Category Archives: Dance

Dance, Performance, Ramble

Love | Death | Devil – The Piece by the Ben J. Riepe Kompanie

Howdy!

Do you remember John Tenniel’s rabbit illustrations for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll?

John Tenniel's rabbit illustration from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
John Tenniel's rabbit illustration from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

That was the first thing I thought of when I saw the program for Love | Death | Devil – The Piece by the Ben J. Riepe Kompanie

Photo : Ursula Kaufmann
Photo : Ursula Kaufmann

Nothing like a rabbit wearing a ruff to bring back memories from my childhood. Which then led me to The Jefferson Airplane.

Which led me to the brown acid, which enabled me to make some sense, or gain some comprehension and understanding of Love | Death | Devil – The Piece by the Ben J. Riepe Kompanie. In short it’s a bad acid trip.

It played at La Chapelle last week and was a very big deal. It was the North American premiere, and quite possibly the first time that the Ben J. Riepe Kompanie itself had performed in this side of the Atlantic. Back in the 1980s I used to say that all the cool stuff either originated here or made it’s way here from New York or Paris. The Ben J. Riepe Kompanie preformed Love | Death | Devil – The Piece in Chennai, Dhaka and Würzburger before making it to Montreal. This is not a good thing.

Nothing against any of those cities, but I’m not certain that I am comfortable with the idea of Montreal being culturally behind a town of about 150,00 people in northern Germany or the capital of Bangladesh. Call me culturally prejudiced or worse if you wish, but I’d kind of like to think that Montreal hasn’t fallen that far.

Liebe.Tod.Teufel - Das Stück photo by Ursula Kaufmann
Liebe.Tod.Teufel - Das Stück photo by Ursula Kaufmann

But enough of that, I’m not here to discuss cultural policy, I’m here to talk about the Ben J. Riepe Kompanie‘s Love | Death | Devil – The Piece. From as much as I can gather it is a compilation of what I would call the greatest bits from Love, Death and the Devil. As far as I can tell Love, Death and the Devil is kind of like the Ring Cycle in that it consists of five separate performances that do not necessarily have to be seen consecutively. (Image 1: The Chessboard Room, Image 2: The Dark Chamber, Image 3: Love, Sex and Vanity, Image 4: The White Chamber, Image 5: Labyrinth.)

Going through the Ben J. Riepe Kompanie‘s YouTube videos you can easily see things (costumes, moves, dialogue, etc.) that are common to things in the Images and The Piece. But let me back up a bit. When the show starts there’s a guy at a table in the back and a woman beside a stuffed deer on the other side of the stage also in back. The rest of the stage is bare except for some microphones.

Liebe.Tod.Teufel - Das Stück photo by Ursula Kaufmann
Liebe.Tod.Teufel - Das Stück photo by Ursula Kaufmann

What carries the performance, is that for just about the rest of the show, everyone is wearing some sort of animal mask. Besides the bunny masks, ape masks, sheep masks and there were probably some animals that I missed. The dancing itself isn’t so much dancing as structured and controlled movement. There’s some screaming, some simulated sodomy, some weird yoga poses and talking through a megaphone.

In other words it’s kind of rough, violent without any real bloodshed and the type of show that can make you wince if you aren’t quite prepared for it. But trying to find a plot or narrative was beyond me. I’m fairly certain that there wasn’t supposed to be one. But I’m still at a loss of trying to figure out the point.

Since I am not familiar with the Ben J. Riepe Kompanie or seen any of their previous work I was left scratching my head. It is obviously absurdist, with a strong dose of nihilism, angst and perhaps some surrealism, too. But no matter which angle I looked at it from, nor how hard I squinted I couldn’t quite wrap my brain around how it was depicting death, love or the devil for that matter.

Part of this obviously has to do with the fact that it is movement and not a play. But I also can’t help but wondering if the “greatest bits” nature of the piece is also a factor. Kind of like trying to make sense of the Variatio 4. a 1 Clav. from the Goldberg variations and the E flat-minor fugue from The Well-Tempered Clavier after hearing them played like they were parts of the same piece.

Overall I’m not quite sure what to make of the piece. On one hand I do recognize that just because Mr. Riepe is speaking a language that I don’t completely understand doesn’t mean he isn’t making sense. But on the other hand it isn’t like I don’t understand it totally (kind of like my relationship with the language of Molière) and what parts I do understand don’t really make sense to me, if you get my drift.

Which brings us back to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. It’s been a while since I’ve read it, and longer since I studied it closely. But I’m certain I can find enough connections to make it worthwhile.

The first one that literally jumps up at me (ok, the second, after the rabbit) is where Fa-Hsuan Chen gets lifted up by her head. In chapter five, Alice meets the caterpillar and after eating some of the mushroom her head grows instantaneously. The third one is… OK, maybe there isn’t that much a similarity between Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Love | Death | Devil – The Piece.

Liebe.Tod.Teufel - Das Stück photo by Ursula Kaufmann
Liebe.Tod.Teufel - Das Stück photo by Ursula Kaufmann

Actually I might be confusing my Lewis Carrol and my Charleton Heston. With all the ape masks I might be able to find some commonalities with The Planet of the Apes.

But like Alice and to a lessor extent Planet of the Apres, The Piece has it’s own internal logic and once you are party to it, everything comes together and makes sense. They just forgot to invite me to the party.

Dance, Performance, Rave, Review

Hora by the Batsheva Dance Company at Theatre Maisonneuve

Howdy!

Last Friday I saw Hora. If you want the short version; it was good, very, very good. If you want the slightly longer version, keep reading. If you want the really, really long version, I will try to oblige. I discovered from this article in the NYTimes that the word Hora not only means “hour” in Spanish, “slut” or “whore” in Norwegian, apparently is like “howdy” in Japanese and is some type of Indian astrology and also a Roman goddess. But the most obvious and significant Hora is the Israeli/Jewish dance.

