Elke Porter | Founder and Blogger | German, Austrian, Swiss News (GAS) | May 14, 2025
Elke Porter: Hello!
Joshua Beamish: Hey! Sorry I’m late. My Zoom link was being weird. I need to update my Chrome after this.
Elke Porter: That’s okay. These things are always a little hit and miss on Zoom. So, how are you?
Joshua Beamish: I’m well, glad to be back. I’ve been away for most of the spring, so it’s nice to be back in Vancouver, focused on the show and getting things ready. It feels like there’s a lot going on, but I feel grounded at home, which is nice. I had an amazing time; I was in South Africa and Japan for two months, but it was a lot of moving around.
Elke Porter: What has been the most fulfilling aspect of your 20-year journey as a choreographer, and how does it feel to celebrate this milestone with such a star-studded lineup of dancers?
Joshua Beamish: I think the most fulfilling part of my career as a choreographer is definitely the relationships I’ve made with dancers over the course of making work. There are many dancers, like one of the original dancers from Trap Door Party coming back 18 years later. One of the dancers most featured in the show, Harrison James, and I have been creating together for 13 years. There’s a type of intimate connection that you make between choreographer and dancer, and when you really connect with one another, there’s nothing else like it. That’s been the most meaningful thing.
And, yes, of course, the fact that the dancers are highly accomplished and superstar performers is exciting for Vancouver. It’s exciting for me to bring that to our community because we don’t often get to see world-class major ballet stars, especially dancing en pointe. So, giving that to the community excites me most.
Elke Porter: The program for the 20th-anniversary gala includes a mix of both new and older works. How do you approach revisiting pieces from earlier in your career, and what changes, if any, do you make when presenting them again?
Joshua Beamish: That really depends on the piece. Oddly, Trap Door Party is the oldest piece in the show, and the one I will change nothing of. That show had a really long life early on in our touring. If I were to bring back the entire full-length production, I would definitely make some changes now, but this particular seven-minute section is exactly what I wanted it to be when I made it. I never changed it in the course of its touring, and I feel like it’s the first thing I ever made in my career that stands up to something I could make today and be proud of making. I feel like it’s aged really well, relative to my interests, which I think is rare to be able to say and rare within the context of my work as well.
Whereas Marcato, from 2011, it seems very clear when I go back and watch it that I didn’t have as much time as I might have now because we were in a place where we had fewer resources, and I was younger and had a different process. So, I’m planning to make a lot of changes to the third movement. I just know it could be better, and I would like it to be, so giving the new cast that space to kind of make it their own in that way with me is an exciting process.
Stay is next oldest, from 2015. That’s another one that has had quite a long life. It’s been brought back many times, kind of every few years since it was made, and I’ve never changed it. It’s another one that was exactly everything that I wanted it to be, and I feel like it’s stood the test of time really well.
Lollapalooza is from 2018. I don’t think I made any changes. Maybe I changed one or two little things here and there, just very fine finesse details, like, “Oh, in that lift, we could probably add one more leg switching” or something. Seeing now that Harrison is super comfortable in the lifting, and we have a new cast member, it’s like, “Oh, we could make that a bit more complicated in this one moment,” but I think there are maybe three total moves in the whole seven minutes.
And then Endless Summer, oddly, is the newest piece and the one I plan to change the most. It’s only three years old; it’s never come to Vancouver, but I’m adding a whole section. I’ve added four or five more cast members. I created it during the height of Omicron, and so we were testing every single day to be able to go to work, and making group dances was really hard. Everything to do with operating during that time was so chaotic, and it was clear that my focus was split. It was clear that I couldn’t achieve my full vision for it, so most of the pas de deux and solos are staying exactly the same, but I’m gonna rework the group sections.
Elke Porter: You’ve worked with prestigious companies like the National Ballet of Canada, American Ballet Theatre, and others. How have these collaborations influenced your choreographic process or style over the years? And how did everything start for you? How old were you when you got into ballet?
