Our reviewer is in love...
In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, which is today, I’d like to begin by saying that Entity, which was performed by Wayne McGregor’s company, Random Dance from the UK, at Vancouver Playhouse on February 10th and 11th, caused me to remember what made me fall in love with contemporary dance in the first place. It’s been a while since I developed such a crush on a show, but sitting in the dark and watching the exhilarating choreography and stunning dancers of Entity, I could feel my heart beating a little faster. I think it might be love.
There is a purity, an authenticity to this show: it is so evident that Wayne McGregor and all of his company members give everything they’ve got to this piece. The absolute commitment to the dance comes through in everything from the exceptional creativity of the choreography to the immense precision of every move that every dancer makes. For the entirety of the show, I felt plunged deep into a passionate immersion of skill and originality.
The choreography of Entity is worth commenting on in that it is detailed, as well as grand, taking up all the space of the stage with bold, evocative movement. Throughout the piece, the dancers are split up into a series of duos and trios and the occasional solo, but perhaps most thrilling is the power of the ensemble work during which all ten dancers consume the stage with a terribly commanding physical presence that demands an amplified emotional response. The fact that Entity is so very evocative is noteworthy considering that, in my review of a recent production by La La La Human Steps I commented that the choreography seemed unfortunately clinical, as if a robot had concocted it, yet Entity was conceived by choreographer Wayne McGregor as an exploration of the relationship between neuroscience – what the brain does – and how the body interprets that through movement. In fact, McGregor refers to his interest in “an artificially intelligent choreographic entity”, as in software that ‘thinks’ and produces movement. This pre-occupation of McGregor’s may explain some of the more alien aspects of his choreography: the repetitive gestures, the strange isolations, but in spite of this, Entity retains a staggering force throughout as it guides the audience through several stages of development.
Perhaps the only thing I didn’t fall for in this piece was the set. For much of the performance, the dancers were surrounded on three sides by a scrim-like set that was lit to reveal a series of wooden supports that somewhat resembled a rib-cage. While it was not aesthetically displeasing, I did not find the sets to be particularly necessary, and in moments I found that they detracted from the dance in that they absorbed some of the immense energy of the dancers rather than allowing that energy to soar as much as it could have.
Still, Entity was absolutely edgy, intelligent and fearless; the dancers burned up the stage with this work and reminded me of the ferocious passion that can be communicated through dance. It used to be that every time I sat down in the dark to wait for a show to begin, I felt the excitement of anticipation. The constancy of that feeling has long since been eroded, but with Entity behind me, I might just feel a flicker of it the next time I sit in that dark theatre hoping that something amazing will begin.