Given that the Batsheva Dance Company and Ohad Naharin (the choreographer) are Israeli, it’s kind of tough to avoid the comparisons. However, there really aren’t any in any literal sense. I’m also trying to figure out if there was any connection between their performances here in Canada and the visit by Benjamin Netanyahu. It’s nice to think that the Prime Minister of Israel travels with the dance company. Or that he likes to be able to highlight Israeli contemporary dance while globetrotting. But I’m not entirely convinced.

I think the more obvious connection to mine is Gaga, the movement language developed by Mr. Naharin.


About Gaga

Bat7 | Myspace Video

And…

While I’m not quite 100% certain that I understand Gaga fully, after watching the videos, I think I have a better understanding of Hora. Which is what we’re here to talk about, right?

When it starts, there are 11 dancers sitting, evenly spaced apart, on a wooden bench along the back wall of the stage. The stage itself has been kind of transformed into some large bright green square with no visible entries or exits. The dancers all rise together and slowly walk forward, they turn to their right, hold a pose as if they are resting their arms on a counter (or possibly playing like a kangaroo or T-Rex, animals with short arms that are held loosely in front) and then turn to the left assuming a pose kind of like some sort of construction crane or back hoe.

The only reason I mention it in such detail is that it gets repeated four or five times during the course of the performance. Which turned it into some kind of touchstone for me. I still wasn’t able to figure out if it had any other more significant meaning and I somehow doubt it. To me, Hora really was just about moving bodies in and through space.

This concept of moving bodies in and through space was most obvious when all 11 dancers veered from the line and each did something different and original. I’m certain that there were a bunch of moves that were repeated, but by having so many dancers on stage and having them all do different things it was extremely hard to focus on one dancers or one movement.

That sort of thing happened numerous times over the course of the performance. But every now and again something (or someone) would squirt out and do something solo-like, or duet-like. One of the one’s that jumped out at me as being particularly well-done was I decided to call “The Twins.” A section where Ian Robinson and another dancer who didn’t quite have as a distinctive haircut go all out at 60 miles-an-hour doing these wild funky chicken type of moves that ended up reminding me of the Mirror Scene by the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup.

There were a bunch of bits like that. A part where all they all end up in a similar position to how sprinters crouch before a race, except that they are using the tops of their toes instead of the bottoms (ouch). Another one where they sit on the stage with their legs extended perfectly flat, and their knees at an exact 135 degree angle, while spinning in absolute unison. And a third where the woman who I referred to as “The Russian Spy,” actually stood on her toes, twice, despite not wearing toe shoes.

It was obvious from the get go that they knew how to dance and move way better than a bunch of stuff that I had seen recently. In going through the bios of the dancers (in a vain attempt to try and figure out who was who) I was happy to see that that Bobbi Smith had previously danced with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and Mr. Robinson with Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal (Go Canada!).

Another thing that made the performance rather kick-ass was the soundtrack. Back in the 70s and 80s (and 90s as well, but by then I had stopped keeping up with pop music) there was this guy Isao Tomita who performed some of the better known classical music cannon on synthesizers. At the time I wasn’t a big fan (I was much more into guitars and drums) but I quite vividly remember coming across his records at the time.

One of the things I’ve realized about dance performances, is that it does help every now and again to offer the audience some kind of hook to hang their collective hat on. Or in slightly clearer language, something with which they can identify. And actually as I write those sentences I realize that in fact it has nothing to do with any other members of the audience, and everything to do with me.

I like it when there is something that I can identify with, or make some kind of association. Since for the most part the movement itself is extremely difficult to describe – at some point I’d love to have an opportunity to try and do a play-by-play of a performance in much the same way that a sports broadcaster would. I see lots of similarities – having some identifiable music makes it extremely easy to make that connection.

Back when I was younger, I would scan the program to see what music was being used and make a judgement on how good the performance was likely to be based on the music. Now it’s way more complex, but as a similar type of rule-of-thumb if they’re dancing to live music, it’s got a better chance in my book of being a better performance than if using pre-recorded stuff (but I digress, Hora did not have a live band).

Nonetheless, since I find it easier to make an emotional connection to music, getting something recognizable aids immensely. Which is not to say that I was able to figure out any specific connection between the music and the movement. Quite the contrary, I would go so far as to presume that the music was laid on top of the piece after all (or most) of the moves had been thought out. In the same way that you would first figure out the menu for a dinner party before deciding on the playlist.

Sometimes dance can be movement for movement’s sake. I think that Hora is one of those cases. I’d love to be able to sum it up in one pithy statement, or witty phrase. But, unfortunately I’m not that good a writer. I also would have loved to be able to talk about the specific dancers more, because they truly were spectacular, but unfortunately the tiny jpg headshots on the Batsheva website don’t really correspond with my memory of what the dancers really looked like. And I’m certain there are tons upon tons of other things that I missed. Nonetheless Hora is pretty gosh darn kick-ass and while I realize that it is unlikely that the Batsheva Dance Company won’t be coming to Montreal next year, I do eagerly anticipate their next visit.

Dance, Performance, Ramble, Rave, Review

Rebecca Halls | Raqib Brian Burke at Tangente

1 Comment

Howdy!

Now we’re really on the ball! It’s a Monday morning and I’m writing about something I saw last Thursday. Almost timely… They had a double feature at the Monument National (where Tangente is camping for the most part this season) and due to a screw up on my part I got to see Rebecca Halls and Raqib Brian Burke perform.

I’m impressed that Ms. Halls agreed to be on the bill with Mr. Burke. Although she didn’t have to follow him, she was first. Still a potentially frightening situation. I’ve heard stories of how in the early 1970s the band Chicago had Bruce Springsteen open for them on a tour, and after something like four shows, Bruce Springsteen was politely asked not to perform anymore because his show was so much better than that of Chicago’s. While not quite as polarizing as Bruce Springsteen and Chicago. Ms. Halls definitely suffered in comparison.

