In a quick post-concert-survey I collected words from various people to describe our collective experience at the Balkan Beat Box. Here are some of them: “new," "old," "fun," "unified," "rambunctious," "rowdy," "full," "light," and “bright.” My favorite was the wordless expletive “ghrrraaa” denoting an over-flowing of fun and excitement.
Toronto Dance Theatre's Dis/(sol/ve)r explored gendered movement in ways that were thoughtful, impassioned, and unironic. A great deal of dance that I have seen lately has tended towards the cerebral, the conceptual, or the exceedingly technocratic, and so although a lack of irony can seem risky in this day and age, it was refreshing to watch a performance that dispensed with gimmicks and stated it's themes directly.
There was a rush of darkness and sound to welcome us in to the primordial soup and then….
A First Back appeared – and the wonder of it all !! A clavicular face !! Awash in light in the bottom corner of a gigantic back drop. An engulfing appliqué notion of decay, of mountain ranges, shimmering. Subdued. Earthen ground.
Shoulder blades and spine a fascinating frame for hands, hands an angular accent for the rising and falling of musculature.
There followed 45 minutes of impeccable, animaline embodiments, technically difficult poses and surprising movement: Angular, jittery, stacatto...
Kirstie: The easiest way for me to sum up my Nixon in China experience is to say that it felt like an intellectual rather than a dramatic experience. Although the performance was stocked with larger than life characters (Nixon, Mao, Pat Nixon, Mao's wife Jiang Qing, Henry Kissinger, and Mao's premiere Chou En-Lai) their encounter was not framed within a traditional narrative.
Marie Chouinard is not your average choreographer. She’s not even your average excellent choreographer. She’s mind-blowing, which is why if you could only see one dance show this season it should be The Golden Mean (Le Moyen d’Or), except that you can’t see it in Vancouver anymore because its Vancouver run was a mere two nights.
In the post-performance artist talk-back after Kokoro Dance's "Love, Sex, and Death" performance, choreographer Barbara Bourget spoke of fusing butoh and flamenco. This idea is visible in the movements of the dancers who combined butoh-style articulated, slow-movements with flexed feet and rounded arms, with the fierce foot-stamping and proud motions of flamenco. They were accompanied by a sound track of luminous, emotional trumpet, sparse piano, intricate guitar, and rich lines of melody carried by the cello.
Mascall Dance's "White Spider" is easily one of the most out-there performance experiences that I have had this year. The stage was equipped with a large revolving disk that was tilted on an angle and moved by a pneumatic lift. Climbing ropes hung from the ceiling, and on the back wall there was a contraption that looked like the ungainly offspring of a lightening rod and a basketball net (it turned out to be a dance/drawing machine). In the second act, a three-sided ladder-like structure was also wheeled onstage for dancers to climb and tumble on.
There are few Canadian playwrights as talented as Daniel MacIvor when it comes to crafting stories hinged on characters’ inner workings and emotional states - and he reaffirms that fact with his latest offering as a writer and director; Communion, now playing at the Tarragon Theatre.
Seven people are preparing to jump off the south side of the Vancouver Public Library. About 300 people have begun to gather, watching in anticipation. There are no paramedics on site, no safety nets have been deployed. Tension mounts. Children fidget and start to cry. Groups of friends huddle, clutching their daily dose of Starbucks.
Finally, the music starts and the dancers begin to saunter across the face of the library, held safely in place, mid-air, by rock climbing gear rigged to the top of the building. The dancers’ majestic movements are choreographed by Julia Taffe,...
