Hofesh Shechter is my kind of choreographer: an extremely talented dance-maker who doesn't take himself too seriously. The Israeli-born, Batsheva-trained and UK-based artist, whose eponymous company first came to Vancouver in 2009 with Uprising and In Your Rooms (and about which I blogged here), was back at the Playhouse this weekend, once again at the invitation of DanceHouse. This time Shechter has brought his newest work, barbarians, a trilogy that might be said to be about the imaginative challenge--and also the necessary futility--of imposing order onto chaos.
That principle extends to the connections between the three sections, which were created separately and which, according to Shechter, unspool in reverse, with the still quiet core of the piece, a duet, only coming at the end. However, what we get at the start, in "the barbarians in love," is a riot of flood lights and follow spots, that sweep across the stage and out into the audience, momentarily blinding us before picking out and arresting in their white hot glow of surveillance six dancers. The dancers are also clad head to toe in white, like they have just escaped from a sanatorium, or a cult. And, indeed, over the course of this first section's thirty minutes, the four men and two women do seem to be moving in response to the computer-generated female voice-over, which intones god-like platitudes ("I am you, and you are me") before entering into a dialogue with the choreographer himself--who is, after all, another kind of unseen overlord in terms of dictating how his dancers should be moving. In this respect, the first section's concluding tableau, which sees the dancers, now completely naked, lined up downstage and slowly turning before us like specimens at an auction, certainly evokes ideas of a coldly clinical outside eye. Except in this case Shechter is at a loss as to how to explain his concept, beyond the fact that he is a 40 year-old man who had this idea to make something...
Which may be why, in the evening's second section, "tHE bAD," Shechter puts his dancers (now reduced by one man) in gold lame body suits. If the dancers in the first part looked like pod people just escaped from a sci-fi film, here they appear to have stepped out of an Andrew Lloyd Webber Broadway musical--not so far-fetched given that Shechter is currently in New York choreographing the revival of Fiddler on the Roof. What is consistent over both sections, however, is Shechter's distinctive mix of unison choreography with classical and vernacular dance vocabularies. At any given moment we have the dancers giving us different baroque formations and noble steps, or else breaking into Israeli folk dancing circles, and even throwing in the odd bit of krumping. What is consistent throughout is the amazing footwork of the dancers, who when shuffling across the stage in a riot of club grooves or descending into and rising from a plie in demi-point are nothing short of mesmerizing.
Finally, in the last section, "two completely different angles of the same fucking thing," we see a couple--the woman dressed in simple slacks and a blouse, the man, somewhat incongruously, in lederhosen--engaged in a simple two step. Eventually they come together in an awkward attempt at partnering that begins gently and playfully, but that gradually becomes more physical and even violent. If, extrapolating from Shechter's comments about the centrality of this section to the work as a whole, we take the duet to be one of the base-line structures of Western concert dance, then such juxtapositions are appropriate. For, as Walter Benjamin has written, "There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism."
P
Showing posts with label Dance House Vancouver. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dance House Vancouver. Show all posts
Sunday, November 15, 2015
Sunday, March 1, 2015
Compagnie Marie Chouinard at DanceHouse
When last the iconic Montreal-based choreographer Marie Chouinard came through town with her eponymous dance company--presenting a new work, The Golden Mean, commissioned by DanceHouse under the auspices of the 2010 Cultural Olympiad--I was not a happy camper. I was vexed at having been displaced from our usual seats in the front orchestra section of the Playhouse by the long ramp jutting into the audience that Chouinard had requested as part of her set. And the compensation of being relocated to premium seats onstage with the dancers hardly mitigated my displeasure; from there I could see up close just how underdeveloped was Chouinard's choreography and how overcooked her accompanying theatricality (which, among other things, involved the dancers donning Stephen Harper masks at one point).
Let's just say with DanceHouse's latest presentation of her work, Chouinard has redeemed herself, reaffirming her place in the pantheon of major dance artists in this country and internationally. The evening was made up of two of Chouinard's more recent pieces, each experimenting in its own way with the idea of the dance score. The first, Gymnopédies, is set to the famously atmospheric piano compositions of the same name by Erik Satie. Written in 3/4 time, each with a similar structure and theme, the three works subtly juxtapose dissonant melodies against the harmony, producing an achingly melancholic effect that has influenced ambient music up to the present day (including electronic composers like Moby, who samples Gymnopédies on his blockbuster album Play). Given that the title of Gymnopédies connotes images of nude dancing (which, to be sure, Chouinard plays upon), Satie's music would seem to be a natural source of inspiration for any choreographer. But Chouinard is not just any choreographer and part of the conceit of her own score to Gymnopédies is that she didn't just have her dancers learn a new set of movement phrases; each of them also had to learn to play Satie's music, which they take turns performing live at the grand piano positioned stage left.
That the touch and caress of piano keys is an act of kinesis as virtuosic as the most complex or gymnastic of dance moves is made clear at the start of Chouinard's piece. The lights come up on a clump of draped forms stage right. A lone woman clad in black enters from the wings and crosses to centre stage. She then sinks to the floor in a split, rocking back and forth with her pelvis as she alternately domes and flexes her extended feet. Rising from the floor, she then takes a seat at the piano (also draped in cloth) and without a concomitant stretching of her fingers she begins to play the first of Satie's compositions. As she bends her body over the keyboard, communing rhythmically with the piano in a way that gives new meaning to the idea of a dancer's musicality, we notice the draped forms stage right begin to move, fingers and hands and arms slowly emerging from openings at their tops. One by one the rest of Chouinard's company of dancers reveals themselves, each nude, like a newborn butterfly emerging from its chrysalis. In pairs, the dancers then slowly walk upstage, slipping between a crack in the curtain.
Following this opening our original pianist is relieved by another member of the company, who provides accompaniment to an energetic duet between one of the male dancers and the tallest of the female dancers, whose towering leg extensions and impossibly deep and wide pliés (a Chouinard trademark) are magnified all the more by her point shoes. However, Chouinard is not only (or even primarily) interested in a serious technical exploration of the links between musical and dance virtuosity. This becomes clear when a trio of female dancers comes out sporting clown noses and, via their comically unsyncopated poses and arm movements, the pathos of Satie's music turns to bathos. Indeed, buffoonery and burlesque are key elements of the piece, with couples forming and splitting and reforming, both along and across gender lines; the action spilling into the audience; not one but several false endings; and the live playing of the Satie score being usurped at certain points by recorded versions emanating from portable CD players.
I took the latter bit to be Chouinard's acknowledgement that Satie's music, as beautiful and haunting as it remains, has become something of a cultural cliche, in part via its endless recycling and re-citation (including, as mentioned above, by DJs like Moby). On the other hand, that the archive of any artistic form eventually becomes part of the repertoire of contemporary performance was also made clear by Chouinard's own multiple references to dance history; repeated scenes of solo and mutual masturbation (including, most memorably, on an electronic keyboard) can't help but evoke recollections of another great pairing of musical and dance scores, in this case Vaslav Nijinsky's scandalous short ballet L'après-midi d'un faune, choreographed to the symphonic poem of the same name by Claude Debussy.
