2024-2025
Vancouver, BC

In April 2024, Kinesis Dance’s founder Paras Terezakis introduced Vancouver choreographer and dancer Rachel Helten as his successor and the new Artistic Director of the company.

Born from Paras & Rachel’s desire to embody this transition of artistic leadership for our organization, Bright Shadow’s first inspiration was to merge iconic excerpts from Paras’ extensive works with Rachel’s multidisciplinary research on Utopia and Dystopia, to create a new work centered around the question “what world are we hoping to build together?”

The sneak peak into the research performed on April 4th featured dynamic movement, live music, and digital projections. At this informal sharing, audience members expressed how moved they were by the work, fueling our desire to expand our research. 

Through this process, we want to research how to integrate interactive audience engagement: how can we incorporate elements into the piece (through technology, movement or sound) that will allow the audience members to actively participate in building our “utopic world” together. Each performance would be unique, with the audience members choosing where to go next through their interactions with the performed work.

As the world is experiencing chaos, a climate crisis, and continued social injustice, we believe more than ever, it is vital to continue conversations, expand in our consciousness, imagination, nervous systems, and hearts, with what a peaceful and utopic world might look like for us. “Bright Shadow” seeks to spark dialogue, inspire creativity, and offer a beacon of hope amidst uncertainty.