Toronto Dance Theatre presents Dis/(sol/ve)r
November 18-22 at Fleck Dance Theatre
By Leandra de Valois-Franklin
Toronto Dance Theatre is currently celebrating its 40th year as one of the city’s foremost dance institutions. At its helm is the ultra-hip Christopher House, artistic director of the company since 1994 and one of Canada’s leading contemporary choreographers. House, who studied philosophy and political science before delving pointed-foot first into the dance world, is known for integrating academia into his artistic creations. His pieces are often informed by a profound curiosity about travel, science, the visual arts, cinema and literature, and he draws inspiration from subjects ranging from mythology to genetics.
In his latest work, Dis(sol/ve)r, House upholds his reputation as the country’s brainiest choreographer, merging dance and quantum physics in a complex, multi-layered work based on particle theory and probability waves. Its central theme concerns the idea of dissolving — “dissolving lovers, the moment of joy, the comfort of cruelty, rising and falling.” While the superficial structure addresses the nature of love, playing with youthful, whimsical qualities, its internal layer concerns itself with quantum theory, particularly the laws of attraction.
The energetic one-hour work centres around an unusual party setting, with five male and four female performers. Wearing suits and sepia-toned vintage-inspired silhouettes by Phillip Sparks, the stylish dancers with their Queen West haircuts sashay across the stage in unpredictable patterns suggestive of random elementary particles moving through space. Like subatomic particles themselves, it is impossible to know their momentum and position simultaneously.
The choreography ranges from kinetic, kaleidoscopic patterns of moving bodies, to chance encounters of duets as well as solos; at times witty, at times passionate, and even at times violent. A repeated gesture has two dancers about to embrace, when one becomes viscous and dissolves to the floor, leaving the other dancer grasping the air. Each dancer fully embraces their role as a subject within House’s bizarre experiment in organized chaos, despite not always being able to embrace one another.
House is known for involving multidisciplinary aspects in his work, linking film and movement, or collaborating with musicians (like the Hidden Cameras). Dis/(sol/ve)r is kept simple with a traditional relationship of movement to a prerecorded soundtrack provided by his longtime collaborator Phil Strong. The Dora award-winning composer created a bouncy, electronic score, featuring melodies and harmonies in a variety of moods, using an assortment of quirky instruments like the nyckelharpa, the harmonium and the hurdy-gurdy. Very indie indeed.
House is a major force in the Canadian dance community, having acted as resident choreographer for Toronto Dance Theatre since 1981 with a contribution of over fifty works to the company’s repertoire, as well as for other Canadian and international companies. He constantly redefines contemporary dance vocabulary, building choreographic language that is piece-specific, reinventing material that is imaginative and unpredictable. Attending a work like Dis/(sol/ve)r is not a passive experience, as themes are layered with the artistic and scientific, demanding examination on the microscopic, or in this case, subatomic level.