Debussy's own work was based on a poem by Stéphane Mallarmé, so it is fitting that in the second work on last night's program, Henri Michaux: Mouvements, Chouinard adapts a work by another French poet. In particular, she takes inspiration from a book by Michaux in which a long poem that's all about motility (the "Mouvements" of both Michaux's and Chouinard's titles) is accompanied by 64 pages of India-ink drawings. Looking at these drawings, which take various biomorphic forms, Chouinard had a revelation: she had in her hands a complete dance score. Her task, then, was to create a catalogue of both stilled poses and travelling movements to accompany each of the drawings.
As the drawings are projected successively on an upstage screen, Chouinard's dancers take turns "figuring" with their bodies what we see on the page, their black clad silhouettes sometimes matching with uncanny precision and at other times only suggestively approximating the series of blots. As the images speed up and become more complex, the dancers form architectural duos or trios, various extended and moving limbs or stretched out bits of leotard evoking the multiplicity of Michaux's brushstrokes. Indeed, my favourite part of the piece is when the entire company performs one of the drawings in unison, the more animated and "dancey" the movement the more cinematic and montage-like the images. Indeed, the whole piece has the feel of a flip book of Rorschach drawings brought to stunning three-dimensional life.
Chouinard even takes into consideration the blank white space of Michaux's pages, with one of the dancers crawling at a certain point under the white Marley flooring to read out the central poem of the book, and with the whole piece culminating in a sped up and simultaneous reverse negative, if you will, of the slower and more methodical serial presentation of each of the drawings. I refer to the fact that at the end the harsh white light illuminating the stage cuts to black as, under a single focused strobe, the dancers, now stripped to their underwear, improvise movements based on what we've just seen.
Henri Michaux: Mouvements is a triumph of inter-artistic dialogue, and in a way that makes neither form subservient to the other, nor that seeks to produce an exact match between them. Indeed, Chouinard shows us the utter impossibility of such a task, as with the additional elements of time, space and audience co-presence, what we think we see and what we know we feel will always be pleasurably incommensurable.
P.
Let's just say with DanceHouse's latest presentation of her work, Chouinard has redeemed herself, reaffirming her place in the pantheon of major dance artists in this country and internationally. The evening was made up of two of Chouinard's more recent pieces, each experimenting in its own way with the idea of the dance score. The first, Gymnopédies, is set to the famously atmospheric piano compositions of the same name by Erik Satie. Written in 3/4 time, each with a similar structure and theme, the three works subtly juxtapose dissonant melodies against the harmony, producing an achingly melancholic effect that has influenced ambient music up to the present day (including electronic composers like Moby, who samples Gymnopédies on his blockbuster album Play). Given that the title of Gymnopédies connotes images of nude dancing (which, to be sure, Chouinard plays upon), Satie's music would seem to be a natural source of inspiration for any choreographer. But Chouinard is not just any choreographer and part of the conceit of her own score to Gymnopédies is that she didn't just have her dancers learn a new set of movement phrases; each of them also had to learn to play Satie's music, which they take turns performing live at the grand piano positioned stage left.
That the touch and caress of piano keys is an act of kinesis as virtuosic as the most complex or gymnastic of dance moves is made clear at the start of Chouinard's piece. The lights come up on a clump of draped forms stage right. A lone woman clad in black enters from the wings and crosses to centre stage. She then sinks to the floor in a split, rocking back and forth with her pelvis as she alternately domes and flexes her extended feet. Rising from the floor, she then takes a seat at the piano (also draped in cloth) and without a concomitant stretching of her fingers she begins to play the first of Satie's compositions. As she bends her body over the keyboard, communing rhythmically with the piano in a way that gives new meaning to the idea of a dancer's musicality, we notice the draped forms stage right begin to move, fingers and hands and arms slowly emerging from openings at their tops. One by one the rest of Chouinard's company of dancers reveals themselves, each nude, like a newborn butterfly emerging from its chrysalis. In pairs, the dancers then slowly walk upstage, slipping between a crack in the curtain.
Following this opening our original pianist is relieved by another member of the company, who provides accompaniment to an energetic duet between one of the male dancers and the tallest of the female dancers, whose towering leg extensions and impossibly deep and wide pliés (a Chouinard trademark) are magnified all the more by her point shoes. However, Chouinard is not only (or even primarily) interested in a serious technical exploration of the links between musical and dance virtuosity. This becomes clear when a trio of female dancers comes out sporting clown noses and, via their comically unsyncopated poses and arm movements, the pathos of Satie's music turns to bathos. Indeed, buffoonery and burlesque are key elements of the piece, with couples forming and splitting and reforming, both along and across gender lines; the action spilling into the audience; not one but several false endings; and the live playing of the Satie score being usurped at certain points by recorded versions emanating from portable CD players.
I took the latter bit to be Chouinard's acknowledgement that Satie's music, as beautiful and haunting as it remains, has become something of a cultural cliche, in part via its endless recycling and re-citation (including, as mentioned above, by DJs like Moby). On the other hand, that the archive of any artistic form eventually becomes part of the repertoire of contemporary performance was also made clear by Chouinard's own multiple references to dance history; repeated scenes of solo and mutual masturbation (including, most memorably, on an electronic keyboard) can't help but evoke recollections of another great pairing of musical and dance scores, in this case Vaslav Nijinsky's scandalous short ballet L'après-midi d'un faune, choreographed to the symphonic poem of the same name by Claude Debussy.
Debussy's own work was based on a poem by Stéphane Mallarmé, so it is fitting that in the second work on last night's program, Henri Michaux: Mouvements, Chouinard adapts a work by another French poet. In particular, she takes inspiration from a book by Michaux in which a long poem that's all about motility (the "Mouvements" of both Michaux's and Chouinard's titles) is accompanied by 64 pages of India-ink drawings. Looking at these drawings, which take various biomorphic forms, Chouinard had a revelation: she had in her hands a complete dance score. Her task, then, was to create a catalogue of both stilled poses and travelling movements to accompany each of the drawings.
As the drawings are projected successively on an upstage screen, Chouinard's dancers take turns "figuring" with their bodies what we see on the page, their black clad silhouettes sometimes matching with uncanny precision and at other times only suggestively approximating the series of blots. As the images speed up and become more complex, the dancers form architectural duos or trios, various extended and moving limbs or stretched out bits of leotard evoking the multiplicity of Michaux's brushstrokes. Indeed, my favourite part of the piece is when the entire company performs one of the drawings in unison, the more animated and "dancey" the movement the more cinematic and montage-like the images. Indeed, the whole piece has the feel of a flip book of Rorschach drawings brought to stunning three-dimensional life.
Chouinard even takes into consideration the blank white space of Michaux's pages, with one of the dancers crawling at a certain point under the white Marley flooring to read out the central poem of the book, and with the whole piece culminating in a sped up and simultaneous reverse negative, if you will, of the slower and more methodical serial presentation of each of the drawings. I refer to the fact that at the end the harsh white light illuminating the stage cuts to black as, under a single focused strobe, the dancers, now stripped to their underwear, improvise movements based on what we've just seen.
Henri Michaux: Mouvements is a triumph of inter-artistic dialogue, and in a way that makes neither form subservient to the other, nor that seeks to produce an exact match between them. Indeed, Chouinard shows us the utter impossibility of such a task, as with the additional elements of time, space and audience co-presence, what we think we see and what we know we feel will always be pleasurably incommensurable.
P.