While I missed the initial Hula-Hoop craze in the late fifties, I did have at least one as a youngster. Then when the neo-hippies started doing it at Burning Man and other festivals, I also missed it, but was aware that Hula Hoops had come back. Now, I’m not completely incompetent at hooping, but then again I never really saw much point in practicing enough to become like super duper good at it. When I was younger I always thought the pogo stick was a much cooler toy – and now that I think of it, I just might have to get myself a pogo-stick this summer. But I digress…

OK, maybe not.

As usual, I tried to go into the show with no to low expectations, so it was only after seeing it that I read in the program (again, no press kit) “As she uncovers her Icelandic Heritage, the dancer takes the audience on a nostalgic journey through cycles of time, planetary motion and the natural world.” And that I think is as good a place as any to try an explain the difficulties I found in the piece.

For the most part hooping is one movement with a bunch of variations. And those variations aren’t terribly major. Hoop on the foot, hoop on the arm, multiple hoops, hoops that are lit up, you get the picture. As a consequence it’s rather tough to impose any sort of narrative on a performance without either some other props, or a script.

Ms. Halls at one point did change her costume, but that was about it as far as props were concerned and it seemed to me that the show was about spinning hoops, and being spun (at one point a harness descends and she puts it on so that she can spin in the air). Unless I was blind (which is quite possible) I did not see any hoop labelled “Mars,” “Jupiter” or “Saturn.” That planetary motion thing really didn’t come through all that clear.

In my notes I do make reference to a video of a “cold and still north.” But given that we happen to live in an cold and still northern place, I was didn’t quite make a connection to Iceland until after I read it. Similarly I didn’t make any connections to a natural world nor the cycles of time.

That all being said, I’m certain that Ms. Halls’ hooping technique was impressive. However the tone was kind of set by the film that was played before her performance which got no applause whatsoever. Kind of surprising considering how polite Montreal crowds normally are. But after that there was no applause for any of the individual feats she performed, which given how hooping is a very physical activity must have been frustrating for her. I don’t know if it has to do with how small the theatre was at the Monument National or if there was some other reason. But at pretty much every other hooping performance I’ve seen, the audience does break into applause when a particularly impressive feat is accomplished.

All of which is a kind of long lead in to Raqib Brian Burke’s performance, which was the second part of the show. For the longest time I thought that Whirling Dervishes spun as fast as Tasmanian Devils did.

Probably something having to do with never really taking a comparative religion course and watching just a little bit too many Bugs Bunny cartoons when I was younger. Now that I’m older, I realize the errors of my youth. it also helps that I got to actually see someone do it live and in the flesh.

What can I say? Well, I’m not going to try and explain why or how he does it. It’s pretty gosh darn simple, spinning around and around. But what continues to amaze me even at this late date, is while everything I have read says that the folks doing the twirling around are the ones who get into the spiritual state. I actually found myself, as a viewer, in some kind of state of bliss. I can barely remember my walk home, but I can very clearly remember the sense of awestruck serenity that I had while watching the performance.

Something probably should also be written about Eric Powell who played the music that Mr. Burke preformed to. Although again to be brutally honest, I was so blown away by Mr. Burke that I have to refer to my notes to even conjure up a vague idea of what and how Mr. Powell played. At various times sounding like a Geiger counter or an electric ukelele or some kind of electronica throat singing or probably a bunch of other things that I didn’t write down, at the time it all sounded exactly and completely appropriate.

If I’m going to question anything, it would be whatever part Mira Hunter had. She’s Mr. Burke’s daughter and got the headliner status as choreographer and the person responsible for the video (I also imagine that she came up with the title). In my notes, I wrote “video comes on / But there is no need for video / he is riveting.” Which is not say that she did anything bad or that her participation lessens the performance. Just that I wasn’t capable of appreciating the nuances that she added.

This is actually a video of a whirling performance by Mr. Burke and his daughter (and some other folk as well) out in Vancouver. Whether it is the tilt of the head, the way the arms are held, or just that it is so gosh darn simple, I don’t know. But Mr. Burke was something completely awe inspiring on Thursday night. I’d draw the line at converting to Sufism, but you don’t know how close I got.

If you want more information about whirling, and all of that, try The Rumi Society (BC) and Mevlevi Order for a start. And then there are these dudes from Turkey.

Dance, Performance, Ramble, Review

Lisbeth Gruwez | Voetvolk, Birth of Prey at Usine C

Howdy!

Color me confused, today. Last week (see? I’m almost all caught up on the dance. Unfortunately, I way backlogged on the art…) I got to see Birth of Prey by Lisbeth Gruwez and Voetvolk at Usine C. It’s a piece that they created in 2008. They flew over here from Belgium specifically to perform it. And then flew back. In other words this was not part of a North American tour or anything. They are also touring a piece that was created this year, called, It’s going to get worse and worse and worse, my friend. I have no clue as to why the fine folk at Usine C decided that the older piece was the one that they wanted to present. But that’s neither here, nor there.

Although now with a little bit of reflection it could be because contortion is “the new black” in contemporary dance. Earlier this season, Angela Laurier performed at Usine C. I’m never one to identify upcoming trends, so I could be very wrong on this one. After all Birth of Prey was created in 2008, which could also mean that contortion has “jumped the shark.”

If you hadn’t figured it our by now, in Birth of Prey for the most part Ms. Gruwez does a kind of 21st century contortion act. Not the 19th and 20th century type where the performer twists various body parts into positions that would make most people wince, and for the most part confined to sideshows and boardwalks. The first word that comes to mind to describe her style is “refined,” quickly followed by “discreet” and “focused.” Hers is much more about individual muscles and bones, than the whole body.

