Catching Up to the Future of Our Past
Plastic Orchid Factory / James Gnam (Unceded Coast Salish Territories)
Presented with
Time // Memory // Motion
Two bodies meet, orbiting between what was and what might be.
Catching Up to the Future of Our Past invites audiences into the strange terrain of midlife—where time gathers, stretches, and folds back on itself. Inside a Mary Quant–inspired, retro-futurist astral bubble, their movements trace the pull of time: measurable yet fluid, finite yet elastic.
Through intimacy, repetition, and reflection, the dancers chart midlife not as a pause or checkpoint, but as a living exchange between memory and possibility. The work unfolds as a meditation on the place where nostalgia and anticipation coexist, where every choice carries echoes of what was and what could be. This work summons us to witness not only the passage of time, but its elastic potential—to feel how memory propels possibility, and how possibility reshapes what we remember.
Future Past x Slow Social
Feb 1 // 2PM
A handmade post show discussion for opening portals into futures and trying to imagine them…
More info and registration here.
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Artist Bio
Plastic Orchid Factory / James Gnam
Unceded Coast Salish Territories
Plastic Orchid Factory (POF) is an interdisciplinary organization led by dance artists James Gnam and Natalie LeFebvre Gnam, on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples (Vancouver). For over twenty years, POF has created work that dissolves the boundaries between dance, theatre, installation and digital media. By inviting audiences to reconsider how movement, space and technology intersect, the company cultivates experiences that are both site-responsive and immersive. Committed to risk-taking, POF embraces experimental rigour while foregrounding collaboration with local and international partners to build bridges between artists, communities and contexts. POF has created more than twenty original works presented in galleries, theatres, studios and community halls across Turtle Island and beyond. Recent highlights include Entre Chien et Loup, presented at The Citadel (Tkaronto/Toronto), MAI | Montréal, arts interculturels (Tio’tia:ke/Mooniyang/Montréal) and The Fluid Festival (Mohkínstsis/Calgary); Digital Folk, shown at Omineca Arts Centre (Lheidli T’enneh/Prince George), Mile Zero Dance (Amiskwaciy Waskahikan/Edmonton), Swallow-a-Bicycle (Mohkínstsis/Calgary) and Crimson Coast (Snuneymuxw/Nanaimo); and The Door Project at Left of Main (MST Territories/Vancouver). plasticorchidfactory.ca
James Gnam (he/him) is a Vancouver-based dancer and choreographer whose work explores the reciprocal tensions between embodiment, technology and social exchange. A graduate of Canada’s National Ballet School, he has interpreted repertoire for Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, Ballet BC, EDAM Dance and 10 Gates Dancing, performing landmark creations by Crystal Pite, Twyla Tharp, Jiří Kylián, Mark Morris, Kurt Jooss, Peter Bingham and Tedd Robinson. Gnam is Artistic Director of Plastic Orchid Factory, a founding member of Left of Main, and an associate artist with Mélanie Demers’ MAYDAY and Jacques Poulin-Denis’ Grand Poney. James’ choreography positions the body as both subject and analytic instrument, extending dance into gaming environments, gallery contexts and civic spaces. Across more than twenty works with Plastic Orchid Factory, he has cultivated a practice that oscillates between meticulous introspection and architecturally scaled spectacle, consistently interrogating the conditions under which meaning—and community—are produced.
His research and productions have been supported by Opera Estate (Bassano, Italy); Circuit-Est (Montréal); Centre Q and the National Arts Centre (Ottawa); and, in Vancouver, The Dance Centre, Electric Company Theatre, The New Forms Festival, The Vancouver Art Gallery, The Burrard Arts Foundation/Facade Festival, The Belkin Gallery and SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts. In 2010, the late Lola Maclaughlin nominated Gnam and his partner and collaborator Natalie LeFebvre Gnam for the City of Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Award for Dance.
Artist Links
Venue
677 Davie Street, Vancouver
Content Advisory
Haze, strobing lights
Showtimes & Tickets
Standard: $39 // Generous: $59
Accessibility
Highly visual, no speaking
Click here to open Catching Up to the Future of Our Past’s Access Guide (pdf)
Credits
Concept & Creative Direction James Gnam Scenography James Gnam, Jack Chipman Media Jack Chipman, James Gnam Lighting Design James Proudfoot Sound Design Kevin Legere, Loscil, Robin P Gould, Judy Garland, The Kinks Choreography & Performance James Gnam, Natalie LeFebvre Gnam Media Integration & Technical Direction Jack Chipman Outside Eye Ileanna Sophia Cheladyn Production Assistant Zack Faulks Photography Michael Slobodian, David Cooper Videography Dan Loan Touring Jason Dubois
Supported by The Dance Centre, PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, Electric Company Theatre, LENA, Savage Society, Impulse Theatre, Metro Vancouver, Deux Mille and Hamber Foundations