HPR Spotlight: Rare Beauties celebrates the wonder of the women of DJD

Rare Beauties, the new show by Decidedly Jazz Danceworks, celebrates women. It opens Thursday night as part of the 2026 High Performance Rodeo.

Decidedly Jazz Danceworks artistic director Kimberly Cooper was searching for some inspiration for her company’s new show Rare Beauties, which opens Thursday night at DJD Dance Centre as part of the 2026 High Performance Rodeo.

One look at the news did the exact opposite.

“I came in to this season kind of depressed about the state of the world,” she said.

That’s when Cooper had the epiphany that if you can’t find inspiration in the state of the world, maybe you can remind others that there’s more to life than watching the world burn.

“I really believe that art is here to remind us that there is beauty, that we really need to embrace that and explore it,” she says, in a YouTube video exploring the new show.

“So I really wanted to make a piece that was about beauty and about the women in this company.

That was the impulse behind Rare Beauties.

It’s rare in another way, namely it’s a DJD show featuring recorded rather than live music.

In this case, Cooper uses “found music” from some of her favourite jazz artists to create an indelible soundscape.

“I’ve seen a lot of them play in the last couple of years and they’re incredible performers,” she says. “Artists like Brandee Younger and Makaya McCraven. And Shabaka Hutchings, Weedie Braimah with Chief Adjuah and Elena Pinderhughes.

“We also have a really beautiful and epic McCoy Tyner tune,” she said. “It’s a recording that was made I think in 2005 at a festival in Vienna. It’s a 12- minute tune and it’s epic and sweeping and moody. And even though McCoy Tyner is of a different era I feel like the music all sort of threads together to take us on a pretty incredible journey.”

She also decided to showcase other aspects of the company, namely lighting designer Steve Isom and costume designer Hannah Fisher to create a look to the show that was as memorable as the sounds of those jazz greats.

It isn’t a narrative dance piece, she says, but it’s an emotional one.

“Each dancer is almost like a jewel or a facet of being a beautiful human in this world.. We see beauty and magic in transformation. We see beauty in anger, in hope, in faith in humanity. Beauty as a weapon.

“These are just things that I’m thinking so I’m really curious to discuss with audience after even if it’s just feelings that people get rather than trying to follow a narrative.

“I really wanted to celebrate the women’s beauty and whimsy and really taking the audience on a journey through many worlds.”

Rare Beauties is on at the DJD Dance Centre through Jan. 25. For more information, go here.

For more about the High Performance Rodeo, go here.