Specifically the trapezius, the latissimus dorsi, the intertransversarii and the multifidus spinae. (Are there any other back muscles? Did I miss any?) There are parts where she does things that could be considered more dance-like and more singing-like, but for the most part it was the control she has on the individual muscles of her back that fascinated me.

If you watch all 21 minutes of the video, you’ll get a real good idea of what the show is like. But please don’t confuse watching a 560 pixel wide video on your computer screen with the real thing. Sorta like confusing CliffsNotes with the original. When you take a step back you can realize that they are in fact two separate things.

The first obvious difference between the video and the real, live stage performance was that for the performance, we had to enter into Usine C using an entrance more normally used for props and actors than the audience. Normally when at Usine C, you walk up a set of stairs to enter into the large theater from the top and then walk back down to your seat. For Birth of Prey we entered at stage level and then walked up to our seats.

For those audience members who had previously been to Usine C the variation on the entry was, while not quite disconcerting, slightly confusing. Added to that was that while we entered the entire stage was completely covered in smoke, from some kind of smoke machine, and I definitely was dislodged from my normal theater performance routine. Which was as I presume, its intended effect. Making me much more aware, questioning what was about to happen, and paying precious little attention to the normal chit-chat that happens pre-show. I have absolutely no idea how full the theater was, nor if there were any vedettes in attendance – both things that I normally write down in my notes because the extent of my notes before the show started were “Enter from the side, with lots of smoke. WHY?” And the “why” was written approximately four times larger than anything else on the page.

Then we were informed that the show had started because some rather loud generic guitar/drum, not quite punk, not quite boogie, music was played. I always like dance to live music, even if the music isn’t the greatest. This music while immediately reminding me of the late and lamented Deja Voodoo

Although I am 100% positive that if you grew up in a different town, there is some other guitar drum duo that you personally remember. But I do appreciate that Dave Schroyen & Maarten Van Cauwenberghe reminded me of Gerard van Herk and Tony Dewald. I hadn’t thought about van Herk Dewald in far too long. Although now that I am thinking about them, I do remember one Deja Voodoo barbecue where my houndstooth check overcoat with a vertical slash pocket got stolen. Something like 30 years ago, man! how I liked that coat. I’m still convinced it is going to reappear (like, magically) in my life. I bought it for $2 in Schenectady, New York. But I digress…

But back to the performance; once the music started, I (and I presume everyone else) started to peer into the smoke. I knew that something was going to happen, I just had no idea what. have you ever seen a newborn gerbil? Newborn hamster?

Baby Gerbil
Baby Gerbil
Baby Hamsters
Baby Hamsters

Well that’s kind of what Ms. Gruwez looked like as she entered the stage. Although now that I think about it, I can probably come up with a bunch of other hairless tubular living things that she would also look like. It’s amazing how some theatrics, smoke and serious lighting presented by someone who knows what they’re doing can look like something else.

But, once she got to center stage, it was all Ms. Olympia all-the-time, almost like what I would imagine a performance by Iris Kyle would be like (if there were loud generic guitar/drum, not quite punk, not quite boogie music played).

And that’s the point. I have absolutely no desire to see Ms. Kyle (or anyone else for that matter) win the 2012 Ms. Olympia Championship. However, Ms. Gruwez’s manipulation of her musculature was completely and utterly riveting to the point where I was hanging on the next move of her latissimus dorsi. Go figure.

At various points she got up and attempted to sing, but whatever. I wasn’t there to hear her sing, scream or shriek. And she did scream and shriek. There were also some points where she actually looked like she was doing modern (or contemporary) dance. But just about anything was going to fail in comparison to what and how she manipulated her back.

Then, there was the point about three-quarters of the way through the show when through the smoke I suddenly saw something like a small rivulet of blood that flowed absolutely perfectly right down her spine. I think at some point I was able to see some kind of tube, but given all the other theatrical tricks it might have just been smoke and mirrors. I dunno.

There were a couple of other salient points. During the performance that I saw Mr. Van Cauwenberghe broke a string at the absolute perfect moment – in between two very different sections that were separated by a scream from Ms. Gruwez – so from an audience perspective it was just like an extended pause while he changed strings. But it did occur to me to wonder why they didn’t just travel with two guitars. I also didn’t quite understand why she started singing Helen Kane‘s signature song.

I‘m positive that there’s some kind of connection between the animal nature of the performance and the title, as in some sort of evil being born – but ultimately I think this one comes down to just how spectacularly Ms. Gruwez is able to manipulate her body, and then some sort of title, music and theory were wrapped around it after the fact.

In short, in comes down to getting a seat front row center, focusing on Ms. Gruwez’s scapulae for 50 minutes and not blinking.

Dance, Montréal, Performance, Review

Ghislaine Doté | Virtuo Danse, Merry Age at Agora de la danse

Howdy!

Color me impressed. Normally there is a dearth of reviews of Montreal dance performances. Sometimes, Le Devoir deigns to publish a review, and occasionally there is something else on a website someplace. For Merry Age by Ghislaine Doté and Virtuo Danse I count seven! Stéphanie Brody in La Presse, Camille Lepage-Mandeville on pieuvre.ca, Ashley Ornawka on Le Médium Saignant, Justine Bleau on Dfdanse, Frédérique Doyon in Le Devoir, Nathalie Katinakis on Musicalavenue.fr and Kat Sark on Suites Culturelles.

Unfortunately, most of them are not terribly positive. (I hope that Ms. Dote has a very thick skin, or chooses not to read them.)

Malheureusement, tout ce qui rendrait Merry Age aussi jouissif se dissout trop rapidement et l’on assiste, navrée, à un sextet qui cherche son fond et sa forme..
[Sadly, everything that makes Merry Age so joyous, sadly dissolves rapidly right before our eyes into a sextet that seeks substance and form.]