Joshua Beamish: I’ll start with that part first. My mom is a ballet teacher, so I kind of grew up in a dance studio. Often, when she was teaching, I’d be in a spare studio just improvising, even when I was a toddler. Then, I started formal classes when I was two years old, starting with tap dance and then ballet. So, I was just kind of born into it, but my mom was really great because she never pushed me to do like, “Now you need to learn this type of dance.” I was always like, “I want to do that now; I want to do that now,” and she always let me. If I wanted to quit, I could quit. I wasn’t pushed. She was in no way like a stage mom or anything.
I was given the gift of dance from her but then able to guide my own way through it, and then it was clear that I was more interested in choreography. So, when I left ballet school, I chose to start the company, which was now 20 years ago, and predominantly focused my career around choreography. Even though my mother’s a ballet teacher and I started ballet, it’s like the second thing that I ever did, I felt like ballet wasn’t for me because I was short. I often felt like I was too chubby. There were all these things where I always felt like my body wasn’t right for ballet, so I never really invested in it.
The world has changed so much. I would look at audition postings for ballet companies, and it would be like, “Men, minimum 5’9” in height,” so I think things like that also led me down a more contemporary and choreographic path.
But then, very soon into my professional career, ballet artists and ballet companies started coming to me with offers to create commission opportunities, and then I started integrating that work into our own company and then hiring ballet dancers to perform in our company. So, then our company’s repertoire actually also became quite balletic as well, in tandem with contemporary dance. It was a very natural progression where working with those artists and working in those environments blended into my company.
At various points within the company’s history, I’d make a very clear decision, like, “I want to make a contemporary dance show now.” Or, “I haven’t choreographed en pointe for a while; I really want to hire ballet dancers and make up pas de deux.” So that’s how I would say that influenced my work.
Elke Porter: And about the prestigious companies you work with the National Ballet of Canada, American Ballet Theatre.
Joshua Beamish: Fairly soon on, I did a workshop at New York City Ballet’s Choreographic Institute with the New York City Ballet School. That was very early on in my career. The work that I created there entered our company repertoire, and we world-premiered it in Bangkok, Thailand. Working with prestigious companies has been a wonderful experience. I’ve gotten to know so many phenomenal dancers through those environments, and it’s influenced my work because then I bring that repertoire and those dancers into our company.
Elke Porter: Trap Door Party helped establish your identity as a choreographer. Why is it so significant for you to include it in this gala?
Joshua Beamish: When I first started my professional career, I felt like I was very influenced by commercial dancing, by jazz dancing and hip-hop and street dance. I knew I wanted to choreograph, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be choreographing music videos or ballets. My first two years of the company, there was a major influence of dance competition and those forms. It felt like it took about two years of operating the company to settle into what my identity was as a contemporary maker, which was I made contemporary dance influenced by my whole life history of all these other dance forms. Trap Door Party felt like the moment where all those things synced up. It was like, “Oh, okay, this is my voice actually.” It’s not that I’m not a commercial choreographer, but my exposure and experience in those forms allows me to approach making contemporary dance with a different language.
It was the first show that we did in Toronto, that was our East Coast debut. It was the first show that we did in New York. It was our American debut. It was the first piece that I created that other companies took into their repertoire that they acquired. I staged it on a few other companies in the US. It’s also the show that brought us to Asia for the first time because Cirque du Soleil brought us to World Expo Shanghai to perform it.
Elke Porter: Lollapalooza is another key piece. What’s it like choreographing for the National Ballet of Canada, and how did that collaboration shape the piece?
Joshua Beamish: I had the most amazing experience working with Harrison James and Jillian Vanstone, who were both principals of the National Ballet of Canada at the time. I had their full focus because it was a creation for the gala. Often, dancers’ focuses in ballet companies are split, and you only get them like an hour a day, or you’re trying to get whatever time you can with them. I had the full focus of Harrison and Jillian while I was making it, so I could make the piece very complex. I was able to do a lot of investigation into lifts and trying to be inventive within the virtuosity of ballet because I wanted to make something really thrilling for a gala that would stand out and give audiences a really exciting experience that really celebrates the amazing physical feats of ballet dancers in addition to the artistry.
