Ep. 70 - Dancer Magic (Catching Up to the Future of Our Past)

Gabrielle Martin chats with James Gnam and Natalie LeFebvre Gnam of Plastic Orchid Factory about Catching Up to the Future of Our Past, coming up at the 2026 PuSh Festival: January 30 and 31 at the Scotiabank Dance Centre in Vancouver, BC.

Show Notes

Gabrielle and Renae discuss: 

• The ways in which interdisciplinary fluidity shapes choreography
• How trust and dialogue forms the core of collaboration
• The power of “dancer magic” and its ability to pull together a performance
• The development of Catching Up with the Future of Our Past
• The use of the physiology of memory as a choreographic tool
• How do we remember and embody future dances?
• The continuous tending to of small things that is present in mid-life and in the work itself
• Creating work together at the same time as being life partners and parents
• How do you know that you’re doing it right?
• The tension between memory, desire and the fantasy of progress
• Capturing the possibility and optimism of the 60s, especially the space race
• The emotional and scenographic landscape, and how that changed when the piece grew from a solo piece?
• Learnings from other collaborators and artists
• The Slow Social coming up at PuSh 2026!

About Catching Up to the Future of Our Past

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.

About the Artists

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.

Land Acknowledgement

This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver.

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Credits

PuSh Play is produced by Ben Charland and Tricia Knowles. Original music by Joseph Hirabayashi.

Show Transcript