MONDOmagazine

Denise Fujiwara's solo Lost & Found. Photo by John Lauener

DanceWorks presents
Denise Fujiwara and Susie Burpee
Part of Harbourfront’s NextSteps Series
Runs until March 6, 2010 @ Enwave Theatre

By Helen Fylactou

Choreographed and performed by Fujiwara, Lost & Found is the story of the slow progression of a woman losing her mind. Fujiwara exclaims to the audience, “I know I have issues, but who would I be without my issues.” It’s a heart-wrenching performance examining the duality of a woman dealing with mental instability; she’s struggling to find herself while trying not to lose what defines her. Fujiwara appears in multiple outfits and with an empty nest on her head. As the performance continues, Fujiwara begins to shed the layers, enacting different stages of her depression.

Fujiwara expresses so much without much movement — Read the rest of this entry »

image via harbourfrontcentre.com

confluence
Presented by Peggy Baker Dance Projects
Part of Harbourfront’s Next Steps series
Ran February 24-28 @ Enwave Theatre

By Helen Fylactou

confluence is loosely inspired by scientist Lewis Thomas’s essay “Lives of a Cell” and Sylvia Safdie’s artwork on insects. Divided into three contemporary dance works, confluence results in a complex interconnectivity between isolation, embodiment and performance. An original evening of dance, it features two works choreographed by Peggy Baker herself – a new solo and a trio for three dancers, plus a duet by legendary New York choreographer Doug Varone.

The first work of the evening was the solo piece performed by Baker. Titled earthling, it exposes Baker on a dimly lit stage, crouched on the edge of a sloping platform.  She takes the form of some unidentified creature that is drained of all emotion. Her movements are reptilian-like and as she rocks back and forth, she begins to resemble a beetle stuck on its back. Considering Baker’s age, her athleticism and strength is remarkable. Her infamous extensions did not fail to impress. Baker’s tightly choreographed solo reflects how solitary one person can feel despite the fact that they are part of something much larger.

The world premiere and centrepiece of the evening Read the rest of this entry »

Photo of Linnea Wong by Kristy Kennedy.

Toronto Dance Theatre’s Pteros Tactics
Choreographed by Christopher House
As part of Harbourfront Centre’s NextSteps series
February 15-20 @ Fleck Dance Theatre

By Tina Chu

Departing for an essay written by Anne Carson entitled Eros the Bittersweet, Christopher House’s Pteros Tactics is an exploration of the instant of desire.

As explored in Carson’s text and House’s choreography, to desire is to acknowledge a lack of something in oneself, thus it is the belief that to attain one’s object of desire would achieve a state of fulfillment.

Pteros Tactics begins with disjointed personal introductions by the dancers themselves, delivering a handful of lines like reciting snippets of personal ads about likes, best features, nice breasts, and being shy but willing, successfully eliciting more than a few laughs from the audience.

A little surprised by this beginning, and more than a bit thrown off, I couldn’t begin to guess where the performance would lead and when the lights dimmed for the last time, I felt uncertain I had been able to follow Pteros anywhere. Read the rest of this entry »

roadkill
Part of Harbourfront Centre’s World Stage
Choreographed by Gavin Webber, Grayson Millwood and Sarah-Jayne Howard
February 3–6 @ Enwave Theatre

By Tina Chu

Even without understanding its exploration of agoraphobia and paranoia, I would have felt the same weighted anticipation as the lights dimmed for Splintergroup’s performance of roadkill at Enwave Theatre.

It’s not everyday a dance performance will incorporate a car and a phone booth all in one go. And while the sight of these props on stage was curious enough, seeing performers Gavin Webber, Grayson Millwood, and Gabrielle Nankivell interact with them was something the word curious cannot even begin to describe. Read the rest of this entry »

Photograph by Boja Vasic.

