Ep. 76 - From the Marrow (WAIL)

PuSh’s Artistic Director, Gabrielle Martin, speaks with Vanessa Goodman about WAIL, coming up at the 2026 PuSh Festival: January 26 and 27 at the Scotiabank Dance Centre.

Show Notes

Gabrielle and Vanessa discuss: 

• Vanessa’s current work and process on tour across the continent with BLOT
• The original impulses and images that inspired WAIL
• How the complexity becoming a parent today requires one to find joy in work
• What does it mean to navigate joy within community? How can joy be a regenerative force?
• The power of physiological change from performance
• How compression can be used in choreography
• The auditory and visual world of the piece
• The body as site between the individual and collective
• The meaning of collaboration and how to hold space for many voices

About WAIL

WAIL is a choreographic poem for our fractured moment. 

Six performers move through a shifting landscape of sound, light, and breath, their bodies echoing the patterns and distortions of the natural world. Drawing from botanical forms and auditory illusion, the work becomes a living ecosystem where motion and vibration feed each other—fragile, unruly, and alive.

WAIL immerses audiences in a multi-sensory meditation on coexistence. Amid contrast and chaos, the work finds its rhythm in the act of collective joy: a wail that is both grief and celebration, a sound that gathers us back into the body of the world.

About Action at a Distance and Vanessa Goodman

Action at a Distance is based on the West Coast on the ancestral and unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples, including the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō, Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh), and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations. The company is led by Artistic Director Vanessa Goodman and Artistic Producer Hilary Maxwell. Their work carries meaning beyond aesthetics, using choreography as a means to explore liminality within humanity. This exploration questions the boundaries of the human experience, emphasizing the interconnectedness of bodies, technology, and the natural world.

Their choreographic practice weaves together generative movement and sonic embodiment, creating immersive performative environments that aim to expand notions of identity, post-humanism and agency. Through their work, they seek to cultivate intimacy between the body and its surroundings, examining how these relationships redefine what it means to be an individual in a rapidly changing world. The company challenges conventional forms of performative hierarchy through collaborative approaches, inviting varied voices to reshape narratives around corporeality and Existence.

Goodman has received several awards and honours for the Company’s works, including The Iris Garland Emerging Choreographer Award (2013), The Yulanda M. Faris Scholarship (2017/18), The Chrystal Dance Prize (2019 & 2024), the Schultz Endowment from the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (2019), The Isadora Award (2025) and participation in the "Space to Fail" program (2019/20) through Hyde Productions (NZ), Critical Path (AU), and The Dance Centre (CA). Longstanding collaborations include Graveyards and Gardens with Caroline Shaw, BLOT with Simona Deaconsecu, and multiple works with Loscil (Scott Morgan), Brady Marks, and James Proudfoot. Their works have toured Canada, the United States, Europe, and South America. 

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.

Vanessa joined the conversation from Calgary, in the traditional territories of the peoples of Treaty 7, which include the Blackfoot Confederacy (comprised of the Siksika, the Piikani, and the Kainai First Nations), the Tsuut’ina First Nation, and the Stoney Nakoda (including Chiniki, Bearspaw, and Goodstoney First Nations).

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