Today is the evening to strike lightning/ Aaj To Bijiliyan Girane Ki Shaam Hai
Artist: Justine A. Chambers and Simran Sachar
Mainstage Presentation
Russian Hall (600 Campbell Ave, Vancouver)
Tuesday, February 3 @ 7pm
Saturday, February 7 @ 8:30pm
Duration: 45 minutes
Photo: Simran Sachar
Credit: Bill Boyd
Image description: A long exposure photo of a woman wearing a white costume. We see multiple images of the woman repeated — she is opening her arms and closing them again. The image is intentionally blurry, and we see 14 images of the woman. The lights look like a line of light moving across the photo.
Justine A. Chambers and Simran Sachar’s first choreographic collaboration is an act of devotion that collapses Waacking, choreographic scores, and gestures sourced from memories and images of their mothers dancing. Today is the evening to strike lightning is a poetic consideration of dances past in order to surface what has been submerged over time.
Echoes of joy, resistance, and care are embodied in a tender act of reclamation, a quiet riot against forgetting. Folding the past into the present to make way for something newly possible, here, every step is an offering toward what endures.
Premiered at Indian Summer Fest July 5th, 2025; Performance at the Surrey Art Gallery's Kinaesthesia Exhibition symposium November 21, 2025.
Choreography by Justine A. Chambers and Simran Sachar
Performance by Simran Sachar
Outside Eye Lisa Gelley
Sound Jackie Adrian
Lights Carlie Cy
Set design Justine A. Chambers and Simran Sachar
Set construction Uros Sanjevic
Costume Design Sarah Doucet
With thanks to: Am Johal, Indian Summer Festival, School for the Contemporary Arts at SFU
JUSTINE A. CHAMBERS is a dance artist and educator living and working on the unceded Coast Salish territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh Nations in Vancouver, Canada. Her practice is a collaboration with her Black matrilineal heritage, and extends from this continuum and its entanglements with Western contemporary dance and visual arts practices. At the centre of her practice is a question often posed by her grandmother: “You feel me?” This question is both a declaration of one’s personal orientation, and an invitation to reorient and include what is held in our flesh. Chambers meets this question in her work by attending to individual and collective embodied archives, social choreographies of the everyday, and choreography/dance as otherwise ways of being in relation. Chambers’ work has been hosted at galleries, festivals and theatres nationally and internationally including: Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, EMPAC, Toronto Biennial of Art, Libby Leshgold Gallery, Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery, Contemporary Art Gallery - Vancouver, Sophiensaele (Berlin), National Arts Centre of Canada, Agora de la Danse (Montreal), Art Museum at University of Toronto, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, Artspeak, Vancouver Art Gallery, The Western Front, The Dance Centre (Vancouver), Burrard Arts Foundation and the Hong Kong Performing Arts Festival. Chambers holds a MFA in Interdisciplinary Art and is currently Assistant Professor in Dance at the School for Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University and Associate Artist to The Dance Centre. Chambers is Max Tyler-Hite’s mother.
SIMRAN SACHAR is a choreographer, dance artist teacher, writer, and actor originally from Calgary, Alberta, but currently dedicates time to their artistic practice in Vancouver, Canada on the unceded, ancestral territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations.
She is a captivating anomaly in this industry known for her work as a contemporary and street dance artist and choreographer. As a performer she’s contributed her skills in various film, television, theatre productions, and Canadian dance companies, as well as the street dance scene where she’s known for her exceptional abilities as a freestyle dancer, strong storytelling skills and fluid precision. As a choreographer, Sachar’s work uncovers distorted memories and how they disfigure us, the duality of relief and grief, and all the baggage that eventually leads us to joy.
Sachar’s other credits include: Disney, Prime Video, Tubi, Netflix, The CW, Apple Tv, Luna Arts Festival, Artfullness Festival, Indian Summer Festival, Surrey Art Gallery, The Vancouver Opera, Dance In Vancouver, Action At A Distance, Alberta Theatre Projects, Blackout Art Society, Furious Grace Dance Theatre, Park Production House, The Vancouver Art Gallery, Dancing On The Edge, OFF-Parcours Danse, OFF-FTA, F.O.R.M Festival, Apple TV, National Arts Centre, Fringe Manila and more.
CONTACT
Justine A. Chambers
justineachambers.com
movingjac@gmail.com / justine_chambers@sfu.ca
+1 778 919-5011
@justine.a.chambers
@simziez