princess productions presents
6th Biennial of dance: made in canada/fait au canada (Opening Night: In Tune: made in canada/fait au canada)
Featuring new choreographies by Susie Burpee (Toronto) and Jolene Bailie (Winnipeg)
Photography Exhibition by Ömer Yükseker
Ran April, 2 – 4, 2009 @ at Betty Oliphant Theatre
By Helen Fylactou
Winnipeg’s Jolene Bailie opened the night with her signature piece Switchback. The captivating solo features Bailie as an isolated creature navigating her way around the stage. The piece begins with the spotlight focusing on a Roman helmet hanging in mid-air. Quicker than your eyes can adjust, the lights are off again, and on again, and the audience sees Bailie for the first time. She is holding herself up in a push-up position. Her head twitches back and forth in some sort of animalistic ritual, perfectly timed to a drumming score by Jared Powell and Aphexx Twinn. To further evoke animalistic emotions, Bailie’s costume resembles a bird, a horse, a reptile, and a Roman warrior. An exquisite feat to watch, Bailie’s pure athleticism is experienced through watching her perfect balance, elevation, and contortionist movements. The movements are tightly choreographed as Bailie shifts from slashing jumps and quick movements to acute stillness. As the performance progresses, her movements become more awkward, mirroring the negative and isolating effects that civilization is having on animals and on the environment. The piece ends as it began: in total silence with only spotlight focusing on a hanging helmet — cyclical.
Toronto-based Susie Burpee’s A Mass Becomes You pays homage to Cindy Sherman’s portrait entitled Untitled 122. Her face is covered by a blonde wig, and she is wearing a constricting black dress. Initially, Burpee is being controlled by the one stereo player on stage. Blaring Mozart’s Requiem Mass in D Minor, Burpee thrusts, convulses, rolls around, and audibly squeaks to the music (which is skipping with every move she makes). She is blindly trying to navigate herself away from Mozart’s Requiem, but she is possessed by it. As the performance progresses, Burpee brings more and more stereos onto the stage. She is mocking the dependent relationship between society and technology. The music begins to weave between playing Requiem Mass to static, to anything on the radio, to her own huffs and groans. Burpee’s solo piece is more of a duet than a solo. The roles reverse half-way as Burpee begins to control the technology. As a positive note to this performance, Burpee is dead-on with her costume. It is as if the woman in the photography stepped off the page and onto the stage. Also, Burpee’s ability to make an inanimate object so animated hasn’t been this well done since, well, since Beauty and the Beast.
Bailie was technically phenomenal: her strengths and abilities were mind-blowing, but Burpee’s performance wasn’t dance. Worse, it was embarrassing for the audience and the performer. The “dance” looked like a cracked-out Courtney Love going through detox on stage — lying on ground and making weird noises while contorting. She kept bringing portable players onstage in a bizarre, OCD showcase. An audience member might’ve thought “I paid $20 to listen to Mozart remixed with static while watching a woman having a orgasm…from a stereo.” The results were contrived, self-indulgent, and unmoving.