Sunday, February 9, 2014
Grupo Corpo: A Little Bit of Galicia in Vancouver
Exiting the Playhouse theatre last night following Brazilian contemporary dance troupe Grupo Corpo's presentation of Ímã and Sem Mim, I asked DanceHouse co-founder Barb Clausen (who was on her way to lead a post-performance critical response with interested audience members) why the movement in both pieces reminded me so much of Irish and Scottish step-dancing. "Galicia," she said. The autonomous region in northwest Spain, with Portugal directly south, takes its name from the Celtic peoples who first settled north of the Duoro River. Their descendants would eventually migrate north to what we now refer to as Ireland, Scotland, and Wales; east to the Carpathian Mountains, between what is now Poland and modern Ukraine; and finally west to Latin America, including Brazil. In the process they took with them their distinct language, as well as their cultural traditions, which included various hybrids of the rhythmically vertical style of dancing on display last night, as well as the pipe music also featured prominently in both works' scores.
Following Grupo Corpo's last visit to Vancouver in 2010--which concluded with the intensely athletic, almost futuristic, and largely floor-oriented Breu--I wasn't expecting the program this time around to be composed of choreography so rooted in folkloric dance traditions. Not that choreographer Rodrigo Pederneiras is at all interest in "heritage" movement. Rather, he infuses both pieces with all manner of contemporary stylistic twists on classical partnering (as with the visually stunning sitting/crab-walk opening to Ímã), release technique, ballet steps (I couldn't stop watching the company members' complex footwork), and large-scale unison movement.
Tonally, the two pieces are a nice complement to each other. Last night's performance opened with Ímã, which was actually listed second on the program. It's the warmer and sunnier of the two works, not least as a result of the primary colours that make up Artistic Director and Set and Lighting Designer Paulo Pederneiras' LED projections, as well as the T-shirts worn by the female dancers. Sem mim is lusher, set as it is to an original score by Carlos Núñez and José Miguel Wisnik that is based on a seven-song cycle about the sea of Vigo. A mass of silvery mesh netting also hangs over the stage; it is lowered and raised at different points throughout the piece to convey images of clouds, mountains, and the sea. The unitards worn by the dancers are "tattooed" with different designs by Freusa Zechmeister, which serve both to individualize the performers when they are on stage and to create an additional mass swirling bodily scenography during the group sequences.
As for the company, not only is it perhaps the most gorgeous one is likely to ever encounter on a concert stage (those stereotypes about Brazilians are true!), but it is also among the most technically accomplished. I have often found it difficult, in watching dance, to see the actual physical manifestation of the expression "light on their feet." Last night I did, with the men's jumps in particular seeming to come about as much through the mere thought of levitation as through the physical effort to do so.
It was something to behold, as was the sheer size of the company crowding onto the stage for their bows at the end of each piece. It must cost Grupo Corpo a lot of money to travel with so many dancers. But we, in the audience, are certainly the richer for it.
P.
Following Grupo Corpo's last visit to Vancouver in 2010--which concluded with the intensely athletic, almost futuristic, and largely floor-oriented Breu--I wasn't expecting the program this time around to be composed of choreography so rooted in folkloric dance traditions. Not that choreographer Rodrigo Pederneiras is at all interest in "heritage" movement. Rather, he infuses both pieces with all manner of contemporary stylistic twists on classical partnering (as with the visually stunning sitting/crab-walk opening to Ímã), release technique, ballet steps (I couldn't stop watching the company members' complex footwork), and large-scale unison movement.
Tonally, the two pieces are a nice complement to each other. Last night's performance opened with Ímã, which was actually listed second on the program. It's the warmer and sunnier of the two works, not least as a result of the primary colours that make up Artistic Director and Set and Lighting Designer Paulo Pederneiras' LED projections, as well as the T-shirts worn by the female dancers. Sem mim is lusher, set as it is to an original score by Carlos Núñez and José Miguel Wisnik that is based on a seven-song cycle about the sea of Vigo. A mass of silvery mesh netting also hangs over the stage; it is lowered and raised at different points throughout the piece to convey images of clouds, mountains, and the sea. The unitards worn by the dancers are "tattooed" with different designs by Freusa Zechmeister, which serve both to individualize the performers when they are on stage and to create an additional mass swirling bodily scenography during the group sequences.
As for the company, not only is it perhaps the most gorgeous one is likely to ever encounter on a concert stage (those stereotypes about Brazilians are true!), but it is also among the most technically accomplished. I have often found it difficult, in watching dance, to see the actual physical manifestation of the expression "light on their feet." Last night I did, with the men's jumps in particular seeming to come about as much through the mere thought of levitation as through the physical effort to do so.
It was something to behold, as was the sheer size of the company crowding onto the stage for their bows at the end of each piece. It must cost Grupo Corpo a lot of money to travel with so many dancers. But we, in the audience, are certainly the richer for it.
P.
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
PuSh 2014: Usually Beauty Fails
I have a new dance crush. The fact that he also plays in a rock band only adds to his allure.
Dancer, choreographer, guitarist, singer, and conceptual raconteur Frédérick Gravel has brought his fist-pumping, foot-stomping multi-media pop extravaganza Usually Beauty Fails to the Fei and Milton Wong Theatre at SFU Woodward's as part of the PuSh Festival for three nights, in a co-presentation with DanceHouse and 149 Arts Society. Raw and intense, much like an underground rave let loose on a proscenium stage, the work is also punctuated by quieter moments that are at times achingly tender and, yes, very beautiful.
As audience members file to their seats, we hear a driving, though muffled bass beat. Two musicians fiddle with computers and mixers upstage. Meanwhile, the dancers (three women and three men, including Gravel) finish their warm-ups and begin massing together in a group downstage left. They start silently nodding and swaying to the music, all the while staring out at the audience--the cool club kids come to challenge all of us sedentary wallflowers. Uh-oh, I first thought--it's Jérôme Bel's The Show Must Go On all over again. But then the house lights go down and the music gets turned up and the dancers start shooting their bodies backwards, arms flying out horizontally, legs breaking at the knee as they drop first one limb and then another to the floor, just barely avoiding a pile-up of bodies upstage before marching purposefully downstage to start their backwards trajectories all over again. The sequence is then repeated stage right, almost like a kind of reverse moshing.
After this high-energy opening, the first of many surprises: a gorgeous duet between the tallest of the male dancers and the smallest of the women. Circling each other initially like wary teenagers, the couple comes together in a series of clinches and lifts and swooning head buts that somehow suggest just how much is at stake--emotionally and physically--in the type and length of each successive touch or embrace. The romantic ante is upped considerably by the love song that accompanies the dancers, the first of several indie-style ballads offered up throughout the evening in which Gravel turns down the volume and, as he puts it just before a subsequent downstage acoustic number, presents his ensemble in a more "vulnerable" light.
For the multi-talented Gravel doesn't just dance, play guitar and harmonica, and sing as part of this piece; he also tells us several highly self-reflexive stories, starting with what it means to present a work like this to a new audience (he likens the experience to worrying about how one's date will behave at a party) and later musing on the concept of time, and how it's more valuable than money because once it's spent--as, for example, at a show such as his--you can never get it back. In these moments, and in the solo he has choreographed for himself--in which he contorts his skinny, pigeon-toed legs into an array of spidery poses--Gravel presents us with an utterly charming persona, the nerdily hip (and hipless) artsy boy from high school who wins everyone over because his awkwardness manages to appear sincere and ironic all at once. At the same time, Gravel--who also at one point ruminates aloud on the possible meaning of the piece's title--is resisting, through various shifts in tone and the overall episodic structure of the work, our urge to make things cohere aesthetically. As that title in fact attests, his is an anti-aesthetic, one that defies representational categories and eschews the impulse towards critical judgement. How else to explain the virtuosic--and utterly compelling--mash-up of a Bach violin concerto and a corps de rock of swiveling pelvises in the middle of the piece?