Christopher Stowell, who is now the new artistic director of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, was the associate director of the National Ballet at the time, and he was my ballet master for the piece, and I had a really great experience working with him. It was my first time getting to be in a studio with him, and so that was also really wonderful.
The piece was shaped by having two of Canada’s best ballet dancers to create with, who are amazing, very open, very smart people. When you have the perfect tools and collaborators, you can make your best work. I felt very supported throughout that process with them. And now we’re restaging it with Frances Chung.
Elke Porter: Have you ever gone…?
Joshua Beamish: I just thought I should mention that. Jillian is retired, but Frances Chung is performing it. Frances is one of the most successful ballet dancers to ever come from Vancouver. Being able to return work…she trained at the Goh Ballet, then went to San Francisco Ballet and shot through the ranks to Principal. She’s a very highly regarded ballet star in San Francisco, in America, and around the world. So to be able to bring her home to Vancouver to perform in this work is very exciting.
Elke Porter: Your work often explores power dynamics in human relationships. What inspired the creation of Marcato, and how do you think audiences will interpret the interactions between the five male dancers?
Joshua Beamish: I’m a man, and I’m also gay, so I’m attracted to men. A lot of my experiences of moving through the world is through that lens. A lot of my friendships or romantic relationships, I’m relating as a man relating to other men, and so part of that of my queer identity makes its way into my work. This was one of my first pieces of all-male dancers. I’ve made a few since, but I think this was the first one, pretty sure it was actually my first piece for only men.
I was really interested in this community of men, and it’s not necessarily even a gay piece per se, but I was interested in the shifting dynamics between a group of men when a new entity or a new man or a new presence arrives. There’s a kind of pack mentality that can happen within men. A lot of my experience of being a gay person was also being bullied as a kid, or not really wanting to be in a sports team, but then being socially ostracized because of that. I feel fine about those things now. I’m a grown-up. It was a long time ago, but those social dynamics are very fascinating, and they’re interesting to work with in a creative process in dance. Pack mentality. There’s a really incredible power that can be achieved when men are lifting one another. It can just be very thrilling.
At the time when I made this piece, it was really uncommon. There’s been way more representation of men dancing together sensuously or romantically more so over the last couple of years, but back then, it was way less common, especially in ballet. It’s a little bit more about curiosity, a little bit desire within this gang community of men.
Elke Porter: Stay is described as a sensual, meditative duet. What was your inspiration for this work, and how does the intimate nature of the dual contrast with other pieces in the performance?
Joshua Beamish: Stay will be the most different from everything else in terms of mood and environment. It’s the piece that has the most space in it. A lot of my work is really dense and complicated and fast. Stay has a lot of room for suspension, and a melancholic grace.
In 2015 when I made the work, I was at the height of my career, the busiest that I was. I was constantly all over the world. I was never really in one place for longer than like three to five days unless it was a significant creation where I was maybe there for a few weeks. Often, I would go and create with a company, leave, and come back another time because I was so busy and pulled in a lot of different directions.
I was making romantic connections with people, and I was never able to stay in it and follow through with them or experience them. So, I lived in this place of, “What could be?” a lot of the time with people who I found interesting all over the world. That was romantic relationships, friendships. My life was very transient. When I was going into the studio with Stephanie and Dimitri, the original dancers, that’s kind of where I was at. Dimitri had really recently moved from Australia to New York. Stephanie is also Australian. She was living in New York, and I was Canadian in New York with them, so we were all kind of from other places. I didn’t know them that well.
The music really informed the atmosphere of the piece, and their friendship. They have this really beautiful, close friendship that existed before we worked together, and so they were able to go to really intimate places with one another and to trust each other. I was able to ask them to try things that might be scary for a ballerina to try with a guy she doesn’t know that well, like running across the stage and jumping onto his shoulder and trusting that he’ll catch her.
It’s kind of sustained, and then suddenly something happens that is just like, “Whoa, how did that just happen?” It’s kind of hypnotic and then kind of shocks you in these certain ways. Suddenly, they’re just in such a close place with one another. It has the most depth in the show.
