Verve Mwendo
Verve Mwendo is a professional dance company, in-residence at Halifax Dance in
Halifax, Nova Scotia. Jacinte Armstrong,
Cory Bowles and Jenee Gowing founded the company in early 2002 in response to their individual passions for dance and the diversity in their dance training that they wanted to share and explore with each other.
Since then, the company has been performing, choreographing, and teaching non-stop around Nova Scotia to ecstatic audiences. In Halifax, Verve has performed regularly in the Kinetic Studio Series (formerly Open Studio Series), Halifax Dance's Jazz Bliss, and has self-produced four full-length shows: Way of Going (June 2002), and Polykinesis (May 2003), presented in Halifax, and toured to Antigonish and Sydney, Verve Mwendo No.3 (June 2004) and A Remedy for Cabin Fever ( Jan. 2005).
Verve is dedicated to the creation and performance of exciting new work that combines contemporary movement techniques and styles with elements of traditional dance forms. With a foundation of contemporary modern and jazz dance, the company has increasingly studied and incorporated African, Brazilian and Latin movement and music into its choreography. The group also performs comedic, theatrical pieces that keep everyone laughing, like The Leisure Medley (performed in tennis gear, racquets included), and Skeleton Krewe (performed in glowing, anatomically correct skeleton suits).
Verve's newest creation was the theatrical and comedic Deleted Scenes, which incorporated live music and clown.