L’œuvre de Doté est un bon divertissement. Il est simplement dommage qu’un concept si prometteur n’ait pas été plus développé.
[Doté’s work is entertaining. But it is too bad that such a promising concept isn’t better developed.]

Le spectacle, dans son ensemble, ne présente pas de réel approfondissement de l’idée ni de nouvelles avenues exploitées concernant l’union de deux êtres à travers la danse.
[The show, as a whole, has no real depth of thought nor does it explore any new opportunities for the union of two beings through dance.]

Mais cette candeur a aussi ses défauts: les faux rebondissements (scènes mal arrimées), un récit trop mince, des mélodies un peu simplettes.
[But this candor also has its faults: twists and turns that don’t work (scenes that aren’t anchored) a thin plot and simplistic melodies.]

Ouch!

After reading those, I almost wanted to write something so over-the-top positive that it could make all those meanies go away. But I quickly remembered that I wasn’t Ms. Doté’s mother, and it really wouldn’t be appropriate to try and protect her from perceived bullies. It’s something automatic in me, not only to be contrarian, but also to want to help the underdog.

Let’s back up a bit, Merry Age was performed by Jenny Brizard, Fernanda Leal, Xavier Malo, Mohamed N’Diaye, Francois Richard and Émilie Tremblay at the Agora de la Danse back in the middle of February. (You see! I am catching up!) Some sort of hybrid type of performance that had bits of musical theater, modern dance and lots of other stuff (I went looking for some examples of dance from the Côte d’Ivoire, but only found this and there really wasn’t an awful lot of that in Merry Age). As per normal, I went in completely blind. I hadn’t read any of the press kit (yes, there was a press kit) refused to read the program, and politely asked my companion not to tell me anything in advance.

So when it started up like some sort of musical, I was very surprised. While I quite like musicals, specifically MGM musicals from the 30s, 40s and 50s with Gene Kelly and/or Fred Astaire (but in a pinch just about any musical will do) I was completely and totally unprepared to see a musical at L’Agora de la Danse. After a bit, it reverted back to more standard contemporary dance fare, every now and again launching into song.

I also had become very comfortable with the concept of no plot, and here was a performance that clearly had plot. Most of the time, kind of like the song (for the most part only one song was used) plot wandered in and out of the show. But since I wasn’t expecting it, I didn’t get too attached to it.

This might have been due in part, to the fact that while it was pretty obvious that the show was about marriage (Ms. Doté even announced it at the beginning) for the first part it didn’t strike me that any of the couples were fixed. Each woman danced with all of the guys and vice-versa, so it never occurred to me to take it that literally. Once that was out of the way, it became very easy to watch.

As I’ve come to expect these days, the set was minimal. There was some kind of podium in the back that held a rack of clothes for the dancers to put on, there was a chair, then there were more chairs and a table and that was about it. You can get some sense of the set and the piece itself here.

It also seemed to me to be one of those pieces that could only be made here in Quebec, as it incorporated bilingual text. What I really got a kick out of besides the bilingualism, was the biracial nature of the couples. Although now that I am able to reflect a little bit more on it, there was one bit in Spanish as well, so it in fact was trilingual, and Ms. Doté could have pushed the envelope slightly by having some non-heterosexual couples as well. But those are more about my agenda than her piece. I realize now that it also could have been made in many other places besides Montreal.

The dancing itself was quite good. Again, my memory is sketchy at best, but I have a vague feeling in the pit of my stomach that the parts where all six dancers were dancing were slightly better than when there were obvious duets. There were a couple of “really nice’s” in my notes. One in particular when they did a round in movement instead of in song, and another after they spin around the table.

So what else? Well, I think the title itself isn’t too hot. A bad play on words (not even a pun) on the word marriage. I think judging from my reaction in comparison to the ones quoted above, that perhaps for the restaging, to change the name, and perhaps say that it is about fish, or mitochondria or something other than weddings and human interactions. The people who pay attention to the stuff in the program and the press kits won’t quite have such large expectations and the reaction probably will be a lot more positive. (And to be fair, there were three positive reviews; one, two and three. It’s just that they weren’t terribly well written, and if I had led with them, I’m not certain what I would have been able to write).

Dance, Performance, Ramble

Je by Dominique Porte at the Monument National

Howdy!

Back at the beginning of the month I was fortunate enough to get to see Je by Dominique Porte at the Monument National. Touted as a solo autobiographical dance, there must’ve been something in the water back at the time everyone was applying for grants because in January Jose Navas, also did a solo autobiographical dance.

As long as I’m musing about funding sources, one thing I probably should get off my chest. I was interviewing Paula De Vasconcelos recently (more on the interview in another article, later) when she mentioned one possible reason for all the solo dance performances with no sets to speak of. Funding being stretched. While I am all for government funding of the arts, and dance in specific, I’m not so certain that funding a large number of bare bones projects is the way to do it. But I digress.

There was a fair bit of hype surrounding the show before it even started. Articles in Voir, La Presse, The Gazette, and Le Devoir among others. After the show, I could only find two reviews, in Dfdanse, and Le Devoir. I’m not sure what to make of that. But I can’t help but thinking that it might be better if there were more reviews and less previews. But I’m not about to start telling anyone else what they should write about.

The show itself takes place on a relatively bare stage. On the left, there are some large piles of paper. On the right some venetian blinds that quickly become a video screen, a smaller pile of paper and some electronic gadget set up, that quickly proves itself to be a video camera that projects live images on to the blinds.

The whole thing starts very casually when everyone in the audience realizes that Ms. Porte is on stage. No dimming of the house lights, no mention of turning off cell phones, nothing like that. It actually is so casual that it even appeared that Ms. Porte nodded at people she knew as a way of saying “hi” from the stage. Then she starts writing and it gets projected on the screen.