Elke Porter: Endless Summer is a celebration of sweet summer memories. How do you capture such nostalgic feelings through dance, and what elements of choreography make the piece particularly special to you?
Joshua Beamish: This piece is to music from the Beach Boys. I was compelled to choreograph ballet to their music because of the rhythmic nature of how they vocalize in the songs. A lot of the time, I choreographed instrumental music, but I love the rhythm of the vocals in the Beach Boys’ music. Some of their songs are very simple lyrics repeated over and over again, and then some of their lyrics are actually really eloquent and quite profound if you’re really stopping and actually listening. There’s actually a lot of emotional depth in what they’re saying in some of the songs.
I was interested in the piece seeming to be all fun in the sun vibes, like everyone’s having a great time, but then actually thinking back to the period, there were still a lot of social restrictions and some unrest. There was a lot of stuff going on just before and just after, so what else was really going on underneath all of that?
For example, the song “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” by them is very clearly written probably about a man and a woman, and him just wanting to be with this. Maybe she has a boyfriend or something, but in my piece, it’s a duet between two men. The lyrics are, “Wouldn’t it be nice to be together, to wake up and see each other?” Things were like, if they were together, a lot of people couldn’t have actually been together in the way that I am with my partner. I was able to take their lyrics that were maybe meant to communicate something else and use them to also tell the untold stories of the era a bit, or like the less mainstream told stories.
One of the duets is to “Don’t Worry, Baby,” and the original dancers when I was making it, she was about to move to Europe to join a company, and her fiancé was staying in Vancouver. It was the last time they were dancing together before she went, but they were still staying together. Something about that I thought was just like they’re gonna be okay. They’re married, and they’re living in the same place, and everything’s great. She’s back performing it in this show, but that was kind of what inspired me to use that song for them. It was like, “Oh, yeah, that’s where they’re at right now, like summer’s ending, she’s got to move to Europe, and it’s gonna be okay.” I love how their songs tell these little stories of our relationships.
I wasn’t alive at that time, so I don’t have nostalgia for that era, but humanity, the world does. We kind of look at it as like a simpler, happier time, but I don’t necessarily even know that it was that. There were a lot of things unspoken.
Elke Porter: You’ve created works for some of the world’s leading ballet companies. How does it feel to return to Vancouver for this performance, and what does the city mean to you personally in your dancing career?
Joshua Beamish: It’s very special to have this performance come to Vancouver. As I said at the beginning, it’s such a rare thing for Vancouver to be able to experience dancers dancing en pointe in anything else but The Nutcracker. No discredit to The Nutcracker, which is a wonderful event, and I’m glad that the public is so invested in seeing it each year. It’s really important for our field. There’s also so much more to ballet, and our city’s dance programming presently doesn’t offer that very often.
I think it’s a really special opportunity for the greater public to experience what else ballet is. There are two things: experience dancers like Harrison and Stephanie. Harrison is from New Zealand. He’s a dancer in San Francisco Ballet and the National Ballet of Canada. Stephanie is from Australia. She was a dancer in American Ballet Theatre in New York. These dancers don’t come to Vancouver to perform their companies don’t tour here. That’s really special and rare. Also, you have Frances Chung, who I mentioned, grew up here. Vancouver produced one of the greatest living ballet dancers, and we never get to see her dance.
I think it’s very special that she’ll get to come home, and her family’s here, and they can be there. I’m sure they go to San Francisco to see her perform, but it’s different. She gets to perform at home, and Vancouver can really see, “Wow, these amazing ballet dancers, we train them in this community.” That’s something to really celebrate.
Our company has been here for 20 years. The predominant work has always been in Vancouver. We’ve also worked a lot in New York because we have kind of like a second chapter of the company there. Especially now, with all of the strange political tensions of this moment in our continent, it just feels really nice to be here right now and to be focused on this community and being in Canada and still celebrating what’s here without becoming protectionist. It’s celebrating what’s here and celebrating sharing with the rest of the world and experiencing great things from other places.
Elke Porter: Art doesn’t know boundaries. Looking ahead, what are some future plans for the company? Are there any themes or concepts you’re excited to explore in your next choreographic projects?