Consider as well, in this respect, the use of nudity in Usually Beauty Fails. At first it is presented as full-on rock star provocation, as the dancers, strutting and gyrating to a particularly explosive number from the band, start peeling off items of clothing with wild abandon. But then the music cuts out and the dancers, exposed and looking sheepish, quickly cover up, as if they have been caught by their parents doing something especially embarrassing. When, later on, we are confronted with a much more explicit display of naked bodies, there is, crucially, no music: two dancers, one male and one female, face each other downstage. They matter-of-factly peel their pants and underwear down to their ankles and proceed, slowly and deliberately, to grope each other's genitals. The effect is the opposite of erotic; if anything, it is humorous and absurdly clinical.
Not everything in the evening is a success. The ending, in particular, felt a little scattered and diffuse. Announcing that it's time for things to get a bit more formal, Gravel, his dancers, and the other two musicians then change into suits and dresses. They bring out plastic champagne flutes and pour each other, the guys in the tech booth, and a few lucky audience members some bubbly rosé. And then, basically, they just loll about. Until Gravel and one of the other female dancers slowly hook up--or try to hook up, their slippery, faltering attempts to grab onto each other's arms and waists and find something akin to a waltz step reminding me of two drunken, lovelorn souls who've stayed too long at a party, or the last exhausted partners at a depression-era dance marathon, desperately trying to stay on their feet and in contact with one another in order to win the prize. I found the sequence--both its pathos and its duration--captivating. But then the remaining dancers also partner up and we get two more successive variations on the same sequence, this time with each of the female dancers leaping over and over again into their male partners' arms.
I would have preferred if things had ended with the first couple. But I also understand--and appreciate--what Gravel is doing in undermining my desire for aesthetic closure. Performance, like beauty, doesn't end; it just goes on and on until it stops.
Usually Beauty Fails continues through this Thursday; it's not to be missed.
P.
Dancer, choreographer, guitarist, singer, and conceptual raconteur Frédérick Gravel has brought his fist-pumping, foot-stomping multi-media pop extravaganza Usually Beauty Fails to the Fei and Milton Wong Theatre at SFU Woodward's as part of the PuSh Festival for three nights, in a co-presentation with DanceHouse and 149 Arts Society. Raw and intense, much like an underground rave let loose on a proscenium stage, the work is also punctuated by quieter moments that are at times achingly tender and, yes, very beautiful.
As audience members file to their seats, we hear a driving, though muffled bass beat. Two musicians fiddle with computers and mixers upstage. Meanwhile, the dancers (three women and three men, including Gravel) finish their warm-ups and begin massing together in a group downstage left. They start silently nodding and swaying to the music, all the while staring out at the audience--the cool club kids come to challenge all of us sedentary wallflowers. Uh-oh, I first thought--it's Jérôme Bel's The Show Must Go On all over again. But then the house lights go down and the music gets turned up and the dancers start shooting their bodies backwards, arms flying out horizontally, legs breaking at the knee as they drop first one limb and then another to the floor, just barely avoiding a pile-up of bodies upstage before marching purposefully downstage to start their backwards trajectories all over again. The sequence is then repeated stage right, almost like a kind of reverse moshing.
After this high-energy opening, the first of many surprises: a gorgeous duet between the tallest of the male dancers and the smallest of the women. Circling each other initially like wary teenagers, the couple comes together in a series of clinches and lifts and swooning head buts that somehow suggest just how much is at stake--emotionally and physically--in the type and length of each successive touch or embrace. The romantic ante is upped considerably by the love song that accompanies the dancers, the first of several indie-style ballads offered up throughout the evening in which Gravel turns down the volume and, as he puts it just before a subsequent downstage acoustic number, presents his ensemble in a more "vulnerable" light.
For the multi-talented Gravel doesn't just dance, play guitar and harmonica, and sing as part of this piece; he also tells us several highly self-reflexive stories, starting with what it means to present a work like this to a new audience (he likens the experience to worrying about how one's date will behave at a party) and later musing on the concept of time, and how it's more valuable than money because once it's spent--as, for example, at a show such as his--you can never get it back. In these moments, and in the solo he has choreographed for himself--in which he contorts his skinny, pigeon-toed legs into an array of spidery poses--Gravel presents us with an utterly charming persona, the nerdily hip (and hipless) artsy boy from high school who wins everyone over because his awkwardness manages to appear sincere and ironic all at once. At the same time, Gravel--who also at one point ruminates aloud on the possible meaning of the piece's title--is resisting, through various shifts in tone and the overall episodic structure of the work, our urge to make things cohere aesthetically. As that title in fact attests, his is an anti-aesthetic, one that defies representational categories and eschews the impulse towards critical judgement. How else to explain the virtuosic--and utterly compelling--mash-up of a Bach violin concerto and a corps de rock of swiveling pelvises in the middle of the piece?
Consider as well, in this respect, the use of nudity in Usually Beauty Fails. At first it is presented as full-on rock star provocation, as the dancers, strutting and gyrating to a particularly explosive number from the band, start peeling off items of clothing with wild abandon. But then the music cuts out and the dancers, exposed and looking sheepish, quickly cover up, as if they have been caught by their parents doing something especially embarrassing. When, later on, we are confronted with a much more explicit display of naked bodies, there is, crucially, no music: two dancers, one male and one female, face each other downstage. They matter-of-factly peel their pants and underwear down to their ankles and proceed, slowly and deliberately, to grope each other's genitals. The effect is the opposite of erotic; if anything, it is humorous and absurdly clinical.
Not everything in the evening is a success. The ending, in particular, felt a little scattered and diffuse. Announcing that it's time for things to get a bit more formal, Gravel, his dancers, and the other two musicians then change into suits and dresses. They bring out plastic champagne flutes and pour each other, the guys in the tech booth, and a few lucky audience members some bubbly rosé. And then, basically, they just loll about. Until Gravel and one of the other female dancers slowly hook up--or try to hook up, their slippery, faltering attempts to grab onto each other's arms and waists and find something akin to a waltz step reminding me of two drunken, lovelorn souls who've stayed too long at a party, or the last exhausted partners at a depression-era dance marathon, desperately trying to stay on their feet and in contact with one another in order to win the prize. I found the sequence--both its pathos and its duration--captivating. But then the remaining dancers also partner up and we get two more successive variations on the same sequence, this time with each of the female dancers leaping over and over again into their male partners' arms.
I would have preferred if things had ended with the first couple. But I also understand--and appreciate--what Gravel is doing in undermining my desire for aesthetic closure. Performance, like beauty, doesn't end; it just goes on and on until it stops.
Usually Beauty Fails continues through this Thursday; it's not to be missed.
P.
Sunday, September 29, 2013
All Over Underland
Deadlines everywhere, demanding my attention, so just a short note on the opening of DanceHouse's new season at the Vancouver Playhouse this weekend.