DISPLACEMENT
Choreographed by Robert Glumbek
Visual Artist Vessna Perunovich
Composed by Christos Hatzis
November 18-21 @ Fleck Dance Theatre

By Gabrielle Charron-Merritt

The idea of displacement is easy to grasp, but it is hard to imagine such experiences, because it forces us to (re)live moments filled with uncertainty, helplessness, and prolonged pain. Watching Displacement was a sensitive experience; the small ensemble of seven skilled dancers morph into different emotional representations of displacement, while the video installation and music move, ever-changing, for much of the 62-minute piece.

Displacement is a multimedia piece presented by Vitek Wincza, artistic director of the Hamilton Conservatory for the Arts Dance Theatre. Composer Christos Hatzis provided two compositions, The String Quartet No. 1 (The Awakening) and The String Quartet No. 2 (The Gathering), as the score. Visual artist Vessna Perunovich’s artwork came  from past installations and performance art pieces. Although both music and art had been created some years back and are being reused for this current production, the original choreography by Robert Glumbek synthesizes the three art forms, resulting in a performance that connects the artists’ ideas in a renewed and relevant way. Read the rest of this entry »

Esmeralda Enrique

¡Lorca! In Search of Duende
Choreographed by Esmeralda Enrique and Juan Ogalla
Part of Harbourfront Centre’s NextSteps 2009-10
Ran November 12-15th @ Fleck Dance Theatre

By Helen Fylactou

Last week saw the second of two recent Lorca-inspired performances in Toronto (see Daina Valiulis’ review of Des Walsh’s Rocking the Cradle). This dance event, however, fused Lorca’s poetry with passion-infused flamenco.

Lorca, a Spanish poet and dramatist, was involved in the Generation of ’27 — a group of artists famous for their avant-garde art movement in Spain. As his work became more successful, Lorca’s personal dichotomy between his fame and love-sick self intensified. Lorca’s better-known plays and poetry explore love, pride, passion, and death. The sold-out performance of ¡Lorca! In Search of Duende connected with Lorca’s intensity and radiated passion, strength and love.

Choreographer and dancer Juan Ogalla opened the evening with the sensational performance entitled Jinete/Rider (Soleta por Buleria). The prominent theme of passion and sex made Ogalla’s presence unavoidable. Accompanied by a live flamenco band, he maintained a rhythmic dialogue between himself and the musicians, and exuded sexual energy that was palpable, commanding attention with rapid footwork that followed the intricate melody. He expertly wended through the music, showing off the control of his upper bodywork and sculpted arm movement. Oozing with masculinity, Ogalla is a dancer of raw talent and virtuosity. Read the rest of this entry »

DanceWorks presents
The Vision Impure
Choreography by Noam Gagnon, Nigel Charnock, Daniel Léveillé
Part of Harbourfront Centre’s NextSteps Series
November 6 & 7 @ Enwave Theatre

By Tina Chu

I’ve been stacking anticipation onto the empty stage for the past half hour and as the lights dim, I’m overcome by the stillness hushing the audience, a stillness that produces what I’ve been waiting for all week, Noam Gagnon in his solo performance, The Vision Impure.

Beginning with his own choreography, Gone, Unfold me, and A few, Gagnon navigates through an experience of situating oneself in loss and mending. Punctuated by films composed through the combined efforts of Gagnon, Aram Cohen, and Jaimie Griffiths, the use of multimedia intensifies Gagnon’s movements and helps to immerse the audience without being overpowering. Though, to overpower a performer like Gagnon is probably not an easy undertaking. Read the rest of this entry »

Dancing In My Unbirthday Suit
Presented by Inertia Productions

Robert Gill Theatre
Tue July 7 @ 10:30pm
Wed July 8 @ 4:00pm
Thu July 9 @ 7:00pm
Sun July 12 @ 3:30pm
Tickets are $10 at the door.

