CONTEST: Win Tickets to Compagnie Catherine Gaudet’s ‘ODE’

DanceHouse opens its 2026-27 season with Compagnie Catherine Gaudet’s latest contemporary dance work, ODE , onstage Oct. 23 and 24 at the Vancouver Playhouse.

Choreographed by the company’s artistic director, Catherine Gaudet, the hour-long work — part pop-rock concert, part ritualistic ceremony — channels the industrial happiness complex into a stripped-down exhortation on group-think conformity and cultural collapse, ultimately revealing a fragile blade of hope under the burden of collective pretence.

“ ODE begins with something wonderfully simple — a group of people coming together around the idea of love — and gradually transforms into something exhilarating, strange and unsettling,” says Jim Smith, artistic and executive director of DanceHouse. “Eleven performers move and chant with extraordinary precision and endurance, and I found myself transported somewhere between a dance work, a rock concert and a ritual. What stays with me long after is the tension between the desire to belong and the cost of surrendering yourself to the group."

Following Gaudet’s captivating performance of Les jolies choses (The Pretty Things) , presented by DanceHouse in 2024, ODE channels our capitalistic society’s cult-like pressure to perform relentless positivity at all costs, drawing from therapy-speak, self-help books and new-age TED talks. The dancers move in lockstep formation, chanting the word “love” in rhythmic unison. They step-touch laterally while sliding their forearms, reaching up with outstretched hands, and swaying their torsos — invoking the precision of an aerobics class and the spirituality of a ritualistic procession.

But under the harmonious pretence, Gaudet reveals a more sinister reality as “the innocence of the initial tableau unfolds into an electrifying and hallucinogenic universe” (BroadwayWorld Montreal). The performers’ engineered cohesion cannot hold forever — voices crack, bodies falter, and the collective chanting turns ragged. Exhaustion from the brutalizing force of obedience and orthodoxy is inescapable, and yet from this disintegration emerges a sliver of hope for a new path forward.

Winner of the 2022 Grand Prix de la danse de Montréal, Gaudet has established a reputation as a choreographer with a strong, distinctive style, drawing on themes of psyche, identity and the body. With razor-sharp commentary on social conventions, Gaudet uses micro-movements and rhythmic expressions to reveal emotions and sensations we try to hide.

ODE premiered to a sold-out crowd at the 2024 edition of Montreal’s Festival TransAmériques and now makes its western Canadian debut in Calgary on Oct. 21, followed by Vancouver on Oct. 23 and 24 at 8 p.m. DanceHouse’s presentation of ODE will feature a pre-show talk at 7:15 each evening, as well as a post-show reception in the salon following Friday’s performance. For tickets and further information, visit dancehouse.ca .

In anticipation of ODE , one lucky Tyee reader will receive a pair of tickets to an evening of the winner’s choice.