Rental show Vancouver Playhouse

ODE

October 23–24, 2026

Venue: Vancouver Playhouse

DanceHouse presents Compagnie Catherine Gaudet in ODE

Coming on the heels of choreographer Catherine Gaudet’s astounding Les jolies choses (The Pretty Things), the company’s new work ODE channels the industrial happiness complex into a stripped-down exhortation/exploration of group-think conformity and cultural collapse.

Eleven performers, moving in lockstep formation, chant the word love. Anthemic, at first, but soon spiraling into desperation and chaos. The iron-clad dictum of happiness, derived from therapy-speak, self-help books, new age Ted-talks, bland as pablum and inoffensive to the point of banality, begins to transform into something more disquieting. Relentless positivity as a form of social violence and containment is only one aspect; the work channels multiple interpretations: Incantation, procession, confession, and ultimately a form of secular pr