ProArteDanza: virtuosic but without the emotion
"ProArteDanza":http://www.proartedanza.com/ is a Toronto company that aims to fuse the best of modern with the best of ballet. It has attracted such luminaries as James Kudelka, Rex Harrington and Evelyn Hart to its fold and has earned its place on the Canadian stage with clean, technically excellent work.
As part of the "Chutzpah! Festival":http://www.chutzpahfestival.com/index.html, ProArteDanza showcased five short pieces that were choreographed and performed by various members of the company. From the boisterous audience reception of the work, it was clear that there was a lot of love for this fairly young company, and while I found their work to be aesthetically appealing and technically strong, I did not feel as much emotional connection to the work as such an otherwise strong company might have commanded.
The two pieces that stood out for me were the first one _Unfinished 32_, which was choreographed for four dancers, and the final one _We will…_, also for four dancers. The pieces in between, which included two duets and one piece with film in the background were all solid pieces of choreography. Still, I found that much of the work of this company appeared to be attempting to occupy an emotionally very high pitched place, but without the development or the clarity of meaning. The work, in spite of its obvious skill, left me cold.
_Unfinished 32_ was a fast paced piece that used the dancers’ physical strength to an extreme, amply demonstrating the high quality technical skill the four dancers are capable of. Within the piece, there were duets shared between the two female dancers, a duet between the two male dancers that mirrored the women’s duet, and plenty of group work that showed off the company’s sense of unison and their strength, flexibility and control. However, it reminded me somewhat of a contact improv session in that it was highly physical but not as fully realized as other modern pieces I’ve seen. I found the work to be reliant on stock gestures such as one dancer putting her/his hand on the shoulder of another to draw her/him in or push her/him away, or the gesture of one dancer running at the other in order to initiate a lift. The combination of choreography, which was somewhat overdone, with the fast pace of the piece left me wondering what the frenzy was all about.
After several other pieces whose meaning eluded me, the last section _We will…_ allowed the dancers to hit their stride. The two women in this piece were both dancing en pointe, and one of the most striking images was that of the very tall female dancer showing off her gorgeous extension. It’s not often that you see such a tall ballet dancer, and the power of this was remarkable, and worked to create an interesting dynamic between her and her male partner as well as an aesthetic dynamic between her and the other, much smaller female dancer. I don’t normally like watching ballet all that much and I have sometimes found that I enjoy modern/ballet fusion even less, but there was a lot to appreciate in _We will…_ The dancing was flawlessly strong, and there was an emotional energy about this piece that I didn’t feel enough of in the rest of the evening. In a way, there was something about putting these dancers in pointe shoes that seemed to bring them into their element, as if by being allowed to dance as ballet dancers, they were, ironically, freer to interpret the work in a way that was more present than the rest of the pieces.
I find it hard to review a show like this one. There was nothing at all wrong with it; in fact, there was a lot that was quite excellent about it. As a matter of personal preference, I get more out of dance that comes with a more clearly articulated emotional element – whether it emerges in the form of comedy or agony or deep personal reflection – I generally relate better to work that has a more obvious inner world. Still, ProArteDanza is remarkable for its sheer physicality and, although what was showcased was not exactly risk-taking art, it was enjoyable to see such virtuosic dancers taking up the stage.
_ProArteDanza presented was presented by the Chutzpah! Festival and Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad; Performances were on February 26 & 28, and March 1 at the Norman Rothstein Theatre in Vancouver._