Self-help gurus are easy to satirize; it's far harder to make them a source of pathos (look at Tom Cruise in Magnolia). However, that's just the task that Ottawa's May Can Theatre sets for itself in Happiness™, on at The Cultch through this Sunday at part of Upintheair Theatre's rEvoler festival. Tony Adams and Cory Thibert play James and Peter, two salesmen who work pitching products for HPL™, a company devoted to spreading Happiness, Prosperity, and Luxury to one and all.
Framed as a self-help seminar, the production begins in the lobby with local Vancouver recruits (Linnea Gwiazda and Morgan Murray) administering happiness assessment surveys and hydrating interested parties with Happiness tea and a cooling skin spray called Optimist (the faux products the company has come up with, and the puns that go with them, are truly impressive). Following the curtain speeches Adams and Thibert emerge and begin working the audience, whipping up the energy with their dance moves, dropping some local Vancouver references, and gauging our susceptibleness to their boyish charm by asking how many of us have felt sad in the last year, month, week, and day.
And yet this dramaturgical conceit turns out to be a false frame. Just as quickly as the audience is positioned as the guileless dupes to James and Peter's in-the-moment hucksterism the house lights go down and the fourth wall is purposefully re-erected. Turns out we are only meant to be eavesdropping on the salesmen's pre-show rehearsals and warm-up, as subsequent interactions between each of them and their tech person, Ted, demonstrate. More to the point, we discover that despite having drunk the HPL™ Kool-Aid®, James and Peter are far from happy, or even emotionally stable. James is preoccupied with the fact that his nephew has just been placed into foster care, and Peter still hasn't gotten over the collapse of his marriage. As their increasing desperation bubbles to the surface, threatening to derail the start of their seminar, James and Peter settle on a definitive gesture aimed at excising all negative thoughts and feelings once and for all--a frankly clumsy ending that involves a pair of wire cutters, some fake blood, and a somewhat mistimed blackout.
Beyond these structural issues, the production mainly didn't work for me because I couldn't muster any sympathy for the two leads. Their back stories are too sketchily drawn for one to connect with their vulnerability when it surfaces. And then there is the whole matter of the rivalry/bromance between James and Peter, who go back and forth between making needling digs about each other's professional and personal mistakes to saying how much they love and support each other, with the latter statements often accompanied by a lot of physical touching. That one of the piece's product demonstrations--for the Happiness Hook-Up™, a mouthpiece designed to stretch one's face into a permanent smile--has the men playing a married couple only ups the homosocial ante. At the same time, because the work's exploration of the codes of masculinity only ever stays at the surface, it risks reinforcing those codes in a manner that can register as borderline homophobic. (The play is clearly influenced by Daniel MacIvor's Never Swim Alone, which not so coincidently both Adams and Thibert appeared in while students at the University of Ottawa, but which also balances the genres of allegorical satire and realism far more complexly.)
In the end, the play's ambitions exceed the company's grasp (the work was co-created and directed by the third member of May Can Theatre, Madeleine Boyes-Manseau). Had they stuck to a concept piece satirizing the self-help industry, the play likely would have been hilarious--as it is, they have created a whole infrastructure of online videos, testimonials, and trademarked products that hints at how far they have already gone down this rabbit hole. It's wanting to make James and Peter more than just types that trips the creators up. On that front, there is more work to be done.
P
Thursday, May 19, 2016
Saturday, May 14, 2016
Vancouver Dance History (2006-2016): Post 15
It's been a while since Justine and Alexa and I have had a chance to gather together at the Dance Centre for another interview--though J and A did meet up last Friday in my absence to do some additional work on scores and, as a result, toss about some preliminary stage designs.
In the meantime, we've also been corresponding electronically about the genesis of and impetus behind the project--the cumulative results of which have just been published on The Dance Centre's blog. You can read the full dialogue here.
P
In the meantime, we've also been corresponding electronically about the genesis of and impetus behind the project--the cumulative results of which have just been published on The Dance Centre's blog. You can read the full dialogue here.
P
Ballet BC's Program 3 at the Queen E
Ballet BC's 30th anniversary season comes to a close this weekend with its third and final repertory offering of 2015/16--aptly titled Program 3 (the utilitarian and self-evident evening descriptors are apparently an innovation that will carry over to next year). Paired together once again were Finnish choreographer Jorma Elo's I am I am You and Ballet BC Artistic Director Emily Molnar's 16+ a room, both of which audiences were first introduced to back in October 2013.