In his artist talk prior to last night's performance of Underland, Stephen Petronio talked about the formative influence of Trisha Brown, with whom he danced in the early eighties. Among other things, he said, Brown provided him with a model for successful artistic collaboration across disciplines. And while, as Petronio went on to note, his "full table" approach to choreography and scenography is very different from Brown's minimalist aesthetic, seeking out talented musical and design collaborators has been a trademark of Petronio's work since he established his own company in 1984.
Underland, for example, is set to the music of Nick Cave, and features costumes by Tara Subkoff, of Imitation of Christ fame, and video projections by Mike Daly. The cumulative effect is a Gesamkuntzwerk for our paranoid, post-9/11 age, bleak in tone, possessed of a raw, almost furious, energy that threatens to spill over into violence (to the self and to others), but also filled with small, achingly beautiful, moments of grace that are shattering in their combining of abjection with a kind of exaltation. Underland, as Petronio has conceived it, is a "place," materially submerged and mentally subconscious, signaled by the choreographer's own opening descent via a ladder into the stage space in the work's prologue, marking his progress with a pen (or is it a knife?) on the surface of his arm. What then follows plays out like a scratching at the wound that may have festered as a result, each subsequent sequence adding a tear or rent to the thin membrane that separates one world from another--something echoed in the deconstructed costumes by Subkoff.
But it is Petronio's whirling, complexly off-kilter, and gravity-defying choreography that is the driving engine of this piece. His dancers (all superb) throw themselves with such force into a signature horizontal arm extension, head toss and torso twist--and they travel with such speed across the stage while doing so--that one marvels at how fluidly they right themselves, bending into a deep plié or rising vertically on their toes before launching into the next impossible "tilt-a-whirl" sequence (coincidentally Cave's song "The Carny" yields some of the most jaw-dropping movement in this respect). Indeed, one of the rich pleasures of Underland is how seamlessly Petronio combines the classical and the contemporary in his choreography, with the partnering between Barrington Hinds and Natalie Mackessy to Cave's "Stagger Lee" a notable stand-out for its sheer physicality and the almost hostile toughness with which Mackessy throws herself into Hinds' lifts.
However, the work is not without tenderness, as when the quartet of Davalois Fearon (riveting throughout), Gino Grenek, Jaqlin Medlock, and Joshua Tuason enact a moving tableau vivant to "The Ship Song." The choreography here is more controlled and contained; it is about seeking out and maintaining our sense of connection--our touch--with another. The four dancers, even when momentarily separated, are in constant search of the hand, the limb, the lips, the bit of skin that marks not the boundary but the bridge between bodies.
It's another way of looking at the ladder Petronio descends at the top of the show (and, indeed, in Daly's video during this sequence we see the choreographer's on-screen avatar navigating a rope bridge). And it's definitely what was created with the audience at the end, a collective exhale and explosion of applause greeting this brilliant reach across different realms of artistic and sensory experience.
P.
In his artist talk prior to last night's performance of Underland, Stephen Petronio talked about the formative influence of Trisha Brown, with whom he danced in the early eighties. Among other things, he said, Brown provided him with a model for successful artistic collaboration across disciplines. And while, as Petronio went on to note, his "full table" approach to choreography and scenography is very different from Brown's minimalist aesthetic, seeking out talented musical and design collaborators has been a trademark of Petronio's work since he established his own company in 1984.
Underland, for example, is set to the music of Nick Cave, and features costumes by Tara Subkoff, of Imitation of Christ fame, and video projections by Mike Daly. The cumulative effect is a Gesamkuntzwerk for our paranoid, post-9/11 age, bleak in tone, possessed of a raw, almost furious, energy that threatens to spill over into violence (to the self and to others), but also filled with small, achingly beautiful, moments of grace that are shattering in their combining of abjection with a kind of exaltation. Underland, as Petronio has conceived it, is a "place," materially submerged and mentally subconscious, signaled by the choreographer's own opening descent via a ladder into the stage space in the work's prologue, marking his progress with a pen (or is it a knife?) on the surface of his arm. What then follows plays out like a scratching at the wound that may have festered as a result, each subsequent sequence adding a tear or rent to the thin membrane that separates one world from another--something echoed in the deconstructed costumes by Subkoff.
But it is Petronio's whirling, complexly off-kilter, and gravity-defying choreography that is the driving engine of this piece. His dancers (all superb) throw themselves with such force into a signature horizontal arm extension, head toss and torso twist--and they travel with such speed across the stage while doing so--that one marvels at how fluidly they right themselves, bending into a deep plié or rising vertically on their toes before launching into the next impossible "tilt-a-whirl" sequence (coincidentally Cave's song "The Carny" yields some of the most jaw-dropping movement in this respect). Indeed, one of the rich pleasures of Underland is how seamlessly Petronio combines the classical and the contemporary in his choreography, with the partnering between Barrington Hinds and Natalie Mackessy to Cave's "Stagger Lee" a notable stand-out for its sheer physicality and the almost hostile toughness with which Mackessy throws herself into Hinds' lifts.
However, the work is not without tenderness, as when the quartet of Davalois Fearon (riveting throughout), Gino Grenek, Jaqlin Medlock, and Joshua Tuason enact a moving tableau vivant to "The Ship Song." The choreography here is more controlled and contained; it is about seeking out and maintaining our sense of connection--our touch--with another. The four dancers, even when momentarily separated, are in constant search of the hand, the limb, the lips, the bit of skin that marks not the boundary but the bridge between bodies.
It's another way of looking at the ladder Petronio descends at the top of the show (and, indeed, in Daly's video during this sequence we see the choreographer's on-screen avatar navigating a rope bridge). And it's definitely what was created with the audience at the end, a collective exhale and explosion of applause greeting this brilliant reach across different realms of artistic and sensory experience.
P.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Playing Catch-Up
It’s been a while since my last post—no doubt this will continue to be one of the perils of trying to maintain this blog while in full-on teaching mode and, as at present, also trying to juggle home renovations.
A lot has happened in that time, from Mayor Gregor’s announcement yesterday of Vancouver’s rebranding as the Silicone Valley of the new Green Economy to the arrest of Roman Polanski. Rather than trying to summarize it all, let me instead draw people’s attention to one important bit of political news, and two favourite returning cultural events in Vancouver.
The political news concerns the public hearings currently being conducted across the province by the Finance Committee of the BC government. These hearings were, of course, announced with very little notice, and the first of them, held this past Monday at the Wosk Centre for Dialogue here in Vancouver, left members of the arts community scrambling to make their voices heard in all their fulsomeness and all their fury. (I’m told representatives accomplished both tasks admirably.) I reprint the schedule for the remaining hearings below, and I urge concerned citizens in relevant communities to attend and make their own voices heard—and not just about the dreaded HST! If you are unable to make one of the meetings (as in my case), you can also fill out an on-line survey, or make a written, video, or audio submission. Here is the link to do so: https://www.leg.bc.ca/budgetconsultations/index.htm.
