Expanse, the festival that celebrates bodies in motion, is back

By Liz Nicholls, .ca

It starts with bodies, all bodies, in motion, and moves onward and outward from there. Azimuth Theatre’s ever-expanding Expanse, their signature movement arts festival, is back Friday, with a 10-day edition dubbed Intersections.

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Community engagement, “the spaces where people, art, and environment converge,” is what Expanse is all about. And as Azimuth’s co-artistic producer (with Morgan Yamada and Andrés Moreno) Sue Goberdhan explains, the 21st annual edition embraces new work, experiments, and artistic collaborators at every stage of development. “At Azimuth we’re always, proudly, in progress,” she says. In the Expanse program each artist is asked “what point in process is your piece at?” The question is at the heart of the festivities.

The lineup, which invades the Fringe Arts Barns (the Westbury and the Studio Theatres and the lobby) and expands to include Moment Discovery headquarters downtown, includes half a dozen mainstage offerings, original between- and pre-show contributions collectively created by the five-member troupe of “Lobbyists,” workshops, artist labs, and community gatherings.

Expanse 2026 launches Friday with a double-bill. The Living Room Party, by name a nod to Azimuth’s origins in a tiny performance space called The Living Room Playhouse, is a showcase for Edmonton-based artists and their in-progress experiments in dance, clown, poetry, theatre. And audiences get to catch exciting glimpses of the process of creation. As Goberdhan describes, the party includes excerpts from new dance pieces and a new musical by Cynthia Jimenez-Hicks, and more.

The F Word, billed as “a playfully political pop-art piece,” is the creation of its two Calgary-based performers Keshia Cheesman and Bianca Miranda. On their journey to self-acceptance, the fulsome pair take on such controversial subjects as fat phobia, diet culture and the intersection of fatness and race in this whimsical melange of fairy tale, dance, and song. Clare Preuss directs.

Ultra Violets, Expanse Festival. Photo by Chelsey Stuyt

In the dance-theatre piece Ultra Violets, Vancouver’s Alexandra Caprara (Hot Dyke Party) leads a cast of 15 dancers, five from the West Coast, five from Edmonton, and five Expanse Fest Lobbyists, in an exploration of transformation that pairs queer club culture and plant life, disco balls and dirt. The inspiration, as Caprara explains in their program notes, is the uncanny similarity of violet lighting in gay clubs and greenhouses.

Phantom Limbs by and starring Kristi Hansen, Expanse Festival. Photo by Ian Jackson.

In Phantom Limbs, created by amputee theatre artist Kristi Hansen, in tandem with Moment Discovery body-sensing technology that leaves her in control of lighting and sound, she unravels the haunting mystery of the presence of absence — both physically in light and poetically in metaphor. The ultra-sophisticated technology registers a right leg and foot that do not physically exist on the artist’s body: that’s the start of it. Read more about this fascinating meditation on memory in an upcoming interview with Hansen.   

Binding is a freewheeling absurdist theatrical conversation between the playwright/actor Calla Wright and their body, specifically an unwelcome body part that defines them in a visibly, not to say graphically, distressing and misleading way. I saw Binding in an earlier incarnation at RISER, and witty arguments put forward by an impressively mouthy pair of boobs gives this unique solo show a wild personality all its own. Sarah Emslie directs.

In Cycle, Thou Art Here’s Andrew Ritchie creates and delivers a provocative hands-on (which is to say bums-on-bike seat), experience from atop his bike, in which we confront questions about how we live in cities, who gets to dominate the urban culture, who owns the city streets. I’ve seen it a couple of times, and the show is a rush and an eye-opener, with unique audience participation and an engaging star.

Each year at Expanse, Good Women Dance sponsors a new work award to an artist who will premiere a piece the following festival. Mpoe Mogale used their year to launch a new dance theatre collective. And BDC is throwing a welcome gathering March 23.   

Expanse puts a priority on community-building. In honour of “Intersections,” this year, for the first time, Expanse will host an “immersive lobby installation” created by the art students of Eastglen High. In an initiative to bond with the neighbouring Whyte Avenue businesses, “Collect The Constellations” is a way for festival patrons to collect stamps from assorted local cafes, bakeries, restaurants on a festival “coffee card” and win prizes. And a “night market” of neighbourhood vendors will activate the Westbury Theatre lobby each Friday and Saturday night 5 to 9 p.m..

The F Word at Expanse Festival. Photo by Aira Ang

Since a sustaining principle of Expanse is “as many access points as possible,” all tickets are pay-what-you-can. And the festival’s accessibility profile includes sensory informed, audio-described, relaxed experience, captioned, and ASL and DTI-interpreted performances available. And there’s a “brown-out” performance of The F Word for BIPOC audiences.

Expanse Festival 2026 runs Friday through March 29 at Fringe Arts Barns (10330 84 Ave.), with one show Phantom Limbs at Moment Discovery (Edmonton Centre). Tickets (all pay-what-you-can), full schedule, and show descriptions: azimuththeatre.com.