Edge 7 at DOTE

Dancing on the Edge Festival's Edge 7 program is made up of two works-in-progress that, in their full iterations, should be back at the Firehall soon. UNTITLEDdiSTANCE is a collaboration between dance artists Emmalena Fredriksson and Arash Khakpour. Based on their common, but also very different, immigrant experiences, the work opens with the artists addressing the audience in Swedish and Farsi, respectively, before segueing into the mutual instruction and execution of a floor sequence that provides them--and us--with an entree into a shared language of movement. That language is largely contact-based and in between giving and taking each other's weight and limbs in the next section, they each narrate their experiences of being othered--because of the way they look, or how they speak--in their adopted home of Vancouver. Not that the work is all about warm and fuzzy support. Indeed, the rest of the piece plays out as a series of increasingly high stakes games in which, for example, one performer, seated in front of a computer, will ask the other an impossible to answer question ("Do you feel more eastern or western?" "Would you kill a cat for a million dollars?") that s/he must respond to during an improvised solo, the movement choices of which are then interpreted and projected for us by the seated interlocutor through Google translate. In this way, and throughout the piece more generally, Fredriksson and Khakpour cannily combine language and movement to show that no matter how we position ourselves, we must always negotiate that position in relation to others--and also that, as in this case, part of that negotiation is developing a shared sense of trust.

An excerpt from Contes Cruels, by Les Productions Figlio's Serge Bennathan, was the second piece on the program. A full-length version of the work will premiere at the Firehall next May and seems to build on Bennathan's earlier Just Words. As in that work, Contes Cruels combines poetic text by the choreographer with original music by Bertrand Chénier to work through a near-death experience. However, here Bennathan has expanded his roster of dancers, with Josh Martin and Molly McDermott joining Hilary Maxwell and Karissa Barry in a quartet that sometimes moves in regimented response to and ethereally against the choreographer's onstage commands. Bennathan's repeated prompts of "Blackout" and "Lights up" late in the piece serve as an especially apt metaphor not just for a physical resurrection, but also for artistic reinvention. In this respect, Martin, who takes over some of the text early in the piece, is clearly meant to be Bennathan's dance double, or avatar, and the women his trio of muses, with their frequent blind but powerhouse leaps into space, or their held poses and offstage looks into the distance, incarnating for us what it means to embrace the unknown.

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Monsieur Auburtin at The Dance Centre

Last year Serge Bennathan, artistic director of Les Productions Figlio, had a cancer scare. The episode prompted him to reflect back upon his life and, in particular, his long career in dance. That reflection initially took the form of text and in Bennathan's latest creation, Monsieur Auburtin, that form remains dominant. The work, which runs at The Dance Centre through this Saturday in a co-presentation with the Chutzpah! Festival, sees Bennathan seated at a laptop computer reading his first-person script; he is accompanied by Bertrand Chénier on electric guitar and piano. Two female dancers, Erin Drumheller (who also plays violin) and the ubiquitous Kim Stevenson, are also part of the piece--though to what precise ends remains somewhat unclear to me.

After thanking us for coming and apologizing unnecessarily for his French accent, Bennathan launches us into his narrative, taking us back to 1963; it's the height of the Cold War and little Serge's father, a military man in France, wants his son to take up the flute--or, more precisely, as Bennathan notes with disdain, what in English we would call the recorder. The choice of instrument is less important than that the activity of studying and practising it will occupy time, keeping Serge--who has a penchant for getting into trouble (including, a little later, stealing motorcycles and selling their parts)--off the streets. But Serge rebels, announcing one day that he no longer wants to study the recorder. To his surprise, his father acquiesces to this desire. However, Serge is not off the hook, for eventually the day comes when his father asks him what he will do instead. Thinking quickly, Serge remembers that he has a friend a few floors up in his building who studies ballet; he has no idea what "ballet" is, but nevertheless blurts out that he wants to study it.

And so begins Bennathan's apprenticeship in dance, as he enrols in an introductory ballet class taught by the M. Auburtin of the title. The arc of that apprenticeship during Bennathan's years in France, before he emigrated to Canada, gives the piece its narrative structure, which is mostly built around a series of signal encounters with ballet legends, all set against the backdrop of Bennathan's youthful arrogance and apparently willful squandering of the opportunities he is being given and the skills he is being taught. Thus, for example, M. Auburtin introduces him, via a series of photographs, to the commanding presence of Nijinsky, upon whose flexed ankle, poised to launch the dancer into flight in a still from L'après-midi d'une faune, Bennathan becomes obsessed. Later, having moved to Paris as a teenager to study, Bennathan becomes a devotee of another sexually charismatic male ballet star, in this case Rudolf Nureyev, who was then in charge of the Paris Opéra Ballet. Bennathan recounts an hilarious anecdote about stealing a pair of Nureyev's tights, which he then promptly shows us. But such youthful escapades came at the expense of the discipline demanded by his disappointed Cuban ballet master, who slaps Bennathan at one point for arriving at the theatre fifteen minutes before curtain.

