2010
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
A cynic’s interpretation of a Christmas classic
The Nutcracker is beautiful, evocative and kinda creepy.
Patron Saint of Stanley Park: a more intense holiday fable
Hiro Kanagawa's new play, The Patron Saint of Stanley Park currently on at the Arts Club, is about a harried mother, a troubled teenage daughter and a brainy ten year old son coming to terms with the death of the husband and the childrens' father on Christmas eve the previous year.
Extra Extra read all about it: News is overwhelming…we have reached media saturation…
Yeah…
I know. We all know.
2010 is drawing to a close and we are still dealing with haywire news sources and mediums messaging messages of all sorts – not much conducive to a good night’s sleep or to enjoying seasonal holidays designed for celebrating peace on Earth.
Jade in the Coal: specific and timeless
Jade in the Coal is about a Chinese immigrant coal mining community in Cumberland BC during 1900. It begins with vignettes of some common events in the miners lives such as working underground in the mine, sending letters and money back to families in China, gambling and eating.
Experiments: where logic and emotion collide
Collisions between dance and science or dance and technology seem de rigeur these days. In Vancouver, October 2010 saw the premiere of Co. ERASGA’s Shadow Machine, which professed to explore “the conflicting relationships humanity has held with machines and the industrial process since the first years of the industrial revolution.” VIDF 2010 gave us Kitt Johnson’s Rankefod, an “evolutionary solo performance in celebration of the origin of the species.” In the summer of 2010 the Plastic Orchid Factory offered the “contemporary dysfunction” of endDORPHIN, a work expressing an alienated, over-medicated 21st century neurosis through dance. Common to each of these works is an interest in bringing the (apparently) opposing poles of art and science together through a work of dance.