This is where I wish I knew more about the brain and cognition. Somehow, no matter how hard I try the words stay in my memory much longer and stronger than any of the movements. Unfortunately I don’t know if this is due to how my brain is wired. Nor do I know if everyone’s brain is wired the same was as mine. And finally it might not even be due to how my brain works. But I’m not about to start doing research on how the brain works at this time.

JE de Système D / Dominique Porte photo by Sandra Lynn Bélanger
JE de Système D / Dominique Porte photo by Sandra Lynn Bélanger

Personally, I’m inclined to think that it is me and my brain. If I think back to other memories of movements, such as baseball games from my youth or parties or other events like that, I am much more likely to remember a written description than to actually have some sort of image burned in my memory. Then again, I could be wrong.

But enough of this dilly-dallying around the subject at hand. I probably should get around to trying to write about what I saw. From the title (translated as I for those that are not up to snuff on their French) through all the preview articles, everyone was pretty much in consensus that this was a performance not only by, but very much about Ms. Porte as well.

Obviously, I’m not going to argue that it wasn’t, because I’m not really in a position to. But without knowing an awful lot more about Ms. Porte’s life it’s extremely difficult to identify the salient points. It’s kind of like trying to find a narrative in the paintings of Paul-Emile Borduas.

I‘m fairly certain that she copped some of her own choreography from pieces that she had previously made – I think within the context of dance that’s 100% alright – it’s just that since I am not as familiar with her work as I should be and that my brain prefers to remember text over images, I’m at a slight disadvantage in being able to identify them.

I also wish that there had been some sort of chronology of her life provided in the program (as per usual, there was no press kit). If you haven’t realized by now, I was trying really hard to impose some sort of plot on the piece and came up woefully short. A month later, I’m still trying to stretch it into some sort of linear narrative, a full month after seeing it (and still having the same difficulties) ‘cuz that’s what I like, darnit!

JE de Système D / Dominique Porte picture by Sandra Lynn Bélanger
JE de Système D / Dominique Porte picture by Sandra Lynn Bélanger

So what is there beyond plot and narrative? Well, by my count there were 11 different sections. All of them were danced particularly well. While I obviously can’t recognize a plot, I can recognize good dancing. I just wish I knew the vocabulary better so that I could better describe why and how Ms. Porte danced so well.

But let me give it a shot. Somewhere in the middle (according to my notes, it was the fifth section, the one that starts with her writing “revenir a un page blanche,” literally “return to a blank page” but more likely just a more poetic way of stating that she was starting over) in between the point where she falls down on her side and when she ends up with her hands and feet on the ground and her butt in the air, I wrote in my notes “nice sequence.” On the video above, I think it is the part around 2:40 or so with the solo piano that sounds like George Winston.

OK I know, I need some more practice.

So I dunno, despite Je not having an easily recognizable narrative. Despite my not knowing a whole heck of a lot about Ms. Porte’s history. Despite my inability to write clearly about dance (in a pathetic attempt at some sort of excuse, it was dark and I was probably riveted) I still kind of think that it was a pretty kick-ass performance. I probably could foam on uselessly for another 500 words or so, but I figure it probably would be best to wrap it up here, and see if I can’t score another interview with Ms. Porte.

Dance, Ramble, Rant, Review

Marie Chouinard, The Golden Mean (Live)

Howdy!

I‘ve been feeling guilty. Last year, back in November, I saw THE GOLDEN MEAN (LIVE) (yeah, I don’t like things that are all in capital letters either… But that’s how she spells it) one of the newer creations by Marie Chouinard. I wanted to write about it, but then got hung up in the humorous verse cycle I wrote about the Quebec Triennial. By the time I had finished that, it was the beginning of January 2012, and the absolute need to write about a performance I had seen almost three months prior was more like a theoretical and potential concept than a valid reality.

But then on Friday I had a Marie Chouinard day. I first saw her at the DHC Art Foundation’s exhibit Chronicles of a Disappearance (more on that in a separate article, in short go hang out on the fourth floor for at least 30 minutes, Ms. Chouinard didn’t) in the afternoon. And then saw her at the performance of “Je” by Dominique Porte (also more on that in a separate article) that night. But this time, Ms. Chouinard had to stick around for the entire performance because Dena Davida sat down right next to her and it would have been kind of awkward to leave in the middle of the performance – this is not to imply that the only reason Ms. Chouinard stuck around was because of Ms. Davida, because Je is pretty gosh darn good, but every other time that I have been in a black box with Ms. Chouinard watching something artistic, she has bolted long before the performance was over, unless it was one of her’s. But I digress.

Then I kept thinking about her participation in The Big Bang at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and figure now is as good of a time as any to spill what’s been inside of me on and about The Golden Mean (Live).
So before I forget how, first a bit of humorous verse about

Marie Chouinard’s The Golden Mean (Live)


Marie Chouinard’s The Golden Mean (Live)
Might have been better if done as a shuck and jive.
Real Pixar lamps, some video screens and masked dancers
Lead to more questions than answers.

Zombies stretching” is how I described the dancers movements
There are numerous things that I can think of that would make for improvements.
The only thing I really liked was the woman with the four sided mask
It was almost as good as the art of Karen Trask.

I‘ll have more to say, not in rhyme, but in prose
Somehow rhyming is difficult when holding your nose.

It actually wasn’t that horrible. It’s just that when writing in rhyming couplets I tend to make everything black or white. No shades of gray, whatsoever. It isn’t like I walked out in the middle of the performance or anything.

But getting to the meat of the matter, I imagine that somewhere Ms. Chouinard believes in her heart that The Golden Mean (Live) is truly saying something. Unfortunately it is in a language that I have an extremely hard time understanding.