I previously wrote about both pieces here, so I won't go into too much added detail this time around, except to say that the works complement each other not just because they share a lighting designer (Jordan Tuinman) and a similar muted costume palette (by Kate Burrows). Each choreographer's choice of music also sets up an instructive contrast. Elo builds his piece around music by Bach, whereas Molnar opts for a contemporary electronic score by Dirk P. Haubrich. This, in turn, contributes to how the dancers are massed on stage in each work. Elo uses fluid transitions and elegant partnering to create vertical lines and tableaux. Molnar shoots her dancers like darts across the stage, purposefully missing each other and eschewing unison in favour of their different singular rhythms. Indeed, where Elo's piece ends with the dancers forming a perfect circle and extending their arms and torsos outward into space, Molnar has the curtain come down on a riot of individual and non-synchronous movement patterns, the visual chaos nevertheless deeply satisfying on a kinetic level.
The highlight last night was the company (and Canadian) premiere of red-hot Israeli choreographer Sharon Eyal's Bill. As she did in Corps de Walk, for the Norwegian group Carte Blanche (which DanceHouse brought to town in 2013), Eyal--working with her partner Gai Behar--sends the dancers out on stage in flesh-coloured full-body lyotards, their hair painted white-blond, and presumably with their individual irises also camouflaged behind similar ice-blue contact lenses (though from where I was sitting I couldn't confirm this last detail). The piece begins with four solo etudes, the first three by male company members, and the fourth and final one by a female dancer. In each, Eyal combines an assortment of recognizably balletic moves (including a series of battements and jetés) with the Batsheva alumna's quixotic, Gaga-esque and thoroughly compelling vocabulary: strange flexions; hips thrusts and swivels that both invite and dissuade a sensual response; double-time foot shuffles and animatronic ambulation.
These are Ballet BC's dancers unlike we have seen them before, other-worldly creatures who, when the full company finally comes together, yelp and cry out strange commands to each other, dispersing outward in long lunges in one moment and then hopping back into a clump like little pixies in the next. Eventually Gilbert Small emerges from the group, arms raised in the air, body swaying this way and that as he makes his way downstage. Behind him a quartet of female dancers follows, raising and lowering their arms and heads, perhaps in obeisance. Meanwhile the rest of the company keeps up their patterns of robotic walking upstage. The combined effect, supplemented by the hypnotic music of frequent collaborator Ori Lichtik, was utterly entrancing, even if the casting of Small in the lead (is he supposed to be Bill?) did make me question the performative neutrality of the costuming in this piece more than in Corps de Walk.
What is certain, however, is that Bill is an amazing addition to the company's repertoire and a piece that will further distinguish the dancers' technical versatility as they take it, along with Molnar's 16 + a room and Crystal Pite's Solo Echo, out on tour later this month.
P
I previously wrote about both pieces here, so I won't go into too much added detail this time around, except to say that the works complement each other not just because they share a lighting designer (Jordan Tuinman) and a similar muted costume palette (by Kate Burrows). Each choreographer's choice of music also sets up an instructive contrast. Elo builds his piece around music by Bach, whereas Molnar opts for a contemporary electronic score by Dirk P. Haubrich. This, in turn, contributes to how the dancers are massed on stage in each work. Elo uses fluid transitions and elegant partnering to create vertical lines and tableaux. Molnar shoots her dancers like darts across the stage, purposefully missing each other and eschewing unison in favour of their different singular rhythms. Indeed, where Elo's piece ends with the dancers forming a perfect circle and extending their arms and torsos outward into space, Molnar has the curtain come down on a riot of individual and non-synchronous movement patterns, the visual chaos nevertheless deeply satisfying on a kinetic level.
The highlight last night was the company (and Canadian) premiere of red-hot Israeli choreographer Sharon Eyal's Bill. As she did in Corps de Walk, for the Norwegian group Carte Blanche (which DanceHouse brought to town in 2013), Eyal--working with her partner Gai Behar--sends the dancers out on stage in flesh-coloured full-body lyotards, their hair painted white-blond, and presumably with their individual irises also camouflaged behind similar ice-blue contact lenses (though from where I was sitting I couldn't confirm this last detail). The piece begins with four solo etudes, the first three by male company members, and the fourth and final one by a female dancer. In each, Eyal combines an assortment of recognizably balletic moves (including a series of battements and jetés) with the Batsheva alumna's quixotic, Gaga-esque and thoroughly compelling vocabulary: strange flexions; hips thrusts and swivels that both invite and dissuade a sensual response; double-time foot shuffles and animatronic ambulation.