Reviewed by Daina Valiulis

Dancing is a cute, wacky little dance piece brought to you by Montreal’s Inertia Productions, and featuring Allison Elizabeth Burns, Vanessa Kneale, and Joannie Pharand. At first, it’s a bit of a mess: girls dressed in party dresses tumble and trip over each other. But the show cleans up as it goes along, presenting a few little scenarios that were creative and delightful to watch.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Zata Omm Dance Projects presents Frames
Presented by DanceWorks
Choreographed by William Yong
Original sound score by Andre Rocca and video by Elysha Poirier
Runs March 19-21 @ Enwave Theatre

By Margarita Osipian

Five dancers silhouetted against a blank backdrop, a thin white line projected through their bodies, cutting the central dancer down the middle. The line slowly grows as it envelops all five dancers on stage. Heavy breathing fills the theatre and brings a vivid physicality to the dancer’s moving bodies.

William Yong’s Frames created an understanding of movement centred on the body, on the visceral quality of performance. Video projections by Elysha Poirier shifted the piece outside of the space of traditional dance performances, at one point, the dancers stood against the back wall of the stage and a sound wave ran over their bodies while the voices of the media projected through them.

Andre Rocca’s sound score added a beautiful element, bordering on eerie and haunting. When the music was taken away, the audience was left with silent, dancing bodies — a possible distraction, but also a good point to notice the music’s impact on the cohesion of the piece.

When the dancers undressed and performed nude, their minimalist movements became even more pronounced, but not forcibly provocative or risqué. Watching the dancer’s bodies without any costume or covering brought out the purity of movement.

The work oscillated between scenes of solitude with a single dancer on the stage and sections where all five dancers were intertwined. The beginning was laced with moments where the dancers were in chaos together — four dancers grabbing, pulling, and grasping the body of the fifth. One of the last pieces involved the dancers connected in a chain, their movements echoing and flowing through one another’s bodies.

As the proverbial fourth wall between the audience and the performers was broken, Yong tried to convey ideas about frames of reference, time and memory, and the impact of the media on perceptions. The dancers peered out through an imaginary peep-hole, pushing and pulling one another aside to get a better look. In the end, however, this piece was notable for its aesthetic beauty-the way the dancers bodies moved effortlessly through space, and the haunting quality that the interconnected multimedia design evoked — not these compelling, academic ideas.

White Moon Dance Nights
Presented by AKA Dance
February 25-28 @ Young Centre for the Performing Arts

By Helen Fylactou

Celebrating the 80^th anniversary of the inauguration of diplomatic relations between Canada and Japan, AKA Dance’s White Moon Dance Nights features new works from Denise Fujiwara, Matjash Mrozewski, and Keiko Ninomiya, as well as ZUKE’s Dora-nominated You see the tree, you don’t see the forest and AKA’s In a Single Bound, inspired by Japanese and North American comic book superheroes.

Fujiwara’s Lost and Found juxtaposes the Japanese dance style of Butoh with improvisational dance. Her performance began and ended with this spoken line: “They say the body never lies. But I lie all the time. And that’s the truth.” The line recognizes the internal struggle of duality — a theme followed throughout all the night’s performances. Lost and Found was both unsettling and beautiful. Keeping in fashion with Butoh, Fujiwara’s movements were at times rigid and grotesque, evoking desperation. Other movements were fluid and beautiful, transforming despair into hope. The idiosyncratic, raw movements of Fujiwara’s solo coexist with exquisite stillness. In her quiet moments, she expresses everything she needs with facial expression.

Contrasting the powerfully unsettling Fujiwara piece, Amy Hampton and Keiko Ninomiya emulate the female superheroes of Japan and Canada. In a Single Bound is the only performance of the night with live music, courtesy of DJ Gerald Belanger. The audience enjoyed the light-hearted routine of dance-fighting, becoming lively alongside Hampton and Ninomiya’s performance. Choreographed with a campy sense of humour, the piece indulged the audience with sound effects, superhero stances, and dance-and-fight sequences to the effect of cheering and laughing throughout the theatre. The two performers were in perfect unison, and had a connection that most dancers take years to find. In a choreographed knife sequence, the dancers showcased their precision and clean movement. Belanger elaborated on the story by including sound effects. Hampton and Ninomiya’s strengths are best shown in their contemporary style, plus over-the-top kicks, quick foot movements, front flips, and interweaving arm movements.

