May 1-3 at Enwave Theatre (Harbourfront)
By Leandra de Valois-Franklin
In honour of Asian Heritage month (this month!), the CanAsian International Dance Festival offered a smorgasbord of world-class pan-Asian dance, presented through three different programs of five dance works at Enwave Theatre. Now celebrating its 10th anniversary, the festival plays an important role in Canada’s multicultural dance landscape, exposing traditional and cutting-edge contemporary dance forms and live music from India, Indonesia, China, Korea and Japan. Featured choreographers this year included Hari Krishnan, Peter Chin, Wen Wei Wang, Soojung Kwon, Guru Sri Devraj Patnaik, and Natsu Kakajima. The outstanding works ranged from classical to experimental, both amusing and poignant, and one dance included a magnificent twist that echo’s Neil Jordan’s The Crying Game.
Programme A comprised of Toronto-based inDance’s Uma, a work focused on Bharatanatyam dance, and Mind’s Hammer by Peter Chin’s Tribal Crackling Wind, in association with Evergreen Club Contemporary Gamelan. Uma, a solo which explores the eroticism of the devadasi temple courtesan dancers in pre-modern South India, is accompanied by seven musicians positioned onstage in a circle around dancer Sudarshan Belsare. Belsare, elaborately dressed in rich purple fabrics with fingertips and feet painted red, performs complicated, intricate footwork with ankles bound in strings of bells, coordinated with precise hand gestures and sensual eye articulations. The dancer’s incredible presence exudes pride and power, representing an idealized image of a woman as a virgin, lover, wife, and goddess. Oh yeah, did I mention that the beautiful Belsare is in fact a man?! Depicted through the medium of stri-vesham (female impersonation), the work merges tradition and modernity through wildly pleasurable means.
Mind’s Hammer displays similar flamboyancy through Peter Chin’s succinct, staccato movements, as he deftly crosses the stage like a leprechaun after Lucky Charms. His eyes are often closed as he shakes his head violently, perhaps attempting to awake from a nightmare, or simply mad from a marshmallowy sugar high. The highlight of the piece is the exotic music by Canada’s first performing gamelan (an Indonesian gong instrument) ensemble, whose clinking and clanking on gold pots visibly taunt Chin.
Programme B included an excerpt of Wen Wei’s One Man’s, and the world premieres of Kwon’s The Choonengmu Project and Patnaik’s Kedar Pallavi. One Man’s fuses movement, storytelling, film and music in a compelling autobiographical solo which communicates Wen Wei’s life experiences in China and Canada. China’s pet genocide occurred during Wen Wei’s childhood, forcing him to slaughter and consume his beloved pet chicken, leaving him with a happy stomach but a hurting heart. This evocative allegory is supported by animalistic movement combining ballet, martial arts and meditation, set against a projection of Chinese market stalls and ambient noise.
The Choonengmu Project, based on a 19th-century classical Korean court dance, deconstructs traditional canons and reinterprets the repertoire with contemporary dance vocabularies to live accompaniment. Kwon dances centre stage with graceful humility in a richly coloured, exquisitely long-sleeved costume as her collaborator Jihee Son shadows her minimal movements, every pose creating an image worthy of a Korean imperial dynasty portrait.
Chitralekha Odissi Dance Creations presented pure lyrical dance based on a Raga (melody), aptly titled Kedar Pallivi, meaning elaboration. Danced by brother and sister prodigies Devraj and Ellora in the traditional abstract Odissi style, the playful duet was a feast for the eyes, with decadent costume and body ornamentation enhancing the immaculately detailed and expressive choreography.
Unfortunately I was not able to attend Programme C, which showcased artistic director Denise Fujiwara dancing a final performance of Natsu Nakajima’s Sumida River (1994). A contemporary choreography based on the renowned 15th century Noh play Sumidagawa by Motomasa, the story acknowledges the “difficult inner journey of a woman…[approaching] the core of the dance in a contemporary way through image, metaphor and the inner life of the dance movements” (Nakajima). As a teenager, Nakajima received training at the pioneering Kazuo Ohno Dance Institute, where she developed skills in Butoh, perhaps the most profound and expressive of all dance idioms. Nakajima and Fujiwara are key figures in exposing audiences around the world to Butoh through extensive touring of Sumida River.
From its beginnings as a small festival with a meager budget of $5,000, the CanAsian International Dance Festival dedicated itself to challenging conventional notions of pan-Asian dance and to provide a platform onto which dance artists could present diverse expressions of dance aesthetics. Since its inception in 1997 the festival has grown rapidly, having recently been awarded a Trillium Grant along with government and non-profit foundation support, bringing its budget to a respectable $200,000. Everyone involved in the festival, including its dancers, supporters and audience, has proven to be invaluable in bringing awareness to multicultural dance forms. No longer hidden within the fringes, pan-Asian dance, imbued with quality and curiosity, rightfully occupies an important position at the forefront of the Toronto dance world.
