Joe Ink's 4OUR at The Dance Centre

The newest evening-length work by Joe Ink Artistic Director Joe Laughlin is a quartet called 4OUR, created in collaboration with dancers Gioconda Barbuto, Heather Dotto, and Kevin Tookey--and featuring the return to the stage of Laughlin himself after many years' absence. It is not only for this reason that the piece's run at the Dance Centre, which concluded last night, sold out. Laughlin is a beloved professional and community dance presence in Vancouver, and his cross-disciplinary movement work (he has choreographed for television, film, and the theatre) always features a mix of complex physicality and engaging wit. Then, too, the other dancers also have their local followings: Dotto and Tookey have both worked with Josh Beamish as members of MOVE: the company; and Barbuto, a Toronto native, created a buzz most recently in Vancouver with her contribution of the explosive immix to Ballet BC's repertoire in 2014 (and about which I wrote here).

As Laughlin notes in his program message, 4OUR emerged out of the coincidence of his improvising with Barbuto in the studio while working simultaneously with Dotto and Tookey on a separate composition. Bringing the group together, Laughlin noticed an instant chemistry, one that telegraphed kinetically precisely as a result of--rather than in spite of--the differences in the dancers' ages and movement styles. Indeed, while 4OUR reads in part as an elegy to the aging dancer's body (the musical score is heavy on Bach), it resists mournfulness in favour of a forward looking emotional clarity: what is being showcased here in the various pairings of older and younger dancers, with their distinct training and performance careers, is a continuity rather than an interruption or surcease of embodied knowledge.

Thus, soon after the four dancers enter from upstage, improvising in a horizontal line a series of contrapuntal movement phrases as they gradually move downstage, they break off into pairs: Barbuto with Dotto; and Laughlin with Tookey. Again, the physical differences in their bodies and ways of moving--Barbuto and Laughlin are shorter and their steps more controlled and precise; Dotto and Tookey are both long-limbed and their frequent directional shifts and weight and height transfers appear looser and more fluid--are anything but distracting. Indeed, one of the fascinating things to watch emerge over the course of the hour-long piece is just how symbiotically the dancers adapt to each others' spatial co-presence on stage. This reaches its peak for me in a moving duet between Barbuto and Tookey that begins with Barbuto, clad in one of the many white tulle dresses/aprons/shifts scattered about the mise-en-scène, undulating her arms and torso atop a wooden box (and underneath another of the white bits of cloth, here functioning as a fancy headdress, or maybe a lampshade); next to her, Tookey begins a game of chicken with what appears to be a ribbed sculpture (it could be a miniature whale skeleton, or the frame of a baby's bassinet, or a hockey mask) hanging from a pair of wires. He sets this object in motion like a pendulum and then ducks in and out of its way as he edges ever closer to Barbuto. Eventually, Tookey will in fact wear this article as a mask, its placement around his head and neck sending him thrashing about the floor until Barbuto calms him with her soothing maternal energy.

By contrast, the duet between Dotto and Laughlin that follows this sequence felt to me to be too gimmicky. Styled as a silent movie spoof entitled "The Chambermaid and the Bellhop"--complete with spot-on projections by Eric Chad--the movement accurately captured that sped-up, physically staccato quality of early cinematic burlesque (at one point Dotto spins Laughlin around like a top); however, the tone felt completely at odds with what we had just seen. And also with what followed: a coda that begins with Tookey launching his body into space via a series of baseball and/or cricket throws. This movement language then gets launched successively into each of the other dancers' bodies, culminating in a solo by Barbuto under a starry and snowy sky (the incredibly effective lighting design is by the always impressive James Proudfoot).

Here we are observing a twilight of movement that signals anything but a decline or the dimming of possible horizons. Like those lobs by Tookey that began this sequence, Barbuto is pitching her body--and by proxy those of her collaborators--forward into an as yet partially obscured and uncertain future, trusting that we will be there to catch her.

P.

