Martha Graham says that “Dance is the language of the soul.”
To dance well, is to commit both hemispheres of the brain to the task, to involve the full body, to surrender to grace and to open to a love and beauty that can only flow from the heart. It is at once disciplined and fluid, patterned and free. Dancers are passionate about their art, and the dance never leaves them; it persists through life, in spite of changes.
We have many fine dancers on Denman Island, but one who stands out for her leadership is Laurie Montemurro. She works full time at various island jobs, including physically-demanding landscape work, but rather than going home and sitting with her feet up, she gives to her art and her community. She creates one stage production or gallery performance after another, under the name Lulu Productions. She also teaches dance on the island. She is currently creating a show called: Ya Can’t Keep A Strong Woman Down to be performed on April 25th at the Community Hall. As always, she will dance in her show, and she will also choreograph and direct some 17 people from the island, who, under Laurie’s leadership, will work hard to offer something to the community that we will remember. Most of the hundreds of hours she commits are unpaid, volunteer work, and she inspires others to do the same, through a loving and supportive relationship with her artists, coupled with a natural authority that always gets the job done well.
Laurie studied dance in Alberta and other locations in Canada, and she has a long and rich performance and choreography history , including with Springboard Dance, Momo Dance Theatre, BirdSoul Productions Vertical Dance and Intranz Dance Collective. We have been lucky to have Laurie on Denman; since 2010, she has produced or helped to produce more than a dozen shows, some packing in 200- member audiences drawn from this small island community.
We honor her in this blog as her creative and generous community spirit has helped inspire Quaternity Platform. She has encouraged many of us on the island to keep dancing or to dance again. Her passion for dance and performance art has carried on to her three beautiful daughters as well.
The photos in this gallery are courtesy of Andrew Fyson and Mike Van Santvoort