SLOTH CANON World Premiere to Be Presented As Part of Global Dance Connections Series
Envisioned and choreographed by Josh Martin and Anthea Seah, of Company 605 and T.H.E respectively,
By: A.A. Cristi May. 01, 2025
Vancouver's Company 605 and Singapore's The Human Expression (T.H.E) Dance Company join forces for Sloth Canon, a new international creation inspired by the idea of building - and breaking apart.
Envisioned and choreographed by Josh Martin and Anthea Seah, of Company 605 and T.H.E respectively, Sloth Canon brings together an exciting team of performers and collaborators from both cities to evoke a strange and vivid world propelled by extreme, unnatural momentum.
"Our starting point for this work was really a sense of exponential expansion we find ourselves in, and endless compulsion to build bigger or progress faster," explains Company 605 Co-Artistic Director Josh Martin. "How can we ever split off from this rapid pace? What happens when the sin of slowness collides with this pressure to produce, and things start to break apart?" The performers are Vancouver's Brandon Lee Alley and Rebecca Margolick, and Singapore's Haruka Leilani Chan, Chang En, and Billy Keohavong. The score is by frequent Company 605 collaborator Matthew Tomkinson, and the work's title draws on the musical compositional technique of the same name where melodic voices are split, with one part running twice as slow as the other. Charged with physical intensity and speed, Sloth Canon also casts an unexpectedly quirky eye over our struggle to slow down in the face of extraordinary pressure.
Following the world premiere in Vancouver, Sloth Canon will be performed at the cont·act Contemporary Dance Festival in Singapore in June.
About the Companies
Led by artistic co-directors Lisa Gelley and Josh Martin, Company 605 is based in Vancouver, on the unceded Indigenous territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. Producing various dance projects and performances through shared creative process, the artists place emphasis on rigorous choreographic propositions and movement exploration to build physically demanding work - juxtaposing raw with precision, and highlighting effort, risk and interconnection.
With roots as a dance collective, the company was founded in 2009, and now has an expanding repertoire of diverse works and interdisciplinary collaborations. 605 has performed in over 35 cities across Canada, as well as in the US, Central America, Europe, Asia and Australia. 605's co-directors have also created commissioned works for several other dance companies, including Vancouver's acclaimed Ballet BC, and their collaborations with filmmakers have allowed 605's work to be shared globally, with award-winning short dance films shown at over 60 dance-on-screen festivals around the world.
The Human Expression (T.H.E) Dance Company was founded in 2008 by Artistic Director Kuik Swee Boon. Rooted firmly in Singapore yet universal in its perspective, T.H.E's contemporary dance works reveal the body as a medium for exploring and celebrating the human condition.
Dance artists at T.H.E are immersed in the Company's signature methodology, HollowBody, which guides them to access their deeper instincts and impulses through movement. The company's movement vocabulary is distinct in its intensely personal aesthetics, yet thrilling in its diversity. As one of Singapore's seminal contemporary dance companies, T.H.E has performed and toured at many major and prestigious festivals across Asia and Europe as well as in Australia and New Zealand. In 2010, T.H.E founded the cont·act Contemporary Dance Festival - the country's first annual contemporary dance festival to showcase local and International Artists.
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