Dance in Vancouver Programs 1 and 2

The 2013 Dance in Vancouver Biennial ended last night at the Dance Centre with a reprise of this year's mainstage programs 1 and 2--only in reverse order from how they played Wednesday evening.

Leading off the 7 pm program was A Crazy Kind of Hope, conceived and directed by Sarah Chase, of Astrid Dance, in collaboration with Toronto-based performer Andrea Nann, Artistic Director of Dreamwalker Dance. Excerpted from a longer work-in-progress, the piece begins with Nann standing on a bench upstage right, looping her arms in a series of graceful arcs as she begins to tell us a story of the Chinatown origins of her Uncle Wayne's carp pond on Hornby Island. This conceit of matching a series of repeated gestures to a gradually unfolding narrative continues with Nann's description of a subsequent trip to Tofino with her husband and daughter, and finally culminates in a stunning loop of ninety-nine arm waves (11 circuits of 9 gestures each) in which Nann brings together the spirit of her daughter, who died very young, with the brother she never knew. The piece unfolds like a beautiful mathematical equation, our delight and wonder increasing as, through the accumulation of repeated gestures, we start to recognize the work's patterns.

Next up was Vancouver stalwart Joe Laughlin's Left. In this iconic work a male dancer (Kevin Tookey) in Elizabethan ruff and cuffs is at once seduced by and himself attempts to woo a teacup, positioned centre stage. And we in turn are seduced not just by Laughlin's precise choreography, as Tookey steps daintily around and gingerly balances with the focalizing piece of china, but also by James Proudfoot's amazing lighting, which expands and contracts the spotlight around (and at one point within) the teacup to dizzying effect.

Following the intermission, Wen Wei Dance Artistic Director Wen Wei Wang unveiled a work in progress called Made in China, co-created and performed with Gao Yanjinzi, Artistic Director of Beijing Modern Dance Company (and seven months pregnant!), Qui Xia He, of the Vancouver-based Silk Road Music ensemble, and the multi-talented video and sound artist (and SFU Contemporary Arts alum) Sammy Chien. The piece uses movement, music, spoken word, and projections to explore the collaborators' common cultural and different personal relationships with China. Seeing Wang, in particular, interact with the black and white palette of Chien's live video projections was mezmerizing, and I look forward to the unveiling of the full piece.

Finally, the evening closed with an excerpt from Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg's Highgate, her intensely theatrical and mordantly funny take on Victorian funerary culture. Very much a work of dance-theatre, in which text and movement are fully coeval, the piece focuses on Mrs. Graves (Friedenberg) and her trio of professional mourners (Alison Denham, Bevin Poole, and Susan Elliott), who are linked not just by their testaments but also by their vestments of mourning. By that I mean that costume designer Alice Mansell's shared skirt for the women plays a starring role in the work, leading to many of the wonders of Friendenberg's choreography as the dancers bend and twist and contort their bodies into various states of lamentation--all to the precise cues of Marc Stewart's richly immersive score. Needless to say, Friendenberg herself is a compelling performer, and her Mrs. Graves will go down with Goggles as one of her most memorable characters yet.

Afterwards I once again led a talkback with the artists from the 9 pm program, and after worrying how I would put Wang's and Friendberg's very different works together, we ended up having a very interesting conversation about compositional process and cross-disciplinary collaboration. All in all it was another great edition of Dance in Vancouver, and I'm so glad I was able to participate in my own small way.

P.

Dance Follies and False Fronts

At EDAM’s studios at the Western Front last night Richard and I took in a mixed program of new choreography.