The deadline for public input is October 23, 2009. There is still time, before the government finalizes its September budget update, to get the Liberals to reconsider their cuts to the arts. I urge all who can to tell Campbell, Krueger, Hansen and their cronies why culture matters. Again, here is the schedule for the remaining public hearings:
Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services
Time: 8:30 am to 12:00 pm
Date: Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Place: Douglas Fir Committee Room 226, Parliament Buildings, Victoria, British Columbia
Agenda: Public hearing
Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services
Time: 9:00 am to 1:00 pm
Date: Friday, October 09, 2009
Place: Community Futures Strathcona, #200-580 Duncan Ave, Courtenay, British Columbia
Agenda: Videoconference public hearing
Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services
Time: 9:00 am to 1:00 pm
Date: Friday, October 09, 2009
Place: Community Futures East Kootenay, 110A Slater Road NW, Cranbrook, British Columbia
Agenda: Videoconference public hearing
Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services
Time: 9: 00 am to 1:00 pm
Date: Friday, October 09, 2009
Place: Commumity Futures Peace Laird, 904-102 A Ave, Dawson Creek, British Columbia
Agenda: Videoconference public hearing
Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services
Time: 9:00 am to 12:00 pm
Date: Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Place: Summit Room, Hudson Bay Lodge, 3251 E. Highway 16, Smithers, British Columbia
Agenda: Public hearing
Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services
Time: 4:00 pm to 7:00 pm
Date: Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Place: Skylight Ballroom, Ramada Hotel, 444 George Street, Prince George, British Colimbia
Agenda: Public hearing
Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services
Time: 9:00 am to 12:00 pm
Date: Thursday, October 15, 2009
Place: Somerset Room, South Thompson Inn & Conference Centre, 3438 Shuswap Road, Kamloops, British Columbia
Agenda: Public hearing
Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services
Time: 4:00 pm to 8:00 pm
Date: Thursday, October 15, 2009
Place: Thompson/Shuswap Room, Woodfire Conference Centre at the Best Western Inn, 2400 Highway 97 North, Kelowna, British Columbia
Agenda: Public hearing
Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services
Time: 9:00 am to 6:00 pm
Date: Friday, October 16, 2009
Place: Guildford B, Sheraton Vancouver Guildford Hotel, 15269 104th Avenue, Surrey, British Columbia
Agenda: Public hearing
Now on to some of the remaining fruits of arts and culture in this province. It’s the beginning of October (where did the last month go?), and so that means that hot on the heels of the Fringe the Vancouver International Film Festival is underway (as of yesterday, in fact). I haven’t yet had a chance to peruse the program in any depth, but my money so far is on Portuguese director João Pedro Rodrigues’s To Die Like a Man, which follows veteran Lisbon trans performer Tonia as she deals with younger competition, a petulant boyfriend, and her estranged son. The festival runs until October 16th.
Finally, DanceHouse, as part of its 2009-10 international dance series at the Playhouse (to which Richard and I have bought season passes, and which begins this November with the Hofesh Shechter Company) is bringing back its very popular "Speaking of Dance" series at the Vancouver Public Library. The talks are Tuesdays, from 7:30-9pm, in the Alice MacKay Room, on the lower level of the VPL, 350 West Georgia Street. The line-up of speakers is as follows:
October 13, 2009
Speakers
> Kaija Pepper, Dance Critic & Author
> Janet Smith, Dance Critic & Arts Editor, Georgia Straight
November 17, 2009
Speakers
> Santa Aloi, Professor Emerita, School for the Contemporary Arts, SFU
> Claire French, Independent Choreographer & Dance Teacher
January 19, 2010
Speakers
> Martha Carter, Director & Choreographer, marta marta HoP
> Emily Molnar, Interim Artistic Director, Ballet BC
April 6, 2010
Speakers
> Day Helesic, Co-Artistic Producer & Choreographer, MovEnt
> Rob Kitsos, Assistant Professor, School for the Contemporary Arts, SFU
That’s it for now. More news soon.
P.
A lot has happened in that time, from Mayor Gregor’s announcement yesterday of Vancouver’s rebranding as the Silicone Valley of the new Green Economy to the arrest of Roman Polanski. Rather than trying to summarize it all, let me instead draw people’s attention to one important bit of political news, and two favourite returning cultural events in Vancouver.
The political news concerns the public hearings currently being conducted across the province by the Finance Committee of the BC government. These hearings were, of course, announced with very little notice, and the first of them, held this past Monday at the Wosk Centre for Dialogue here in Vancouver, left members of the arts community scrambling to make their voices heard in all their fulsomeness and all their fury. (I’m told representatives accomplished both tasks admirably.) I reprint the schedule for the remaining hearings below, and I urge concerned citizens in relevant communities to attend and make their own voices heard—and not just about the dreaded HST! If you are unable to make one of the meetings (as in my case), you can also fill out an on-line survey, or make a written, video, or audio submission. Here is the link to do so: https://www.leg.bc.ca/budgetconsultations/index.htm.
The deadline for public input is October 23, 2009. There is still time, before the government finalizes its September budget update, to get the Liberals to reconsider their cuts to the arts. I urge all who can to tell Campbell, Krueger, Hansen and their cronies why culture matters. Again, here is the schedule for the remaining public hearings:
Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services
Time: 8:30 am to 12:00 pm
Date: Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Place: Douglas Fir Committee Room 226, Parliament Buildings, Victoria, British Columbia
Agenda: Public hearing
Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services
Time: 9:00 am to 1:00 pm
Date: Friday, October 09, 2009
Place: Community Futures Strathcona, #200-580 Duncan Ave, Courtenay, British Columbia
Agenda: Videoconference public hearing
Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services
Time: 9:00 am to 1:00 pm
Date: Friday, October 09, 2009
Place: Community Futures East Kootenay, 110A Slater Road NW, Cranbrook, British Columbia
Agenda: Videoconference public hearing
Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services
Time: 9: 00 am to 1:00 pm
Date: Friday, October 09, 2009
Place: Commumity Futures Peace Laird, 904-102 A Ave, Dawson Creek, British Columbia
Agenda: Videoconference public hearing
Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services
Time: 9:00 am to 12:00 pm
Date: Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Place: Summit Room, Hudson Bay Lodge, 3251 E. Highway 16, Smithers, British Columbia
Agenda: Public hearing
Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services
Time: 4:00 pm to 7:00 pm
Date: Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Place: Skylight Ballroom, Ramada Hotel, 444 George Street, Prince George, British Colimbia
Agenda: Public hearing
Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services
Time: 9:00 am to 12:00 pm
Date: Thursday, October 15, 2009
Place: Somerset Room, South Thompson Inn & Conference Centre, 3438 Shuswap Road, Kamloops, British Columbia
Agenda: Public hearing
Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services
Time: 4:00 pm to 8:00 pm
Date: Thursday, October 15, 2009
Place: Thompson/Shuswap Room, Woodfire Conference Centre at the Best Western Inn, 2400 Highway 97 North, Kelowna, British Columbia
Agenda: Public hearing
Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services
Time: 9:00 am to 6:00 pm
Date: Friday, October 16, 2009
Place: Guildford B, Sheraton Vancouver Guildford Hotel, 15269 104th Avenue, Surrey, British Columbia
Agenda: Public hearing
Now on to some of the remaining fruits of arts and culture in this province. It’s the beginning of October (where did the last month go?), and so that means that hot on the heels of the Fringe the Vancouver International Film Festival is underway (as of yesterday, in fact). I haven’t yet had a chance to peruse the program in any depth, but my money so far is on Portuguese director João Pedro Rodrigues’s To Die Like a Man, which follows veteran Lisbon trans performer Tonia as she deals with younger competition, a petulant boyfriend, and her estranged son. The festival runs until October 16th.