Finally, the last section of Bennathan's narrative is devoted to his time dancing for Roland Petit, who in the early 1970s was starting up a new ballet company in Marseille and looking for dancers. At an audition in Paris packed with more than 200 male dancers, Bennathan makes it to the last 10 (based in part on his strengths in jumping), only to have his hopes dashed when he is not one of the final four chosen. However, remaining at the barre dazed and confused, his disappointed immobility is eventually rewarded when Petit suddenly looks up from his conversation with the chosen and motions him over to join them. Bennathan's is launched on his career, one that will eventually take him from the apartment block in Marseille he shares with a posse of motherly prostitutes to points all around the world, including a tour of Canada, where he gets his first taste of Vancouver. Oh yes, and during his time with Petit, Bennathan will also spend a week taking more or less private class with one Mischa Baryshnikov. However transformative this event is, witnessing Pina Bausch's Cafe Müller for the first time is even more mind-blowing for Bennathan, an experience that will force him to question his years of classical training and that will eventually launch him on the path of contemporary dance.

One cannot help but be charmed by the recounting of such moments. Bennathan is a gifted and compelling storyteller, applying his choreographic skills with rhythm and pacing to shape an autobiographical fable that, like the best story ballets (including Bennathan's favourite Giselle), seems at once magical and inevitable. Chénier's musical accompaniment aids immeasurably to this end, providing tempo but also crucially creating atmosphere, including dramatic suspense. The dancing, however, I found more difficult to integrate into the overall concept of the piece. At times Drumheller and Stevenson, who are both very talented movers, appeared to be illustrating what Bennathan was describing, and at other times deliberately burlesquing it. Whatever the case, mostly I just wished there was more movement--full stop. For long stretches the dancers remain stationary on the stage, and only rarely--in the few moments he gets up from his chair to move up- or downstage to read from a sheaf of printed pages, do they interact with Bennathan directly. This is in contrast to an earlier excerpt from the work-in-progress that I saw at EDAM last fall. Then Bennathan was standing throughout, and the female dancers (Karissa Barry and Hilary Maxwell) interacted with him--and each other--much more physically, at various points encircling him like the Wilis from Giselle.

I realize that the piece has become something much different in its present incarnation. But as Bennathan--who after last night's performance was presented by Howard Jang with the Canada Council's Jacqueline Lemieux Prize for dance--has distinguished himself in this country as such an adept choreographer for women, I was hoping to see more of this artistry in action. Perhaps that will become the second half of the story of Bennathan's life in dance--which, happily for us, is still unfolding.

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Threshold at EDAM

EDAM's 2014 fall choreographic series featured new work from Artistic Director Peter Bingham alongside premieres from Serge Bennathan, of Les Productions Figlio, and dumb instrument Dance's Ziyian Kwan. If there was a theme connecting the works, we might say it had something to do with the choreographer-as-observer, at once inside and outside of the work, looking in.

Bennathan's just words opens with the choreographer in a spotlight, flanked by dancers Karissa Barry and Hilary Maxwell. He begins a humourous address to the audience, at one point even singing--badly. In the meantime, Barry and Maxwell have begun to move, flailing their arms and slowly encircling Bennathan, who eventually recedes stage right as the piece gives way to a highly physical and increasingly aggressive duet. Martial arts moves combine with early La La La-esque running falls that make canny use of the cavernous depths of the EDAM space (another common theme among the works). At the same time, there are several affecting moments of quiet tenderness in the piece, as when the two dancers, slowly walking downstage with their backs to the audience, reach out their arms, find, and then clasp their hands together. The juxtaposition of velocity and stillness in the movement finds its corollary in the two other texts that Bennathan reads to the audience, in which we are reminded about both the ephemeral beauty and the labourious pain of dancing. At one point in one of Bennathan's recitations, a port de bras is mentioned, and the image triggered in my head encapsulated the dialectic of the piece: among the simplest of movement phrases from an audience perspective, it is nevertheless one over which the dancer labours and strains--precisely in order to make it seem effortless.