First up was Struck, by Winnipeg Contemporary Dancers Artistic Director Brett Lott. Featuring a quartet of female dancers elegantly sheathed in costume designer Norma Lachance’s see-through black dresses, simple yet effective lighting by Dean Cowieson and Kyla Gardiner, and an original score by Christine Fellows, the piece begins with the dancers, aligned horizontally and staggered according to height (short, tall, short, tall), slowly emerging out of shadow. What at first appears to be a coincidence of the performers’ body types takes on added structural resonance, however, as the piece slowly unfolds as a succession of solos and duos in which the shorter and—it appeared to me—more emotionally intense of the dancers successively attempt to woo their taller, more aloof sisters. All of this takes place within a single square of light, with the dancers taking turns entering it to sculpt the spaces between—at times painfully proximate, at other times as painfully distant—themselves and the bodies of their would-be others, who are watching silently from the shadows.

Next up was EDAM Artistic Director Peter Bingham’s X pollination, his latest contact improv-inspired work, this time for two male dancers, James Gnam and Chengxin Wei. James and Chengxin are both former Ballet BC dancers (now each with his own company, the plastic orchid factory and Moving Dragon, respectively), and here Bingham is clearly having some fun putting the two through their shared weight-transfer and floor-based movement paces, while retaining various balletic traces in the classic arm movements and foot positions that are interpolated near the end of the piece, and in the final double tours en l’air that punctuate the piece’s witty close. The dancers are also clearly having fun discovering how their classic technique can be adapted and expanded via this new form, and in response to each other’s bodies. The highlight of the evening for me.

Finally, the program ended with Joe Laughlin’s Dusk. The first part of a work-in-progress “on experiences surrounding darkness, shadows, limited visibility, and declining light,” the piece—also for four female dancers—was in many respects quietly terrifying, despite being performed under more-or-less full house lights. This is because what begins as a seemingly benign solo for lead dancer Caroline Farquhar (with fellow company members Michelle Cheung, Tara Dyberg, and Samantha-Jane Gray languishing in various poses along the back wall of the studio) eventually turns into something far more menacing, as Cheung’s gradual shadowing of Farquhar’s movements becomes part of a larger monitory process in which Farquhar is first coerced into moving according to the others’ desires, and then constrained from movement altogether.

All in all, a fine evening of dance, made all the more enjoyable by Reece Terris’s witty “Western Front Front—Another False Front,” his addition of a new, larger, and more ornamented façade to the exterior of the venerable building. Part of the 2010 Cultural Olympiad, this architectural folly remains on view through to the end of March; however, the dance follies described above have only two more shows—this Friday and Saturday.

P.

Diving Deep

The Surfacing event that took place at The Dance Centre this past weekend proves that there is life yet in and at Ballet BC. I couldn’t get to the Ignite gala at the end of September that was meant to announce the resuscitation of the company under Interim Artistic Director Emily Molnar, so I was keen to attend a performance of Surfacing, if only to check the pulse of an artistic organization this city and province can’t afford to let die.

The first-ever commissioned choreographic series by Ballet BC, the conceit for the Surfacing program proves that Molnar is not interested in reinventing the wheel, and that she is not afraid of taking risks. Pairing Ballet BC dancers with members of the Arts Umbrella Graduate Program in Dance, Molnar assigned a differently mixed group to four respective—and respected—local choreographers: Joe Laughlin, Simone Orlando, Donald Sales, and Rob Kitsos. She also assigned the music for each piece, and imposed a 20-minute time limit on the finished product. Finally, the choreographers had less than a month to conceive and choreograph their works, and only two weeks to rehearse them. Despite—or maybe because of—these constraints, the pieces that resulted were uniformly excellent, although the combination of musical and choreographic styles (not to mention my own tastes) meant that some stood out for me more than others.

Joe Laughlin led off the program with “On Wings,” set to a Scriabin’s Piano Sonata No. 1. Perhaps because of the musical choice, this piece felt the most traditionally balletic, with the women en pointe for much of it and the men in the first sections mostly doing lifts. The piece did gain complexity as it proceeded, as did the partnering, and no doubt the two young men seconded from Arts Umbrella (one impossibly tall) gained immense experience and confidence as a result of the process.