These are Ballet BC's dancers unlike we have seen them before, other-worldly creatures who, when the full company finally comes together, yelp and cry out strange commands to each other, dispersing outward in long lunges in one moment and then hopping back into a clump like little pixies in the next. Eventually Gilbert Small emerges from the group, arms raised in the air, body swaying this way and that as he makes his way downstage. Behind him a quartet of female dancers follows, raising and lowering their arms and heads, perhaps in obeisance. Meanwhile the rest of the company keeps up their patterns of robotic walking upstage. The combined effect, supplemented by the hypnotic music of frequent collaborator Ori Lichtik, was utterly entrancing, even if the casting of Small in the lead (is he supposed to be Bill?) did make me question the performative neutrality of the costuming in this piece more than in Corps de Walk.
What is certain, however, is that Bill is an amazing addition to the company's repertoire and a piece that will further distinguish the dancers' technical versatility as they take it, along with Molnar's 16 + a room and Crystal Pite's Solo Echo, out on tour later this month.
P
Thursday, May 12, 2016
Mis Papás at The Cultch
This year's rEvolver Theatre Festival opened last night with a production of rice & beans theatre's Mis Papás. The play is based on the story of writer and director Pedro Chamale Jr's parents, Stella and Pedro Sr. In a series of short, non-chronological scenes we learn about how the couple met and subsequently immigrated to Canada from Guatemala, only to have their lives upended by an illness and life-threatening coma that leaves Pedro Sr deaf and in need of near-constant care from Stella.
Uniquely, the show unfolds as a boxing match, with ringside seats arrayed about The Cultch's Historic Theatre stage. The actors, having spent part of their rehearsal process training at the Eastside Boxing Gym, spar not just verbally, but also physically, taking turns in donning the two pairs of bright red boxing gloves and throwing jabs that land with greater or lesser force depending on the context. When Pedro Sr and Stella are in the ring together, Pedro doesn't stand a chance, and not simply because Manuela Sosa, the actress playing Stella, is taller than Edwin Perez's Pedro; as played by Sosa, Stella reveals herself to be a woman of indomitable will, someone who bluntly tells her husband that she is always right--especially when it comes to his own well-being. That doesn't mean, however, that the burden of care is easy for Stella, or that cracks don't emerge in the stoic facade she presents to hospital staff. In a bravura scene the physical and psychological toll Pedro Sr's illness is taking on Stella is made clear as Sosa skips rope while reciting a litany of Pedro's symptoms, the drugs he's taking, and the food items she's daily consuming from the vending machines in the hospital; Sosa does not miss a beat on either count.
As for Perez's Pedro, his submission to Stella is not played with wounded masculine pride. Apart from one scene when, following his discharge from the hospital, Pedro complains to his doctor (a lanky Derek Chan) about not being able to continue working as a mechanic owing to his deafness, cliches of machismo are scrupulously avoided in this play. Instead, we see that Pedro's lack of fighting chance with his wife is a result of the fact that he is completely and utterly besotted with her. Likewise, Stella's stubborn refusal to give up the primary care of her husband--even when, in conversation with his nurse (Anjela Magpantay), it emerges that Pedro has bitten her--and her confidence that he will get better comes from a place of absolute devotion. More than anything else, and in spite of its intensely physical dramaturgy, this play is a love story told with the utmost tenderness.
It is also told bilingually, in English and Spanish, and without the benefit of surtitles. Just as Pedro and Stella must deal with the estranging medical jargon surrounding Pedro's illness--bits of which are explained to us via Chan and Magpantay in exchanges played out to the audience--so are we deliberately put in a position of not always understanding. As Chamale Jr explains in his notes to the play, that position reflects not just the journey his parents are now on as they move into the uncertain future of Pedro Sr's inevitable decline, but also the immigrant story writ large. Why shouldn't we, then, be made to experience something of this unfamiliarity as well?
It's a question Mis Papás asks with intelligence and grace.