In French the title is Le nombre d’or (Live) which really translates into English as The Golden Ratio (Live), not the Golden Mean. The Golden Mean has more to do with Nicomachean Ethics, whereas The Golden Ratio is 1.6180339887… referred to in most of the literature in the press kit (yes, Virginia, I do occasionally get press kits).

Also in perusing the press kit, while the piece itself may be named after a mathematical principle (A+B is to A, as A is to B) the piece itself doesn’t seem to be as rigorous. I read reviews where it was danced by 10 dancers in one place and 11 dancers in another and in Montreal there were a total of 14 dancers on stage. And as long as I’m going on about the press kit, there were nine photocopied articles in Spanish, Italian, German and Dutch. I’m not entirely certain what the point was. While I’d like to think of myself as a polyglot, in fact I am really just an old and fat opinionated American, commonly referred to as a Tête carrée here in Quebec. The idea that I can really understand four other languages, when I have a hard enough time wrapping my tongue around la langue de Moliere is just kind of silly and a waste of paper.

As long as I am nitpicking, according to Ms. Chouinard the dancers put on masks of the head of state of whatever country they are performing in. But it seems that when they were in Amsterdam last summer someone forgot to tell them that Jan Peter Balkenende had been defeated and resigned, and while technically still Prime Minister, was not the man in charge. It also might account for why it wasn’t performed in Brussels.

And while the catwalk is integral to the performance, in order to, as she told Catherine Lalonde of Le Devoir, get the dancers as close as possible to the audience, to literally penetrate the theatre. [J’avais envie de voir les danseurs au plus pres du public, de faire pénétrer dans l’espace de la salle.] But when it was preformed in Venice there was no catwalk, and it is because of that performance that Tanz magazine named Carole Prieur dancer of the year.

So obviously when you (or I) go to see The Golden Mean (Live), what you see and what I see are not going to be the same thing. I’m still trying to figure out if that’s a good or a bad thing.

If you’d like to see a 13 minute video of Ms. Chouinard describing how The Golden Mean (Live) was made and what’s it about, click on this (unfortunately, I wasn’t able to embed it).

But enough about the background and the nitpicking over details gleaned from the press kit. What about the dance itself? And the even more importantly the dancers? I’d love to be able to tell you what Mark Eden-Towle, Eve Garnier, Benjamin Kamino, Leon Kuperschmid, Lucy M. May, Lucie Mongrain, Mariusz Ostrowski, Carol Prieur, Gérard Reyes, Dorotea Saykaly and James Viveiros did and how they moved. But unfortunately since they were all masked, I have no freaking clue as to who did what. Although after the fact I did realize that it was Carol Prieur who did the unmasked solo.

Depending on where we are in the performance, the dancers are either all wearing some moth-eaten blonde wig with a kind of plastic face shield, occasionally with some hipster glass frames. Or they are wearing photographs of people that have been glued to something like foamcore to keep it rigid. There’s one set that was all Stephen Harper, another set that was a bunch of “old people,” and a third that was all of infants.

It was the infants that I particularly didn’t like, as when the dancers were wearing those masks, they were completely naked. My first thought was did Ms. Chouinard get permission from the parents of the infants before slapping their faces on masks? My second thought was what’s the point? When they had the masks of the infants on, nobody did much of anything. If it was for shock value, it didn’t work at the performance I was at. If it was to make the audience uncomfortable, I’m fairly certain that there were some people in the audience who were made uncomfortable, but it wasn’t a majority, and most people were very polite about it.

Then much later, I went to see The Big Bang at the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal (I told you that I’d get around to it) in which Ms. Chouinard had some work. That work was four photographs of her dancers with the infant masks on. Apparently she was influenced by an incense burner which she likened to developing genitalia of fetuses. One of the many problems with it was that the crotches of the dancers were very much obscured. Using the lingo of the day, it was a #totalfail. It was made even curiouser because there is a dancer in The Golden Mean (Live) who imitates Marc Quinn’s sculpture Sphinx (Road to Enlightenment) which is at the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal.

Marc Quinn's Sphinx (Road to Enlightenment)
Marc Quinn's Sphinx (Road to Enlightenment)

Then at another point, some of them suck in their stomachs just like the statue by Mr. Quinn, and it isn’t pretty. So while the museum asked her to be influenced by a piece that they have (I think it’s a loan, and not part of the permanent collection) she just got confused or something. Another thing that struck me about the masks that were pictures of faces, was that for whatever reason, she had not chosen the picture of anyone who wasn’t Caucasian.

As I mentioned in the verse, an awful lot of the dancing was what I would liken to zombie stretching. Sometimes there was some undulating and Carole Prieur’s solo was what I called “tribal” or “voodoo.” There were a couple of times when two dancers would do something that suggested sex, but was more violent than erotic.

No matter how hard I tried, I really couldn’t put a finger on anything that would unify the whole piece. It didn’t come across as movement for movement’s sake. It sure as shooting didn’t have a plot. There weren’t any incredibly breathtakingly beautiful moments (or movements). In writing this, I am struck how it seems to me as a disparate collection of things that Ms. Chouinard wanted to copy. From the Pixar lamps, to the Quinn statue, I can easily see how each scene could have been copped from some image that she had taken, and then most fruit these days, grafted on to the performance.

It would be an interesting exercise to go through Ms. Chouinard’s sketch book (or the equivalent) while watching The Golden Mean (Live), it would kind of like this:

So there you have it. The Golden Mean (Live) isn’t a bad piece, it’s more of a blah piece. Nothing remarkable, good or bad. it sort of sits in my memory taking up space, and with a little luck that memory will inform future stuff better and worse.

Dance, Performance, Ramble, Rave, Review

Vertical Road by the Akram Khan Company

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Howdy!