Simone Orlando, who is currently Artist in Residence with Ballet BC, was next up with "Doppeling." Bach’s Concerto in D Minor provided the score to what I read as a witty post-Freudian take on the Olympia story from Hoffman’s Tales. Half a dozen female dancers, dressed in matching beige lyotards, and sporting similar bewigged bobs scamper, jump, prance, and pose mechanically to Bach’s allegro tempo. They are soon joined by four men, also in lyotards and wigs, also doing their best pixie wind-up impressions to the music. The two groups remain for the most part segregated along gender lines until the lead female doll encounters her blond male counterpart. There follows a moving pas de deux that would seem to bring the piece to a natural conclusion, except that—my only criticism—Orlando adds a coda that returns both dancers to the uniformity of their respective groups.

Donald Sales, working with Yann Tiersen’s combination of tango, accordion music and French chanson, created "Long Story Short," an alternately moving and joyful celebration of the rituals of social and romantic courtship. The piece opens with two tableaux: downstage left a couple reclines dreamily on the floor; upstage right there is a tense domestic stand-off at a table that seems to lead to a break-up (not least, it’s suggested through an effective bit of trompe l’oeil, because of another woman). Thereafter Sales alternates animated group scenes that involve the incorporation of everyday bodily movements (scratched heads, tugged ears, smelled armpits, picked noses) into exuberant expressions of pure dance with quieter movement sequences focused on three individuals who for different reasons (self-absorption, painful shyness, willful isolation) forsake both the group and the longed-for connection with another.

Finally, my colleague Rob Kitsos brought down the house with "Regression Line," a Jets and Sharks-style contest of movement set to a propulsive rock score by Dub Trio. A dance rumble that repeatedly brings the dancers to the threshold of (presumably violent) contact, only to back away and start the marshalling of short, sharp movements all over again, the piece is remarkable for its aggressive yet incredibly disciplined energy. The gang groupings and their respective star-crossed leaders, as I conceived of them, circled each other warily, often precariously, and yet at the same time knew when to keep their distance, with Rob effectively juxtaposing vertical and horizontal lines of movement throughout.

Rob’s piece, moving 15 plus dancers across an intimate stage space at full velocity, also reminded me of why I so love attending performances of The Dance Centre. It’s up close and personal, to use an old cliché. When the different groups of dancers marched purposefully downstage at different points in the piece, it did feel like they were going to continue on into the audience, and from where I was in the third row one could see every flexed muscle, every tensed tendon, every bead of sweat on their bodies.

Ignite, I recall, was staged at the Playhouse, which I’ve also come to appreciate more and more as a space to watch dance thanks to the DanceHouse series. It makes me hope that, as the company rebuilds and redevelops, it will think twice about making its home in the newly reopened Queen Elizabeth Theatre. I know changes in the design and acoustics mean that this venue is not the cavernous echo-chamber it once was; I also know that filling a theatre that size means that much more ticket revenue. However, I never thought the Queen E was the best fit for Ballet BC, and that the impulse for some of former Artistic Director John Alleyne’s more ambitious—if not always completely successful, not to mention financially remunerative—story ballets was just as much a function of the performance space as it was the imagined tastes of the company’s main audience base. If Molnar is indeed trying to attract a new kind of audience for a company that will distinguish itself less by a repertoire of Sleeping Beauties and Nutcrackers than by daring new works of the sort on display in Surfacing, then she would do well to think about the spatial fit of the performance venue as well (one wonders, in this regard, if the about-to-open SFU Woodward’s might fill a much-need size gap here).

One final note. From what I understand new Ballet BC Executive Director Jay Rankin is very good at his job, and is working tirelessly to put the company back on a sound financial footing. However, judging from what he had to say in advance of yesterday’s performance, he’s not the best public speaker. Which is unfortunate if you’re trying to draw attention to arts cuts and urge people to donate to endowment funds, etc. Molnar, on the other hand, is warmth and articulateness personified. My advice: let her do the talking from now on.

P.