Astorino’s Ballroom (1739 Venables Street, East Vancouver, no phone) hosts a program called Mr. Dance on, at last report, Tuesday and Sunday evenings. It leans to ballroom dancing, with latitude.
Anyone interested the more alternative scene might check out bassix (see "CDs and Vinyl”). This music store and DJ hangout is also a reliable source of information on the city’s live and recorded dance scene. Here you’ll find a large selection of those small, cryptic cards (usually with hip graphics) that advertise out-of-the-mainstream events, happenings, and businesses.
Those interested in dance’s training and performance aspects should look no further than the relatively new Dance Centre (677 Davie Street, Downtown, 604-606-6400). Something of a Modernist, glass-façade canopy laid on top of a century-old neo-Classical bank building, The Dance Centre is superbly sited on the northeast corner of Granville and Davie streets. For the past halfcentury, this area has been pretty seedy, dominated by cheap rooming houses and X-rated stores. With the opening of The Dance Centre (financed by ScotiaBank), and the renovation of several nearby hotels and drinking spots, the area has acquired a new life, and is quite safe for evening entertainment and ambling.
The charitable foundation that established The Dance Centre went through years of political maneuvering to get the job done. At first, city council didn’t like the bank’s demand for a flashy rotating neon sign on its original site, within view of the Granville Street Bridge. Then the proposed building design an architectural hybrid that pretty much ruins the modestly sized bank building — infuriated heritage types. Public debate went on and on. Finally, after project organizers shrewdly brought architect-god Arthur Erickson onto the design team, no one with any political savvy was able to do serious battle — and the project proceeded.
The Dance Centre supports more than thirty dance companies with the goal of “fostering excellence” in dance in British Columbia. It holds regular performances in its own studios and elsewhere around town.
You might want to look out for performances by Ballet British Columbia (604-732-5003). Director John Alleyne has been credited with bringing the company back from the brink in just over a decade and creating, according to Vancouver Sun dance critic Michael Scott, new works of “grave and subtle beauty.” Scott describes Alleyne’s 2002 full-length Orpheus as exhibiting “meticulously finished surfaces polished to a soft gleam.”
Since the 19405, the grand ballroom on the fifteenth floor ofwhat is today the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver (900 West Georgia Street, Downtown), known simply as The Roof has been a dancer’s heaven. In the 19505, CBC Radio broadcast big-band music from here, and Dal Richards and his orchestra have been popular fixtures. Alas, the Hilton hotel chain eliminated the vaulted ceiling to accom¬modate wiring for elaborate lighting. While still spectacular, the room is now used mainly for weddings and other private events, so it can be rented (ask for catering/banquet services at 604-684-3131). The Hilton is now gone, and the hotel has reverted to its original owner.
Another venerable dance venue is the Commodore Ballroom (868 Granville Street, Downtown, 604-739-4550). Ballroom is a misnomer; I doubt if a ball in the conventional sense of the word (or even ball-room-style dancing) has taken place here in half a century. Rather, local and imported acts — ranging from hip-hop madsters to African jazz combos — blow the roof off this cavernous second-story room. Meanwhile, the dance floor remains (one hopes) among the best in the city.
The Commodore and Roof are among the few extant members of the “historic hail” category of the BC Entertainment Hall of Fame, and you’ll find a plaque to that effect in their vicinities. Others, like Isy’s, the Cave, and the Palomar — what were called “supper clubs”
— have vanished, which says something about the city’s live enter¬tainment history. Hall of Fame plaques mark their spots as well.
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