Finally, DanceHouse, as part of its 2009-10 international dance series at the Playhouse (to which Richard and I have bought season passes, and which begins this November with the Hofesh Shechter Company) is bringing back its very popular "Speaking of Dance" series at the Vancouver Public Library. The talks are Tuesdays, from 7:30-9pm, in the Alice MacKay Room, on the lower level of the VPL, 350 West Georgia Street. The line-up of speakers is as follows:
October 13, 2009
Speakers
> Kaija Pepper, Dance Critic & Author
> Janet Smith, Dance Critic & Arts Editor, Georgia Straight
November 17, 2009
Speakers
> Santa Aloi, Professor Emerita, School for the Contemporary Arts, SFU
> Claire French, Independent Choreographer & Dance Teacher
January 19, 2010
Speakers
> Martha Carter, Director & Choreographer, marta marta HoP
> Emily Molnar, Interim Artistic Director, Ballet BC
April 6, 2010
Speakers
> Day Helesic, Co-Artistic Producer & Choreographer, MovEnt
> Rob Kitsos, Assistant Professor, School for the Contemporary Arts, SFU
That’s it for now. More news soon.
P.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Dancing Through the End of Things
As promised, some notes on three dance shows I recently attended in Vancouver:
1. EARTH = home, Judith Marcuse Projects, Scotiabank Dance Centre, 23 April 2009
The final installment in Marcuse’s trilogy of participatory dance theatre pieces exploring young people’s responses to various social issues (previous pieces, ICE: beyond cool and FIRE…where there’s smoke, tackled teen suicide and violence, respectively), EARTH = home is a fable about the environment and the difficulties of changing human behaviour. Conceived over three years through national and international workshops with young people aged 15 to 25, the story concerns a group of strangers who suddenly find themselves trapped in an unnamed locale by a mysterious force field. At the top of the show, we are introduced in turn to a young couple (Molly Johnson and Joe Danny Aurélien), a mother and father and their young daughter (Marvin Vergara, Lina Nykwist, and Kara Nolte), two sisters (Kathryn Crawford and Meredith Kalaman), and two hip single dudes (Alexei Geronimo and David Cox). Even at this early stage, before the unsuspecting group’s situation turns dire, we are made aware of the social impediments to even the most basic aspects of human interaction and the sharing of public space, as the various characters stake out discrete territories in part through their different dance styles (ballet, contemporary, jazz, hip hop, tap, etc.). Only Nolte’s young Lola, in her naïveté, seems willing to mix things up (much to the dismay and worry of her parents), skipping eagerly from one person to the next and basically asking to play.
The fourth and final presentation of Barb Clausen and Jim Smith’s inaugural DanceHouse series, which aims to bring the best large-scale contemporary dance from around the world to Vancouver audiences (see my pervious post on Batsheva), featured Chicago’s acclaimed Hubbard Street Dance Company. The company has been under the artistic direction of Jim Vincent for the past nine years, and in addition to performing his own works, the company regularly commissions new work from some of the most innovative international choreographers, including Batsheva’s Ohad Naharin, William Forsythe, Nederlands Dans Theater’s Jirí Kylián (for whom Vincent danced for many years), the Spanish National Dance Company’s Nacho Duato (with whom Vincent has also collaborated), Marguerite Donlon, and many others.
Finally, on Saturday evening I attended EDAM Dance’s mixed program, Repose, at the Western Front. I was there primarily to see my student, Alana Gerecke, in EDAM Artistic Director Peter Bingham’s newest contact improv creation, Slingshot. It was a fitting conclusion to the week, as the piece strips things down to the bare essentials: just four dancers and their locomotive relationships with each other, and with the floor. Even the blackout curtains on the west wall, normally closed to block out the windows behind, were thrown open to let the last rays of evening light into the studio. And the music is almost an afterthought, an extremely slowed down acoustic version of Leonard Cohen’s “Bird on a Wire” that fades in and out; otherwise it’s just the sounds of the dancers’ feet and bodies meeting the floor, and the exertion of their breathing.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Going Gaga for Batsheva
This past Saturday Richard and I were back at the Vancouver Playhouse, in the exact same row we sat for Relâche. This time, however, we were there to see Tel Aviv’s Batsheva Dance Company perform Deca Dance, a program of reconstructed excerpts from works created by Artistic Director Ohad Naharin between 1990 and 2008.
Batsheva, founded in 1964 by Martha Graham and the Baroness Batsheva de Rothschild (from whom the company takes its name), is routinely cited as one of the most exciting and innovative contemporary dance companies in the world. And Naharin, who combines a sensuous musicality with a desire, above all, to communicate through his art the pleasure and joy in movement, has become one of the world’s most sought-after choreographers. He is also famous for inventing, and making a staple of Batsheva’s daily training method, GAGA, a movement release technique aimed at maximizing effort and the experience of the moment, and minimizing the stakes in what that effort and experience looks like or results in (hence the lack of mirrors in Batsheva’s rehearsal studios). GAGA classes are now taught regularly to non-dancers in Tel Aviv, and have been similarly exported around the world. Although the word is apparently meaningless, a nonsense expression invented by members of the company to describe Naharin’s improvisational and associative movement language, I have discovered that it also refers to an Israeli folk version of dodge ball that is frequently played at Jewish summer camps around the world.
Certainly Naharin draws inspiration from Israeli folk dancing traditions (he grew up on a kibbutz, where group dancing was a regular and cherished activity), and one of the most amazing things for me on Saturday was to see how he corralled his large ensemble of 24 dancers into precisely executed chain reaction movements through music. This was particularly true in the opening piece, which began with the dancers, dressed in the black suits and wide-brimmed hats of Hassidim, slumped in chairs arranged in a semi-circle across the stage. As the anthemic folk song playing on the sound system gained in force, the dancers flung themselves up off their chairs one by one from stage left to stage right, crashing briefly to the floor before bouncing back up to do some amazing sitting choreography on their chairs, and finally leaping to their feat to join in the song’s chorus. Except to this accumulative group movement Naharin also included some telling variations: one dancer on the end who would or could not pull himself up off the floor; another who at a certain moment broke the chain by leaping up onto his chair. It was a rousing way to begin, and had me completely captivated and enthralled from the get-go. The following link contains a sample of this piece, along with other excerpts from the mixed program, not all of which were performed in Vancouver.
Actually, most of the audience was mesmerized even before the official performance had begun. This was because our performance of Deca Dance included a bonus curtain-raiser solo by one of the male members of the ensemble, who improvised various steps and interacted charmingly with various members of the audience as the house was filling up and people were finding their seats. For him it might have just been an exhibitionary version of his normal backstage warm-up, but for us it was a delightful introduction to Batsheva’s movement vocabulary.
And to their penchant for audience interaction! For midway through one of the dances on the program (I am unable to refer to the excerpts by name, for while their titles are provided in the program, an asterisk also tells us that they do not appear in the order in which they are listed), members of the company suddenly jump down from the stage and each pick out a partner from the audience. What follows is a ten-minute feast of dance abandon, in which the lucky audience members are seamlessly incorporated into the work on stage, at once improvising singly to the tango movements of their respective Batsheva partners and then coming together as a group in a chorus line of random steps and shimmies. All those chosen willingly and gamely participated—especially one brave and talented woman who was rewarded with an extra slow dance with her male partner after the others had left the stage—and the joy they expressed in moving on stage was completely unself-conscious and totally infectious.
Mixed in with the overt theatricality of the larger ensemble pieces, there were also sparer works—most created for the women in the company—that emphasized more textured movement and repeated compositional forms and sequencing. This was especially true in a duet choreographed to an unusual arrangement of Ravel’s Bolero, as well as in a longer excerpt danced to some interesting post-feminist spoken word poetry.