P
Uniquely, the show unfolds as a boxing match, with ringside seats arrayed about The Cultch's Historic Theatre stage. The actors, having spent part of their rehearsal process training at the Eastside Boxing Gym, spar not just verbally, but also physically, taking turns in donning the two pairs of bright red boxing gloves and throwing jabs that land with greater or lesser force depending on the context. When Pedro Sr and Stella are in the ring together, Pedro doesn't stand a chance, and not simply because Manuela Sosa, the actress playing Stella, is taller than Edwin Perez's Pedro; as played by Sosa, Stella reveals herself to be a woman of indomitable will, someone who bluntly tells her husband that she is always right--especially when it comes to his own well-being. That doesn't mean, however, that the burden of care is easy for Stella, or that cracks don't emerge in the stoic facade she presents to hospital staff. In a bravura scene the physical and psychological toll Pedro Sr's illness is taking on Stella is made clear as Sosa skips rope while reciting a litany of Pedro's symptoms, the drugs he's taking, and the food items she's daily consuming from the vending machines in the hospital; Sosa does not miss a beat on either count.
As for Perez's Pedro, his submission to Stella is not played with wounded masculine pride. Apart from one scene when, following his discharge from the hospital, Pedro complains to his doctor (a lanky Derek Chan) about not being able to continue working as a mechanic owing to his deafness, cliches of machismo are scrupulously avoided in this play. Instead, we see that Pedro's lack of fighting chance with his wife is a result of the fact that he is completely and utterly besotted with her. Likewise, Stella's stubborn refusal to give up the primary care of her husband--even when, in conversation with his nurse (Anjela Magpantay), it emerges that Pedro has bitten her--and her confidence that he will get better comes from a place of absolute devotion. More than anything else, and in spite of its intensely physical dramaturgy, this play is a love story told with the utmost tenderness.
It is also told bilingually, in English and Spanish, and without the benefit of surtitles. Just as Pedro and Stella must deal with the estranging medical jargon surrounding Pedro's illness--bits of which are explained to us via Chan and Magpantay in exchanges played out to the audience--so are we deliberately put in a position of not always understanding. As Chamale Jr explains in his notes to the play, that position reflects not just the journey his parents are now on as they move into the uncertain future of Pedro Sr's inevitable decline, but also the immigrant story writ large. Why shouldn't we, then, be made to experience something of this unfamiliarity as well?
It's a question Mis Papás asks with intelligence and grace.
P
Wednesday, May 11, 2016
Caroline Shaw at the Fox Cabaret
Last night Caroline Shaw concluded her year as composer-in-residence at Music on Main with a performance called "One Night Stand," part of MoM's "Month of Tuesdays" at the Fox Cabaret. The show featured a range of Shaw's compositions, including two pieces--"Valencia" and "Entr'acte"--performed by the immensely talented Emily Carr String Quartet; "Entr'acte," with a long plucked sequence and a beautiful coda for solo cello (played by Alasdair Money), was especially captivating.
Pianist David Kaplan also excelled in his performance of two of Shaw's "conversations" with nineteenth-century composers, in this case Robert Schumann and Frédéric Chopin. As is increasingly common at concerts these days, Kaplan read his sheet music from an iPad; in conversation with him at intermission we learned that he controls the turning of the pages with an extra foot pedal that is synched to the iPad through Bluetooth.
Throughout the evening, Shaw also improvised on violin, including in a wonderful duet with local dancer Vanessa Goodman. The duo will reprise their collaboration on Thursday as part of Dances for a Small Stage's Salon Series at the Emerald Room, and I was excited to hear in Shaw's stage patter last night that she and Goodman are planning to work together again in the future.
The final piece on the program was an excerpt of three songs from Shaw's By and By series, her setting of traditional bluegrass spirituals. Shaw was accompanied by Kaplan on piano and the Emily Carr String Quartet, but it was the purity of her own voice that resonated most with me. A triple threat as a composer, violinist and singer, Vancouver has been lucky to have this Pulitzer Prize-winner in our midst this past year. Here's hoping she visits again soon.
P
Pianist David Kaplan also excelled in his performance of two of Shaw's "conversations" with nineteenth-century composers, in this case Robert Schumann and Frédéric Chopin. As is increasingly common at concerts these days, Kaplan read his sheet music from an iPad; in conversation with him at intermission we learned that he controls the turning of the pages with an extra foot pedal that is synched to the iPad through Bluetooth.
Throughout the evening, Shaw also improvised on violin, including in a wonderful duet with local dancer Vanessa Goodman. The duo will reprise their collaboration on Thursday as part of Dances for a Small Stage's Salon Series at the Emerald Room, and I was excited to hear in Shaw's stage patter last night that she and Goodman are planning to work together again in the future.
