“It’s not a spectacle,” says Noam Gagnon. “It’s an encounter . . . Intense. Unflinchingly human.” He is speaking of being, the nearly hour-long piece that he and violinist Stefan Smulovitz will perform at Vancouver’s KW Production Studios, from March 11 to 14.

Anyone who witnessed the birth of being, the opener for last June’s Dancing on the Edge festival, will know that Gagnon is not exaggerating. The two performers, along with lighting designer James Proudfoot, have put in months of rehearsals to develop the show. It is now even more ferocious and affecting, very much an immersion in the turbulence of our world today, on a geopolitical and a personal level.

“Being is not easy,” the dancer notes. “To even find the bandwidth to cope with the world we live in. It’s hard to stay put, to stay within your sense of self. Growth comes when there’s change and change requires effort.” He and Smulovitz have been working together for a couple of decades and have developed a highly intuitive way of responding to each other in the creative process and in performance.

Wearing only a loose pair of torn jeans, Gagnon mounts a white box not much bigger than a shower stall on its side and begins to explore the edge of his space — think of a large tiger in a cage — in slow fashion. To the side, Smulovitz plays his five-string electric violin, manipulating the sound, all of it live, through his electronic switches. The dance progresses through stages of solitude, anger, fear and tenderness as Smulovitz, continuing to play his violin, joins Gagnon on the small platform.

An audience in such an intimate space cannot help but be moved, in what Gagnon says is “not an easy piece. We are really in your face.”

 Even after decades of performing, including work with Holy Body Tattoo in the late 1990s and now with his own company, Vision Impure, to perform from such an exposed position, he says, is difficult. He’s not the body-builder type, even though very ripped. “I’m in a place of vulnerability when I take my shirt off.” The body doesn’t lie, he says, and such nakedness reveals the distress inside in the very movement of muscles. But he hopes people will see  in being an expression of human resilience in the face of universal malaise.

For Smulovitz, whose composing has included live soundtracks for films, the most important aspect of performance is staying in the present. “You have to trust in that presence, that authenticity. When we come from a place of power, we can show what that power can be between two people.”

being

Created and performed by Noam Gagnon and Stefan Smulovitz with lighting by James Proudfoot.

At KW Production Studios, 111 West Hastings Street, Vancouver from March 11 to 14, 2026. Tickets, $25 to $40, available from https://www.showpass.com/being-noam-gagnon-and-stefan-smulovitz/