Action at a Distance
Photo Credit: Robert Torres
Graveyards and Gardens
“Graveyards and Gardens bridges the past and present to create a moving meditation on mortality.” – The Georgia Straight
Credits
ACTION AT A DISTANCE
Vancouver & Portland, Coast Salish Territories
GRAVEYARDS AND GARDENS
March 5th, 6th, and 7th, 2026. 7:30PM
The Stage at St. Andrews
Please choose the pricing that best suits your lifestyle!
General Seating – Adults/General $45.00; $35.00 Seniors; $20.00 Students / Arts Worker; $65.00 Dance Advocate ($20 Donation Receipt) ; Group Discounts Available
Run Time – 55 Minutes
Content Warning: Light Strobing
Graveyards and Gardens is a collaborative performance installation conceived, created and performed by composer Caroline Shaw and choreographer Vanessa Goodman with lighting design by James Proudfoot and audio design by Eric Chad and Kate De Lorme. Co-produced by Shaw and Goodman, this new work examines memory as a process of reconstruction rather than an exact recall of fixed events, embracing the various elaborations, distortions, and omissions.
Using soil as a mirror and metaphor for storing memory. A shared history by all of us. The impacts of our activity beneath our feet. Decomposition leading to regrowth and renewal. A resilience, a loop of decay and growth. Soil represents the past, present and future for our bodies.
ACTION AT A DISTANCE
Action at a Distance, led by Artistic Director Vanessa Goodman, is a contemporary dance company located on ancestral and unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples, including the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō, səl̓ílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations.
Inspired by artistic collaboration across multiple disciplines, the company has been making and sharing original contemporary dance work in BC since its founding in 2015. Action at a Distance works with a mission to create immersive environments and facilitate engrossing experiences for those who engage with the work.Action at a Distance strives to create welcoming performative environments, inviting audiences and participants to have unique, nuanced experiences, whether responding purely to the aesthetics or parsing deeper underlying themes.
The company’s work has been presented in Vancouver by DanceHouse, SFU Woodwards, Music on Main, The Firehall Arts Centre, The Dance Centre, The Chutzpah! Festival and The Shadbolt Centre for the Arts. Presentations further afield include the Tanz Bremen (Germany), Third Angle (Portland), Brain Webb Dance (Edmonton) Fluid Festival (Calgary), Kinetic Studio (Halifax), dance: made in candal (Toronto), On the Boards (Seattle), Risk/Reward Festival (Portland), Offset Dance Fest (Brooklyn), Switch Lab (Bucharest), L1 Festival (Budapest), Estorgenuis (New York), BioFriction/ FACTT (Lisbon), The International Contemporary Dance Festival FIDCDMX (Mexico City), Tanzmesse (Düsseldorf), CINARS (Montreal) and The Bienal Internacional de Dança Do Ceará (Brazil).