Gabrielle Martin chats with Alan Lake about his show, Orpheus, coming up at the 2026 PuSh Festival!

Show Notes

Gabrielle and Alan discuss: 

• What drew you to the myth of Orpheus?

• Why do some old stories continue to return to the present?

• How are your artistic interests evolving?

• How does each element develop in conversation with the other?

• How does your relationship to camera and frame differ from your relationship to the stage?

About Orpheus

Orpheus reimagines the myth of descent as a visceral dance through darkness toward connection and renewal. Choreographer Alan Lake constructs an immersive world of image and movement where body, matter, and light converge—oscillating between dream and reality. Within this charged landscape, the performers navigate rupture and transformation, their physicality both raw and transcendent.

Lake's choreography merges the mythic and the human, urging us to face the fractures of our humanity—division, conflict, isolation—and to reach for one another. Both intimate and monumental, Orpheus is dance as myth, as mirror, as act of faith—inviting us to drink from the fire and emerge changed.

About Alan Lake

Alan Lake approaches movement through the accumulation of experience and a multidisciplinary practice. His artistic approach lies at the intersection of dance, film, and visual art, with the goal of merging these disciplines into a common space in service of dance. An associate artist at La Maison pour la danse in Québec City, Alan Lake regularly presents his choreographic work in Québec, across Canada, as well as in Belgium, Mexico, and the United States. He is also an active teacher and guest choreographer in various institutions throughout Québec.

About Alan Lake Factori[e]

Founded in 2007 and based in Québec City, Alan Lake Factori[e] is dedicated to choreographic research and creation, as well as the production of both stage works and dance films. With its multidisciplinary approach, the company offers an expanded vision of choreographic art. Whether through in situ projects in unconventional spaces, stage productions, or cinematic works, the company embraces artistic hybridity to develop its own distinct aesthetic and physical language.

Land Acknowledgement

This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver.

Alan joined the conversation from Quebec City, on the traditional territories of the Huron-Wendat, Innu, and Abenaki Peoples.

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Credits

PuSh Play is produced by Ben Charland and Tricia Knowles. Original music by Joseph Hirabayashi.

Show Transcript