All in all a most enjoyable evening—although one not without its share of mild controversy. As a leading cultural export from Israel, Batsheva’s current tour of North America has been targeted by protesters angry over Israel’s invasion and occupation of Gaza and calling for a boycott of anything related to the country until there is an end to a further expansion of settlements and a lasting two-state solution with Palestinians is reached. Similar protests had been called for in Vancouver, an idea that divided many in the dance community, and prompting many to anticipate some angry exchanges at the entrance to the Playhouse during Batsheva’s dates here. In the end, no protesters were in sight on the Saturday.
Which I was glad to see. Boycotting arts and cultural groups, often the most financially vulnerable and the most critically political organizations in any country or regime, does little to advance a cause. At least not in the way, say, as targeting Shell for its investments in Apartheid South Africa. Were we to stop reading Nadine Gordimer or listening to Miriam Makeba during the same era? My life would be greatly impoverished, politically and culturally, if I couldn’t watch the films of Eytan Fox, who has made some of the most affecting cinema on the Israeli/Palestinian situation, often complicating questions of religion and ethnicity with added issues of sexuality.
In fact, as with the work of Fox, I would argue that the active promotion and dissemination of art can actually do more to engage people politically than any mass boycott of cultural products or industries. Certainly in the wake of the most recent Israeli elections, in which the hawkish Netanyahu may have formed a temporary—and tenuous—coalition of convenience with the ultra-right Lieberman but in which he likewise needs the active support of Livni to survive (especially given the new government in the US), Batsheva’s visit gave me much to think about in terms of the history of the embattled Middle East and what might be done to secure its more peaceful future.
Kudos, then, to Dance House, Vancouver’s newest contemporary dance production series, for bringing this amazing company to the city for the first time (and to the Chutzpah Festival and the 2010 Cultural Olympiad for partnering with them). And to making such splendid use of the Playhouse as a dance venue. I look forward to visiting again in April to see Hubbard Street Dance.
P.
Batsheva, founded in 1964 by Martha Graham and the Baroness Batsheva de Rothschild (from whom the company takes its name), is routinely cited as one of the most exciting and innovative contemporary dance companies in the world. And Naharin, who combines a sensuous musicality with a desire, above all, to communicate through his art the pleasure and joy in movement, has become one of the world’s most sought-after choreographers. He is also famous for inventing, and making a staple of Batsheva’s daily training method, GAGA, a movement release technique aimed at maximizing effort and the experience of the moment, and minimizing the stakes in what that effort and experience looks like or results in (hence the lack of mirrors in Batsheva’s rehearsal studios). GAGA classes are now taught regularly to non-dancers in Tel Aviv, and have been similarly exported around the world. Although the word is apparently meaningless, a nonsense expression invented by members of the company to describe Naharin’s improvisational and associative movement language, I have discovered that it also refers to an Israeli folk version of dodge ball that is frequently played at Jewish summer camps around the world.
Certainly Naharin draws inspiration from Israeli folk dancing traditions (he grew up on a kibbutz, where group dancing was a regular and cherished activity), and one of the most amazing things for me on Saturday was to see how he corralled his large ensemble of 24 dancers into precisely executed chain reaction movements through music. This was particularly true in the opening piece, which began with the dancers, dressed in the black suits and wide-brimmed hats of Hassidim, slumped in chairs arranged in a semi-circle across the stage. As the anthemic folk song playing on the sound system gained in force, the dancers flung themselves up off their chairs one by one from stage left to stage right, crashing briefly to the floor before bouncing back up to do some amazing sitting choreography on their chairs, and finally leaping to their feat to join in the song’s chorus. Except to this accumulative group movement Naharin also included some telling variations: one dancer on the end who would or could not pull himself up off the floor; another who at a certain moment broke the chain by leaping up onto his chair. It was a rousing way to begin, and had me completely captivated and enthralled from the get-go. The following link contains a sample of this piece, along with other excerpts from the mixed program, not all of which were performed in Vancouver.
Actually, most of the audience was mesmerized even before the official performance had begun. This was because our performance of Deca Dance included a bonus curtain-raiser solo by one of the male members of the ensemble, who improvised various steps and interacted charmingly with various members of the audience as the house was filling up and people were finding their seats. For him it might have just been an exhibitionary version of his normal backstage warm-up, but for us it was a delightful introduction to Batsheva’s movement vocabulary.
And to their penchant for audience interaction! For midway through one of the dances on the program (I am unable to refer to the excerpts by name, for while their titles are provided in the program, an asterisk also tells us that they do not appear in the order in which they are listed), members of the company suddenly jump down from the stage and each pick out a partner from the audience. What follows is a ten-minute feast of dance abandon, in which the lucky audience members are seamlessly incorporated into the work on stage, at once improvising singly to the tango movements of their respective Batsheva partners and then coming together as a group in a chorus line of random steps and shimmies. All those chosen willingly and gamely participated—especially one brave and talented woman who was rewarded with an extra slow dance with her male partner after the others had left the stage—and the joy they expressed in moving on stage was completely unself-conscious and totally infectious.
Mixed in with the overt theatricality of the larger ensemble pieces, there were also sparer works—most created for the women in the company—that emphasized more textured movement and repeated compositional forms and sequencing. This was especially true in a duet choreographed to an unusual arrangement of Ravel’s Bolero, as well as in a longer excerpt danced to some interesting post-feminist spoken word poetry.
All in all a most enjoyable evening—although one not without its share of mild controversy. As a leading cultural export from Israel, Batsheva’s current tour of North America has been targeted by protesters angry over Israel’s invasion and occupation of Gaza and calling for a boycott of anything related to the country until there is an end to a further expansion of settlements and a lasting two-state solution with Palestinians is reached. Similar protests had been called for in Vancouver, an idea that divided many in the dance community, and prompting many to anticipate some angry exchanges at the entrance to the Playhouse during Batsheva’s dates here. In the end, no protesters were in sight on the Saturday.
Which I was glad to see. Boycotting arts and cultural groups, often the most financially vulnerable and the most critically political organizations in any country or regime, does little to advance a cause. At least not in the way, say, as targeting Shell for its investments in Apartheid South Africa. Were we to stop reading Nadine Gordimer or listening to Miriam Makeba during the same era? My life would be greatly impoverished, politically and culturally, if I couldn’t watch the films of Eytan Fox, who has made some of the most affecting cinema on the Israeli/Palestinian situation, often complicating questions of religion and ethnicity with added issues of sexuality.
In fact, as with the work of Fox, I would argue that the active promotion and dissemination of art can actually do more to engage people politically than any mass boycott of cultural products or industries. Certainly in the wake of the most recent Israeli elections, in which the hawkish Netanyahu may have formed a temporary—and tenuous—coalition of convenience with the ultra-right Lieberman but in which he likewise needs the active support of Livni to survive (especially given the new government in the US), Batsheva’s visit gave me much to think about in terms of the history of the embattled Middle East and what might be done to secure its more peaceful future.
Kudos, then, to Dance House, Vancouver’s newest contemporary dance production series, for bringing this amazing company to the city for the first time (and to the Chutzpah Festival and the 2010 Cultural Olympiad for partnering with them). And to making such splendid use of the Playhouse as a dance venue. I look forward to visiting again in April to see Hubbard Street Dance.
P.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
