Local choreographer Alvin Erasga Tolentino draws heaven down from the abstract to suggest that it lies within each of us

One thing that unites the often antagonistic religions of Islam and Christianity is their shared trust in an afterlife: paradise, they insist, awaits all true believers as surely as it will be denied the unfaithful. But few clerics, no matter what their affiliation, are willing to disclose heaven’s GPS coordinates.

Songwriters, arguably a more forthcoming lot, do better: paradise can be found by the dashboard light, says one; another contends that it used to lie on the banks of Kentucky’s Green River, before Mr. Peabody’s coal train hauled it away. But these suggestions aren’t much use to those seeking paradise in the here and now, even if the dashboard-light suggestion might be worth further study.

Faced with these insinuations and uncertainties, though, Vancouver choreographer Alvin Erasga Tolentino has come up with a more mystical proposition: paradise, he says, lies within.

That’s the theme of his latest production, PARADIS/Paradise, a collaboration between his Co. Erasga troupe, composer Emmanuel de Saint-Aubin, media artist Donna Szoke, and the Conservatoire Municipal de Musique et de Danse of Laon, France. And like many revelations, it is as much the result of concentrated effort as of spontaneous inspiration.

“It’s had sort of a long, long development,” says Tolentino, reached at Co. Erasga’s downtown office. “In the beginning, my idea was to work on the idea of paradise as an environment, or as a utopian place. But then as the research progressed I kept asking myself what the project was really about, and I came to the conclusion that, well, I can’t really understand all these
different paradises. So, being a dancer, I decided to live the idea of paradise through my body, the idea of being able to see, to hear, to touch, and to taste all of that. And of being really aware of my perception, my own feelings.

“I guess paradise lives inside of me,” he adds. “It’s in my own body.”

Implicit in Tolentino’s stance is that heaven is not some vague promise of the future, but a state of being alive and aware in the moment. But this is complicated by the Filipino-born Tolentino’s personal history; for many immigrants, paradise is more readily seen in the rear-view mirror than by the dashboard light. Might PARADIS/Paradise—which debuts at the Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre on Tuesday and Wednesday (March 25 and 26) as part of the Vancouver International Dance Festival—have something to do with the world he left behind when he made his 1983 leap to North America?

“That’s something I’m always aware of,” he says. “And I think that there is a sense of nostalgia in this piece—a sense of nostalgia and longing that’s kind of sitting in the body. We don’t really literally speak about it, but I think it sits in the body; it’s centred in the body. And for me as a dancer, finding a way to express that is a dance.”

More pertinent to the development of Tolentino’s new work is his collaboration with Saint-Aubin, who approached the dancer after a performance in Laon.

“In 2005, I presented [the taiko-drum-driven] OrienTik/Portrait there with live music and dance,” Tolentino explains. “Emmanuel saw that piece and he gave me a CD and said, ”˜I would like you to listen to my music, just to see if it would interest you. I would really like to collaborate with an artist in North America.’ So I listened to his music, and I was very interested, and I pushed through the project. So now we’re in partnership with the city of Laon and the Conservatoire, and they’re coproducing it.”

It’s the first time, he adds, that he’s had such an intimate working relationship with a composer. Thanks to their Laon residency, they were able to develop the piece in the studio, rather than each working separately.

“That was really fascinating, working that way,” Tolentino notes. “Again, it was really being in the moment. The music was really born from the breath-to-breath of the dance.”

And that music, it’s important to add, is far removed from what one might normally think heaven would sound like.

“It’s complex,” the choreographer says. “We had some public presentations during the process in France, and I remember one audience saying that, you know, it felt like there was hell in it, that they were actually able to see hell. It’s new music, it’s kind of groovy noise music; he makes a lot of noise. But the noises are scored. It’s a very specific palette. It could just be a guitar or a really very dense sound. It sounds sort of like thunderbolts, sometimes. And it can be very eerie, sometimes. And it can also be very transparent.”

Adding to the emotional intensity of this new work is that it’s dedicated to the memory of Larisa Fayad, a Vancouver-based theatre technician and lighting designer who worked on previous Co. Erasga shows. Six months after the jet crash that took her life, Tolentino is still mourning his colleague, and he says that he’s been thinking about how art and memory can provide a “living vessel” for the essence of someone who has been taken from this existence. But grief is only one small component of PARADIS/Paradise, which has a nuanced but essentially upbeat message: life is short and heaven is within, so seize the day.