Joshua Beamish: We have some very exciting developments coming down the line that will be announced in the fall, so I can’t really speak to them too much, but I’m really excited about the future of where the company is going. One thing that we’re going to begin doing more is inviting more work from other creators besides myself, which we have always done, but we’ve not done it as much since the pandemic. I’ve had two choreographers make solos for me, but I haven’t had other choreographers come in and work with dancers in the company since before the pandemic, so that is an exciting thing, and we’ll be able to bring more choreographic voices to Vancouver and keep enriching the ecology for dance that way.
I’m really excited to be collaborating with a fashion designer on a new piece for next year. I have been a big fan of her work for quite a long time. She’s a local artist, and she’ll be announced in September. I’m very excited about our conversations and the way we’re approaching collaboration. I’m really interested in the way that her culture and ideas and approach to making work will actually impact how I make dance. We’re gonna actually make a ballet together versus just her making costumes for my ballet.
That is our next trajectory. We’re in the stage of planning. We don’t have any more shows for this year. This is it. Then we have our summer intensive with youth, and I’m teaching a lot this summer. I really enjoy working with kids.
Elke Porter: What is like the most exciting moment for you like? You went to some country, and you made this performance, or you met some people, or what was the highlight of your career?
Joshua Beamish: A lot of the time, the things that should be the highlight of your career in theory in what the public would assume are so stressful, and you’re so tired when you achieve them, or there’s just so much that those moments don’t really feel like the highlight in a certain way. Then I look back, and I’m like, “Wow, my work was at Lincoln Center in the Koch Theater, or my work was…,” but also that was a really, really stressful experience and very tiring.
When I think about the highlights, Giselle, here in Vancouver, was so exhausting because it was such a huge undertaking. Our resources are definitely minimal compared to the caliber and scale that we’re working at. However, it was three sold-out nights at Vancouver Playhouse, and the audience was buzzing, and sitting in the playhouse with Vancouver, my home community, seeing a full-length Giselle reinvented, and having the public seem so engaged and excited by ballet and by my interpretation of this ballet was one of the most special feelings. Lincoln Center is a highlight in retrospect, and it was an honor.
Outside of my company, the highlight of my career and probably my life was working at the Royal Opera House and the Royal Ballet in London. I so loved being there, working with the dancers. There’s a real sense of family when you’re working there in community. There are so many amazing artists, all committed to excellence, and the pace of that place is like it’s going, going, going all the time. A generosity exists alongside the propulsive nature of that place, and it was such an incredible thing to be a part of for the time that I was there.
I was lucky I was there for two and a half years, and I had five works presented in the Opera House in that time. That was the highlight of my career for sure.
Elke Porter: Did you hop over to Germany while you were there?
Joshua Beamish: Actually, one of my favorite touring experiences was Theodore Freiburg because they were the commissioning partners for my full-length work, So Dodd, which actually premiered in 2017. Because of the pandemic and some other factors, we didn’t going there until 2021. It was the first place that we went back. It was our first international tour coming out of the pandemic, and they treated us so well, we were so well supported. We had a really great attendance with the audience. The question and answer with the audience was really compelling. Everything about that experience…but that’s my only experience ever working in Germany. It couldn’t have been more positive.
Elke Porter: I really enjoyed our time.
Joshua Beamish: Wonderful.
Elke Porter: I’m going to let you go so we can practice and choreograph. Now I’ll do the interview on my blog, WestcoastGerman News. Usually, I write about more German things, but I’m starting to do a lot more arts. So I write about the opera, the symphony, the Orpheum, dancing. If you can’t do it, you can write about it! I took ballet when I was nine. I was a little old to start, but I had a great time doing it, so I know a little bit.
Joshua Beamish: Thank you for that.
Elke Porter: Nice to meet you and have a wonderful day.
Joshua Beamish: Nice to meet you. Yes, you, too, take care.
#Ballet #Choreography #DanceInterview #VancouverArts #JoshuaBeamish #WestcoastGermanNews #DanceGala #CanadianDance Elke Porter
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