The Pulse: Nov. 4, 2021

Good Women Dance Collective's newest work — how many emails does it take to make a dance piece? — is set to premiere on Nov. 11, a year later than initially planned.

It'll be danced as part of Convergence, Good Women's annual showcase, which will mark the collective's return to the stage after a hiatus during the pandemic.

"There are parts of this process, as a producer and performer, that I feel I can easily slide right back into and other parts that are taking more energy to bring back into focus," Ainsley Hillyard, one of the Good Women dancers, told Taproot. "Absence does make the heart grow fonder, and I feel like I have a new relationship with dancing."

The new work was developed with Montréal choreographer Sasha Kleinplatz. It explores the dancers' memories of previously learned choreography — the moments and movements from the past that stick around in body and mind.

"Sometimes remembering and performing old choreography is very nostalgic and beautiful and other times it brings up a horrible memory or experience," Hillyard said. "It's hard to divorce the movements and choreography from my emotions around them. I didn't realize how much my body actually remembers old choreography, and how easily some of these old dance moves come back to me. It feels a bit magical."

"I love how Sasha balances seemingly contradictory things," added Kate Stashko, another member of the collective. "Working hard and being gentle; persisting and giving in; structure and chaos; pleasure and effort; doing many things and doing nothing."

Convergence, which runs Nov. 11–13 at L'UniThéâtre, also features two other acts: Saddle Lake Cree fancy dancer Dustin Stamp, and Montréal's Karen Fennell.

• Construction is set to begin on kihciy askiy, Canada's urban Indigenous cultural site, this fall. Located in Whitemud Park, kihciy askiy will enable Indigenous communities to host ceremonies and sweat lodges within Edmonton.
• Edmonton's Milla Pub was destroyed by a fire on Nov. 2. The historic building was the home of Edmonton's first gay bar, Club 70, which opened in 1969. The fire comes just three weeks after another fire one block away also resulted in extensive property damage. The causes of both fires are being investigated.
• City council voted to delay auctioning off 89 properties until Jan. 25 to give owners more time to pay their taxes. In a typical year, the number of properties that end up on the block is fewer than 10, taxation and assessment branch manager Cate Watt said in a Postmedia story.
• Cold Shot, an Edmonton-based inter-city bus company, is facing closure after the pandemic decreased ridership. After Greyhound ended services in Western Canada in 2018, Cold Shot took over some of its former routes and is the only bus service to some rural Alberta communities.
• The Government of Alberta expanded eligibility criteria for third doses of COVID-19 vaccines. Starting Monday, all Albertans over 70 and all First Nations, Métis, and Inuit people over 18 are eligible for a booster shot if they received their second shot at least six months ago.

On this day in 1960, two Edmonton department stores were advertising visits from Santa Claus at the same time.

The Westmount Woodward's claimed that St. Nick would stop by on the next Saturday afternoon, while the Simpsons-Sears near Woodcroft claimed to have Kringle booked, too. Of course, as adults, we know the truth — at least one of them must have actually been one of Santa's helpers. (Extra points to the Santa who showed up in a helicopter, though.)

One could argue that the city's relationship with the department store started at its founding. Fort Edmonton was originally established as a fur trading post for the Hudson Bay Company. HBC would also open the city's first department store downtown in 1904. As Edmonton's population grew larger and more prosperous over the next 25 years, more would follow. When Woodward's chose Edmonton for its second store in 1926, it built a three-storey, 60,000-square-foot building complete with state-of-the-art lighting and heating systems. The discount-focused Army and Navy would open its first Edmonton store in 1928, and Eaton's would open right in the centre of the city the year after.

These large department stores had an impact on the city that matches their square footage. By offering a wide variety of goods all under one roof, department stores were attractive to shoppers who wanted to avoid multiple trips to the different speciality stores. They were also a major source of employment in the growing city; the largest stores needed a small army of staff not only to work on the sales floor but also to import the goods to put on the shelves. Of course, the impact wasn't always so rosy. Small shopkeepers in Edmonton found it difficult to compete. And as with most aspects of life at the time, department stores weren't welcoming to everyone.

Given their size and popularity, department stores soon became social centres as well. And of course, they went all out during the Christmas season with lavish displays, decorations, and visits from Santa, or at least his helpers. Woodward's, for example, put together a Toyland for the Christmas season, giving out gifts and showing movies for kids. Anything to entice parents to bring their families to the store (and hopefully leave with fewer dollars in their pockets).

The quick rise of the department store in Edmonton is in contrast to its slow, agonizing decline. Tough economic times, the expansion of malls and U.S. retail giants like Walmart, and the rise of internet shopping are some of the many factors that took down department store companies. Edmonton's last Woodward's closed down in 1993. The Eaton Centre shut down in 1999 when the whole company went under. The building was combined with a neighbouring shopping centre to create City Centre Mall. The latest of the closures is the downtown HBC, which closed its doors this spring.

While many of the stores that rely on Christmas cheer to draw people in might be gone, the appeal of the season for retailers is as strong as ever. The skeletons and ghouls from Oct. 31 were barely put away before a host of Christmas markets, sales and other events popped up all across the city.

This is based on a clipping found on Vintage Edmonton, a daily look at Edmonton's history from armchair archivist @revRecluse — follow @VintageEdmonton for daily ephemera via Twitter.

• Mingle with entrepreneurs, investors, and members of the startup community at Startup TNT's weekly happy hour on Nov. 4.
• Get your glow and groove on at Evolution Wonderlounge's glow party on Nov. 5.
• Witness the beauty and tragedy of Swan Lake by the Alberta Ballet on Nov. 5-7.
• Think you can brave the terrors of Deadmonton with only a flashlight and your wits? The Lights Out event on Nov. 5-7 will plunge horror seekers into the dark to navigate haunted houses and interactive scares. Venture if you dare!
• The Fiancée, a historical engagement comedy, will debut at the Citadel Theatre on Nov. 6.
• Good news, toy and comic book enthusiasts! Edmonton Collector Con is back after its two-year hiatus on Nov. 7.
• The Great Disconnect, a short film about the social impacts of loneliness, will screen for free at the Garneau Theatre on Nov. 7.
• Bike Edmonton's annual general meeting will be held on Nov. 7 via Google Meet. Anyone hoping to attend is asked to RSVP beforehand.

Photo: You can get your final scares of the season at Deadmonton's Lights Out event. (Deadmonton)

Correction: A previous version of this agenda said it is Startup Edmonton's weekly happy hour, when in fact it is Startup TNT's.