Email to a friend Printer friendly Font: * * * * Three of the dances have not been done in Vancouver: What the Wind Whispered, Bird Bones and When Skin Separates from Bone. What the Wind Whispered is danced to an aria by Jessye Norman, with whom Gillis has collaborated on a number of projects including Norman’s Sacred Ellington tour (featuring the work of Duke Ellington). On dancing to Norman’s live voice, Gillis, in a telephone interview from her home in Montreal, says: “It was a blessing.

I always say she’s the goddess, and I’m the goddess in training.” Gillis made a brief appearance in Vancouver on a Dances for a Small Stage program in 2006, but her last full evening concert here was at the Vancouver Playhouse in 2005. Born in Montreal to a family of athletes, Gillis has had a storied career that includes many milestones: She introduced Western contemporary dance to China in 1979, has performed with New York’s Paul Taylor Dance Co.

in pieces by her late brother, dancer and choreographer Christopher Gillis, and choreographed two solos for Cirque du Soleil’s newest production, Love, which premiered in Las Vegas in June 2006. She’s as cherished as a soloist in Manhattan as she is in Moncton. The first modern dance artist to be appointed to the Order of Canada, Gillis takes her role as a social change agent as seriously as she does her dancing.

She has been active in support of AIDS organizations, been a spokeswoman for Oxfam and Planned Parenthood Foundation, and affirms that “one cannot be an artist or a human being without being political. Even apolitical is political.” It all adds up to there being no one like her.