Kwan's bite down gently & howL--which, full disclosure, I was privileged to have glimpsed in advance as it was being built in the studio--is the choreographer's quixotic take on the story of "Goldilocks and The Three Bears." It begins with the lights (expertly overseen, as always, by designer and technical director James Proudfoot) slowly coming up on the four dancers in the piece, each hibernating on (or over or beside) a chair placed strategically about the stage. Going counter-clockwise, Barbara Bourget, as Mama Bear, is tucked into a ball upstage left; Vanessa Goodman, as Baby Bear, is bent at the waist upstage right and facing the backstage wall; James Gnam, as Papa Bear, is sprawled sexily over his overturned chair stage right; and, centre stage, perched on a stool and with her bare back turned to us, is Kwan, hair of course dyed blonde, and from the waist down clad in a brown bear costume. (The brown fun-fur onesie, complete with detachable paws, was designed by Diane Park, who along with her musician husband, Mark Haney, is dancing in Le Grand Continental with me.) As the music begins, Kwan slides her hands down the length of her back, first flipping out the stubby bear tale upon which she has been sitting (a witty gesture somewhat obscured by the still dim lighting at this stage), and then throwing the arms of the costume over her shoulders before slipping into each, tying up at the front, and turning to face us. This sequence importantly establishes the dreamlike state governing the piece as a whole, a liminal space (to adapt the title of Bingham's piece) between sleep and wakefulness in which we are watching Kwan-as-Goldilocks-becoming-bear. It's a sleight-of-body that gets telegraphed immediately in the deliberately awkward, lumbering gait that Kwan adopts as she trudges toward and eventually slams into the backstage wall. Needless to say, such a move is likely to rouse fellow slumbering bears, and the piece eventually unfolds as series of signature solos for Bourget, Gnam, and Goodman, each set to--wait for it--an iconic Nancy Sinatra song. Thus, Bourget, in a fur-collared black dress and pill-box hat with veil momentarily casts off a lifetime (or maybe it's only a winter's worth) of regret and rediscovers her bossa nova moves to "As Tears Go By." Gnam, sporting a toque and aviator sunglasses, is all thrusting pelvis and sexy swagger, during "Indian Summer." And Goodman, in her herky-jerky twitching and casual abuse of her Teddy Bear to "Bang Bang," hints at some possible childhood trauma. Indeed, all is not cosy and tender in this family ménage, and when the three dancers do eventually come together in a clinch at the climax of the work, their previously functional solo movement morphs into fractious verbal dysfunction. Throughout, Kwan is watching expectantly, and occasionally intervening, the dreamer at once fascinated by and seeking to make sense of her own dream.

The evening concluded with Bingham's Liminal Spaces, a trio danced by Walter Kubanek, Olivia Shaffer, and Chengxin Wei. The piece begins as a vertical corridor of movement along the stage left wall, each of the dancers experimenting with different levels as they move in response to and close proximity with each other (and the adjacent wall). But apart from the occasional hand on back for support, or to telegraph spatial distance, the dancers do not touch. It is only when they move out into the rest of the space and they give themselves over to the contact improvisation that forms the core of Bingham's aesthetic that we begin to see and apprehend the previously invisible kinesthetic awareness and structures of bodily support undergirding the movement. The score to this work is comprised of a cello solo by Peggy Lee, over which Bingham speaks text, soft and not quite intelligible during the stage left corridor section, but gradually becoming more clearly enunciated as the contact phrasing gets more vigorous and complex. At one point in the text, Bingham asks whether or not a tree knows it's doing a good job as a tree (or something to that effect). As the dancers arrange and rearrange themselves into a bodily stack upstage at the conclusion of the piece, the question becomes explicitly self-reflexive. But hardly rhetorical. In this gorgeous and sublimely danced work, the tree/trio performs magnificently, each of its rings in perfect sync.

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She

I disagree with Kevin Griffin's review of Serge Bennathan and Les Productions Figlio's premiere of the Rio Tinto Alcan Award-winning Elles, on at The Cultch through this Saturday. Griffin found the work "confusing," which was a barrier for him in terms of feeling his way into the piece (as Bennathan, in his choreographic notes, states is his purpose).

For me, the work was all too accessible in its meaning, with the balletic inspiration of Giselle (which Bennathan has talked about repeatedly in publicity for the piece, and which Griffin makes no mention of in his review) overdetermining how I received this exploration of female power and energy--not least in the repeated references (via the fluttering hands and arm movements especially) to the famous Wilis. In other words, the barrier to feeling for me last night was too much (literal?) understanding.

That said, there was some stunning movement on display last night, and it was a treat to see these eight incredibly talented women lined up on stage (Bennathan plays at various points with the traditional notion of a corps de ballet). As for the stage itself, I was reminded last night just what a small footprint The Cultch's Historic Theatre has, even post-renovation (and even with the first few rows of orchestra seats removed), for dance. At times it felt (see, I guess muscular empathy did get through to me on some level) as if the dancers were going to fly into our laps, or tumble off into the wings, when the movement was at its most frenzied. To be sure, this creates a wonderful sense of intimacy between performers and audience. But one has to wonder about the degree to which the limited space sometimes constrains rather than fully unleashes the creativity of the dance artists who use it.

Speaking of The Cultch, Heather Redfern's absence in giving the curtain speech last night reminds me that I have been remiss in this blog in acknowledging the recent passing of Redfern's partner, the late great Jim Green. The tributes have been many and fulsome, and so I won't add to them here--except to say that he was the greatest mayor Vancouver never had. And that we have Woodward's, his gift to the city, to remember him by.

P.