This was my second opportunity to see Wen Wei Wang’s *Three Sixty Five*, and before the show, I was excited. I loved Three Sixty Five the first time I saw it and was looking forward to seeing its highly emotive physicality again as part of this year’s "Dancing on the Edge Festival":http://www.dancingontheedge.org/. Of course, choreographies evolve, and Three Sixty Five was a different show the second time around; it seemed a bit smoothed down, mellower in some ways, but it remained a showcase for the outstanding talent of Wang and his dancers....
On a warm, windy summer evening in July, I sat on a folding chair outside the Roundhouse in Yaletown. This is an area of Vancouver I seldom frequent, yet at that moment in time, it felt like the heart of the city, of my city. I was surrounded by cement and brick, skyscrapers looming above me and above the makeshift stage. The sun was setting, Alvin danced.
Alvin Erasga Tolentino. Photo by Alex Waterhouse-Hayward.
Putting ideas ahead of aesthetics when making art can be an interesting exercise. This kind of conceptual art tends to provoke questions about the nature of art, about what makes for good art, and about the boundaries of form and genre. But, if the resulting artwork doesn’t come up with many good answers to the questions it asks, then one has to ask what the point of the exercise is. If an artist isn’t in it for the aesthetics, and doesn’t do a great job of addressing the big questions either, then what is the value of such art? This...
On Saturday, June 6, *Skin Divers* & *Carmen* brought sexuality to the Four Seasons stage to rival the hottest bedroom. Skin Divers opens the senses to the body’s power to remember, and the mind continues to process it long after curtain. While this multimedia piece is sophisticated and stimulating, Carmen overwhelms audiences during the second half of the evening. This provocative interpretation of the famed opera is an eruption of passions so powerful they cannot be processed, simply absorbed.
Ravenous applause greeted the opening performance of *Giselle* last night and the final production for prima ballerina Chan Hon Goh. Leading the "National Ballet of Canada":http://www.national.ballet.ca/, which has been her home for 20 years, Goh was a revelation in the majestic Four Seasons auditorium. Her dancing was sublime, as it has been throughout her dazzling career. But her dramatic power continues to evolve and engulf the stage.
What makes a show like *live** work is the fact that it not only plays with our perceptions of reality and illusion, but that it plays with the very idea of performance itself, stretching the concept of performativity to the far end of the spectrum and asking questions about who is audience and who is performer, and what constitutes spectacle in the first place. The great thing about this show, however, is that it asks all these questions without slacking off into the mentality that if one is asking questions, then anything goes in the way of aesthetics. All of...
Is it trite to say that "Hubbard Street Dance Chicago":http://hubbardstreetdance.com/home.asp was a joy to watch? Even if it is, I’ll risk the cliché by saying that the four choreographies presented by "Dance House":http://www.dancehouse.ca/ at the Vancouver Playhouse on April 24 and 25 were spectacularly energetic, beautifully graceful and cleverly choreographed. While I can’t say that the program was edgy or challenging in its theme or aesthetics, it was, quite simply, excellent dance. Each of the four pieces was quite different from the other, making for an enjoyably varied program that breathed fresh air into the Vancouver scene....
The sheer joy of Hubbard Street Dance; photo Todd Rosenberg
A young cast gives new life to Giacomo Puccini’s La Boheme. This production by The Canadian Opera Company charmed audiences if not critics at the opening April 17 at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts.
Frédérique Vézina as Mimì and David Pomeroy as Rodolfo La Bohème; photo: Michael Cooper
In the 1997 film "Sick":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/index.html?curid=1713997, performance artist Bob Flanagan nailed his penis to a board, cracked jokes and urinated on the lens of the camera that was filming him. I saw this excerpt of the film and it made me cringe. But here’s the thing, Bob Flanagan was a sado-masochist who had cystic fibrosis and spent much of his life making art about how he used pain to live with the pain of his disease. Does this make for good art? I’m still not entirely sure, but at least it was purposeful....
Pierre-Paul Savoie and Marc Boivin in Mi-un ni d’eux.
My first impression of *F*, a new work by "Kokoro Dance":http://www.kokoro.ca/, presented in this year’s "Vancouver International Dance Festival":http://www.vidf.ca/, at the Roundhouse was a striking use of color and height, which the combination of Judy Nakagawa’s giant hanging sculpture and Cori Ohirko’s beautifully stark costume design certainly provide. My second impression was of the highlighted, rapid, molten phrases that Deanna Peters uses to move across the stage effortlessly; my eye was riveted to her every nuance. After that, I no longer knew where to look.
