The Dance Centre is choreographing a virtual event to celebrate International Dance Day on Wednesday (April 29).

Amid COVID-19 social-distancing measures, the facility has come up with a program that ranges from online Kpop classes to "micro-commissions" of new work from local artists.

Launched in 1982 by UNESCO, International Dance Day is marked annually on April 29 with events across Canada and around the world. The date commemorates the birthday of Jean-Georges Noverre (1727-1810), regarded as the founder of modern ballet.

Tomorrow (April 29), look to the Dance Centre’s Facebook and YouTube channels for the premieres of short commissions from P. Megan Andrews, Jenna Berlyn, Vancouver Samba School, and Voirelia: Dance, Psychology, and Philosophy Hub. (They start appearing at 1 p.m.)

Turn to the same platforms to check out other demonstrations, works, and classes now. They include installments by Petra Zanki, WeDT Kpop Dance Club, and Vanessa Goodman’s Action at a Distance. Kinesis Dance somatheatro's contribution, by recent Lola Award-winning artistic director Paras Terezakis, is below.

And click on Instagram Live at 10 a.m. to see Amber Funk Barton, the creative force behind the company simply known as response dance. and such hyperkinetic visions as The Art of Stealing, Risk, and Vast, as she performs an improvised work on Instagram Live.

In her International Dance Day message (full text here), Michelle Olson, artistic director of locally based Raven Spirit Dance, acknowledges the strange times the city's artists find themselves in for the annual celebration:

Who knew that we were taking these moments for granted. Who knew that weeks later distance between bodies would no longer be just a choreographic tool but would become a necessity. Who knew that this innate human need to somatically connect with each other was an impulse that we could no longer follow.

So here we are in an unknown landscape, our bodies traversing the distance between what was and what will be. And in this place between we are carrying all these unrequited impulses, unable to realize them in ways we have fulfilled them before. This is a reckoning in itself, but also a deepening. These impulses have become solo kitchen dance parties, dance with the elements of land, wind, trees and water, dance with our breath and the dance we do we with our dearest and closest. Yet, this distance between our dancing bodies at times feels unbearable. It feels unbearable because as humans we are meant to be in community, to be held and to be witnessed.