancer and the audience, the audience and themselves — which is often a big part of watching contemporary dance. It’s very reflective and it’s very prismatic.”

Julious Gambalan is one of the four dancers in KJ4 — the KJ being Keith Jarrett, the American pianist/composer whose percussive music provides the backbone of the work, and the numeral referring to the number of dancers. It can also be performed as KJ3.

“It’s highly intense, very technical, and it’s very tiring, too,” says Gambalan, who trained at the School of Contemporary Dancers, which Browne also founded in 1972.

“It’s also very precise.”

Performing Browne’s choreography has given Gambalan the sense he’s part of something larger.

“I think it’s an honour to perform these works. I know Rachel would be very proud seeing her work onstage again. Some of our students at the School of Contemporary Dancers haven’t seen Rachel’s work onstage, so it’s very exciting to show them who Rachel is, what her range is for her pieces, and who she is as a mentor and teacher as well,” he says.

Bailie, too, is proud to continue Browne’s dream.

“I’m amazed every day. I’m so honoured and lucky to work here, to be carrying on this legacy. And, you know, it’s a hard, hard journey but we do it and it’s magic. It’s just pure magic,” Bailie says

An artist talk with former WCD artistic director Tom Stroud, who helmed the company from 1995 to 2001, will follow Sunday’s show.

jen.zoratti@winnipegfreepress.com