Ki wo mite Mori wo minai, translated as You see the tree, you don’t see the forest, was the most impressionistic performance. The theatre is pitch black for a few moments, when suddenly a spot light reveals a fully cloaked character. He is completely still. Suddenly his hands begin to move across his chest, and then another set of hands appear. The cloaked stranger pulls a young girl out from behind him. ZUKE (Tokyo’s Kinya Zulu Tsuruymana) and Keiko Ninomiya, both in monochromatic outfits, explore the idea of perception and dependence through seamless synchronicity. The performance, like Fujiwara’s, is in Butoh style. Weaving between slow movements and angst-filled, spastic movement, the dancers expose the complexities of relationships. Taking turns cloaking and then uncloaking each other, the dancer’s perceptions of reality are constantly changing. The beauty in this performance is the trust that you see between Tsuruyama and Ninomiya. The dancers create unusual forms, and hold their form for exaggerated periods. Both Tsuruyama and Ninomiya are fluid in their awkwardness.

As a representation of Canadian-Japanese diplomatic relations, this cross-cultural production missed its mark — but as a fantastic exploration of eclectic performance style, White Moon Dance Nights is more than worth the price of admission.

COBA presents Banta
World premieres of Passage, Maa Keeba, and Inner Voice, plus a remount of Doun Doun Dance
February 20-22 @ Fleck Dance Theatre

By Margarita Osipian

I’m endlessly fascinated by contemporary dance’s beautiful manifestations. I grew up going to classical dance performances, mainly ballets, and the theatre. So I jumped at the chance to attend Banta, a presentation of the Collective of Black Artists (COBA). Rooted in the legacy and storytelling of African history, COBA’s creations address social themes through a unique aesthetic lens. The latest, Banta, was actually a series of four performances broken up with a short break between each piece. I tried not to read the performance descriptions in the show’s catalogue because I wanted to see if I could pull the narrative from the dancers on the stage. There’s something humbling, especially for a writer, to witness a story without words. Banta’s performances successfully addressed the idea of narrative and momentum through time, using music, rhythm, and bodies. But should a marker of success be based upon whether the story that I interpreted from the dancers was the same as the story that they were attempting to tell? In the end, it’s not relevant — because the mark of a good storyteller is the enjoyment inherent in the process of telling and listening.

BaKari E. Lindsay’s Maa Keeba is a tribute to the legendary South African singer Miriam Makeba, who collapsed as she was leaving the stage after one of her last performances in Italy. Opening with a group of dancers in black outfits silhouetted against a coloured backdrop, this was my favourite piece of the night. The dancers worked in beautiful unison, creating a community of dancers that told the same story. The simplicity of their costumes allowed the movements of their bodies to take centre stage. Impressive transitions shifted the story seamlessly from one part to the next, moving from an individual dancer to the reemergence of the group. One of the most breathtaking scenes was at the end of this performance when the dancer playing Makeba falls on the stage, gasping for air. Bathed in a ray of light shining across the stage, her bright orange skirt illuminated, only the sounds of her struggling for breath filling the room. This spectacular image is still deeply engraved in my mind.

The two middle performances, Charmaine Headley’s Passage and Lindsay’s Inner Voice, were slower in their execution. They featured subtler storytelling and didn’t capture my attention the same way Maa Keeba had. They were slightly repetitive and far more aestheticized. The focus on the body and its subtle movements stood out in these pieces. Inner Voice, comprised of a group of female dancers circling around one male dancer, was unique because the dancers were disjointed from one another in their movements and choreography.

The final performance, a remount of Sis Robin Hibbert’s spirited Doun Doun Dance, woke up the audience with high energy hand drumming and singing. The colourful costumes illuminated the darkness evoked in the previous performances. I could see the rhythms and sounds moving along the stage as the drummers communicated through music to one another. A spectacular end to an array of storytelling through dance.