Vancouver
Screaming Silently: A Hot Mess
Frankly, the title says it all -- because that's what I was doing throughout most of the show. Screaming Silently is a trainwreck, I'm afraid, and no amount of cute stage business or earnest delivery can save it. The play is about four adult siblings reunited upon the death of their egomaniac film-director father, one Giles Forbes. In the style of such stories, the siblings return home to pay their last respects and rivalries and dark secrets emerge.
Dances for a Small Stage 23: Funny, macbre and well put together
"Dances for a Small Stage 23" was much more of a cohesive performance than I was expecting. The MC's did an admirable job of weaving a story around each vignette. I liked the frame story, there was a good through line, it provided a reasonable explanation for the vignettes and the bookends mirrored each other nicely.
Nigeria: verbal gymnastics and "Virginia Wolfe on Quaaludes"
Remember your mother telling you to finish your dinner because children were starving in Africa? As its central motif, ‘Nigeria’ contrasts the spiritual wealth of Africa with the obsession with monetary wealth, spiritual bankruptcy and ennui of life in West Vancouver. In spite of its dazzling verbal gymnastics, the play often feels clichéd. And then, in a refreshing u-turn, the playwright questions the authenticity of his own premise.
Ihtsi-pai-tapi-yopa: treads firmly on the spirit side
Ihtsi-pai-tapi-yopa—Essence of Life— by Coyote Arts Percussive Performance Association (CAPPA), brings story and movement from the Blackfoot-Blood-Kanai culture to the contemporary dance stage. Using lights and background video (Craig Alfredson), a soundscape ranging from bear growls to night-club beats (Sandy Scofield), and the strong, often animal-inspired movements of the three male dancers, the piece tells of bird men who become lost and full of conflict in an urban landscape, but are guided to a renewed sense of balance by a bear spirit. The story they tell of urban stress and the presence of an intervening, powerful, ultimately benevolent nature spirit—of separation and the need for connection to nature—is important for our contemporary world. The work is also significant in that CAPPA’s creative process involves consultation with Blackfoot elders. If there is a continuum between dance as entertainment and dance as food for the spirit, this piece treads firmly on the spirit side.
Status Quo: beyond the norm
Part of the 22nd annual Dancing on the Edge Festival, Status Quo is a dynamic and visceral hour-long journey through two solo pieces and one quartet. Choreographed and performed (in part) by Shay Kuebler and Amber Funk Barton, the mandate of Status Quo is to “create movement that is dynamically bold and emotionally captivating due to its velocity, speed, musicality and articulation.” Drawing from a variety of dance techniques (to this untrained eye, there were glimpses of pop and lock, breakdancing, modern, and even ballet), the pieces seemed to physically articulate the relationships and fragmentation of our own society.
Sidra Bell Dance and Gallim Dance
The Chutzpah! Festival coninues: on March 8th Sidra Bell Dance and Gallim Dance of New York presented a double-bill performance. Though vastly different in style, neither Sidra's Bell's “Anthology” nor Gallim Dance's “I Can See Myself in Your Pupil” overtly showed their conceptual underpinnings. Both companies focused on the purely physical rather than intellectual. Sidra Bell Dance explored polarities, representing the body as sultry and mechanical, while Gallim Dance shook things up with a wild, free-for-all performance.
Idan Raichel Project's Tapestry of Sound
There are the words and the melodies I write, and there are the fusions that I create between ethnic groups, between currents and between people, and in the encounter between them everything is open ~ Idan Raichel
Sending a Dove to Noah: a review of Craig’s List Cantata
The exploration of “acquisition and attrition” which was my experience of Craig’s List Cantata, played itself out under lights suspended from the ceiling. A pulley system lifted the lighting-rig as the show began and the scavenged, salvaged, pre-loved, gently-used, antique lamps with their fringed shades hanging soft, laced and beaded, illuminated the stage.
If Robots Could Choreograph...:Édouard Lock's "New Work."
Can a choreography be at once an orgiastic celebration of the human body in motion and an utterly clinical, soulless exhibit of dance?
It’s Big Work to make a World Complete: Review of Eve Egoyan playing Anne Southam’s Simple Lines of Inquiry
The lush, rich lines of a Fazioli concert grand piano dominated the centre of the Heritage Hall on Main street. Seats were placed all around the glossy, topless instrument. Topless for good reason, because when Eve Egoyan began playing Simple Lines of Inquiry, the room filled with the rising rolling resonances of its body, the slow movement and expansive time of Anne Southam’s composition bringing us into a contemplative space, together.