The final piece on the program was an excerpt of three songs from Shaw's By and By series, her setting of traditional bluegrass spirituals. Shaw was accompanied by Kaplan on piano and the Emily Carr String Quartet, but it was the purity of her own voice that resonated most with me. A triple threat as a composer, violinist and singer, Vancouver has been lucky to have this Pulitzer Prize-winner in our midst this past year. Here's hoping she visits again soon.
P
Monday, May 9, 2016
PACE + Kaleido at Studio 1398
A brief shout-out to the OURO Collective, who this past weekend premiered two new works at Studio 1398. OURO's members (Christina Bucci, Maiko Miyauchi, Rina Pellerin, Dean Placzek, Mark Siller, and Antonio Somera, Jr.) all bring different street dance styles (from hip hop to waacking) to the creation of truly unique ensemble work for the concert stage--a fusion of intricate unison patterns and bodily tableaux with high energy breakout moments of individual freestylin'.
This was especially on display in the second piece on the program, the collectively choreographed PACE, where I was most taken with the multi-levelled and dextrously coordinated arm and head chains created by the dancers. My only complaint was that the venue sometimes made it hard to see the group's floorwork--a shame given that breaking is clearly a signature.
These guys need a much bigger stage.
P
This was especially on display in the second piece on the program, the collectively choreographed PACE, where I was most taken with the multi-levelled and dextrously coordinated arm and head chains created by the dancers. My only complaint was that the venue sometimes made it hard to see the group's floorwork--a shame given that breaking is clearly a signature.
These guys need a much bigger stage.
P
Friday, May 6, 2016
ReVoLt at The Dance Centre
Belgian choreographer Thierry Smits, of Compagnie Thor, brought the solo ReVoLt to The Dance Centre last night as the closing performance of this year's Global Dance Connections series. A solo created for the Australian dancer Nicola Leahey, the piece deals--somewhat didactically--with the continued bodily oppression of women. As the lights come up, we see Leahey in a self-imposed choke-hold, her long blond hair covering her face, her body twitching in resistance to what we are to imagine is some external constraint (whether it be the arms of an abusive male lover or the expectations of society). A quick blackout and then we see Leahey centre stage, her arms pinned behind her back, the rest of her body again convulsing against the would-be disciplining of her physicality. And so the beginning of the piece continues, with two more such poses added to the repertoire of controlling movements, one in which Leahey's arms are wrapped around her waist, and one in which they get locked, like a chastity belt, underneath her pubis.
The rest of the piece is essentially built upon the repetition of these four poses, with Leahey every now and then breaking free to move into a tentative forward lunge, or to arch into a gorgeous back bend, as if to show us just what her body can do when unharnessed. In this respect, Leahey's long, loose hair plays an important role in the piece. Unbound and flowing freely, it will not be tamed like the rest of her body. As it flies and whips through the air during Leahey's convulsions, or spills dramatically about her head when she descends to the floor, its indiscreet and thoroughly wanton movement becomes a metaphor for female resistance against imposed expectations (including, presumably, in dance).
I just wish this wasn't delivered so literally. And also that the piece built to a point where Leahey really showed us what she could do when fully untethered. As it is, the score, as it progresses, has Leahey increasingly throw off the shackled arm holds of the four core poses; but there is no real indication of where she might go from there. Her arms ascend by her sides in that tentative forward lunge, hinting that she might take flight. But for now she remains at the threshold.
P
The rest of the piece is essentially built upon the repetition of these four poses, with Leahey every now and then breaking free to move into a tentative forward lunge, or to arch into a gorgeous back bend, as if to show us just what her body can do when unharnessed. In this respect, Leahey's long, loose hair plays an important role in the piece. Unbound and flowing freely, it will not be tamed like the rest of her body. As it flies and whips through the air during Leahey's convulsions, or spills dramatically about her head when she descends to the floor, its indiscreet and thoroughly wanton movement becomes a metaphor for female resistance against imposed expectations (including, presumably, in dance).
I just wish this wasn't delivered so literally. And also that the piece built to a point where Leahey really showed us what she could do when fully untethered. As it is, the score, as it progresses, has Leahey increasingly throw off the shackled arm holds of the four core poses; but there is no real indication of where she might go from there. Her arms ascend by her sides in that tentative forward lunge, hinting that she might take flight. But for now she remains at the threshold.
P
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