Who would’ve thunk? I kind of like it… OK, let me back track slightly. On January 27th, I went to see Vertical Road by the Akram Khan Company at Theatre Maisonneuve. The company was brought into town as part of the Danse Danse series (who also somehow forgot to give me a press kit, but I digress). In short they were pretty gosh darn amazing. In my notes I wrote “very cool,” “wicked cool!” “I’m riveted,” “Wow!!” and “She’s Amazing!” You get the idea.

In mulling things over, I wasn’t quite certain how or what I was going to write. It’s always easier to write something sarcastic and negative than it is to write something that praises. But then I started to do some cursory research, and one thing that stuck out like a sore thumb to me was how the whole shebang was sponsored by Colas. In the program they had even gone so far as to give some guy named Hervé Le Bouc a full page to explain how his company ended up being partnered with the Akram Khan Company.

I only had one small question. Who, or what was Colas? As it turns out, they are a French company that builds roads (or as they write in the program: Roads). As I wrote up above, “I kind of like it.” It being the idea that some industrial engineering company is paying some kind of coin (and I would imagine and hope that it is some serious coin if they are getting a full page in the program) so that contemporary British dance can be seen.

So it now becomes self-evident here the name of the dance comes from. Unfortunately I wasn’t invited to the dinner with M. Le Bouc and Mr. Khan so I can’t comment on whether M. Le Bouc had any other input into how the dance was created, or if he participated in any other way. Personally, I’d like to think that M. Le Bouc was a big dance fan going way back, and that over dinner he and Mr. Khan hit it off like a house on fire, brainstorming ideas ’till the cows came home. Then after they had become BFF, Akram (after all they gotta be on a first name basis by now) blurts out to Hervé “I know I’ll make a dance for your company!”

I also think it would be great if some of our local engineering firms that built roads (or other things) started sponsoring local dance companies. But somehow, I don’t see that happening for a while. Pity.

Despite not getting a press kit (me, obsessive? nah.) I was able to suss out that Vertical Road is supposed to be some kind of spiritual dance. Mr. Khan is quoted in the program as saying it is “the journey from gravity to grace.” But I’m not entirely clear on what that means, exactly. Is he referring to the force of attraction? Heaviness or weight? Seriousness or importance? Or something else. And grace has equally many definitions, none of which are exactly antonyms of gravity. In fact, riffing off of the seriousness definition you could almost make a point that gravity and grace were synonymous. Almost.

But back to the point at hand, the performance. In reading about it (after the fact) just about everyone seems to talk about Vertical Road as a journey by one person. That did not come across as strongly as you would think during the performance. Salah El Brogy definitely was the “lead.” But there was enough other stuff happening that the idea of a journey really only occurred to me after I read about it and then kinda nodded my head and said to myself (quietly) “yeah, I can see that…”

To me it was much more of a group piece done in about eight separate scenes, beginning and ending quite dramatically with a scrim. At the beginning, I couldn’t quite tell if there was one or two people behind it, and then I figured out that it was only one person, Mr. El Brogy – who I referred to as “the hairy dude” in my notes – because he placed various body bits on it in a kind of shadow play. But what was most impressive to me was how he banged it, like a gong or something, with his hand and it rippled like a vertical lake. At the end he goes back to the shadow play and when the scrim drops the show is over.

For the six other scenes, there is lots of running, jumping, spinning and the like. While I was watching I thought there were some similarities to various martial arts like kung-fu. But while doing some cursory research I came across this article from The Guardian that informed me that

Khan’s dance roots are in kathak – and it shows. It’s a style characterised by mathematically complex rhythmic footwork, spins, fluid arm and hand gestures, as well as dynamic contrasts between speed and stillness.

I also saw some similarities to the Dhikr performed by the Mevlevi Order (as I wrote that I was sticking out my chest proudly, showing off my madd wikipedia skillz!). In plainer language there were some bits that reminded me of Whirling Dervishes.

And if I remember correctly, I read someplace that Mr. Khan is a Sufi, and the whirling dervishes are also Sufi.

But then my theory starts to fall apart when I also noted that certain bits of the show reminded me of Loie Fuuller.

And no matter how hard I try I can’t make any connections between a 19th century American vaudeville performer and Mr. Khan. Other strange visions that jumped onto my head during the performance were of American football referees.

Touchdown!!
Touchdown!!

And Chinese terracotta warriors (mainly due to the incredible amount of talcum powder that was on their costumes and how solidly they stood at in the second and third scenes). In what I’m calling the third scene there’s a wicked cool back and forth that I would call a duet except that all eight dancers are on stage doing stuff. Where the shortest woman in the company (sorry but my memory is not good to begin with and since I didn’t get a press kit, trying to figure out if it was Eulalia Ayguade Farro, Konstandina Efthymiadou or Yen-Ching Lin is beyond my abilities – suffice it to say that they all are pretty gosh darn amazing dancers) does a kind of puppet and puppet master dance with Mr. El Brogy (aka the Hairy Dude) made even more spectacular because at various points they trade positions and that who was the puppet becomes the puppet master and vice versa.

It because of things like that, where Mr. Khan plays fast and loose with whatever plot there is, in order to wow and impress the audience with movement that caused me to that there wasn’t much of a path happening.

Some other brief thoughts I had were that while I have never been to Burning Man, the performance was very Burning Man-esque. Sort of like a 21st century version of transcendental meditation done while throwing bodies through space. And while looking up the dancers on the internet I discovered that Ms. Ayguade Farro also danced in the Hofesh Schecter company and immediately recognized the similarities in style between the two.

I should also mention Ahmed Khemis, Yen-Ching Lin, Andrej Petrovic and Elias Lazaridis. Just because they didn’t get anything that I would call a solo does not in anyway mean that they were anything less than kick-ass and amazing dancers. They were and are, and I can only hope that when I grow up that I can dance half as well as they can.

Dancers explaining

At which point I’ve gone way over any reasonable word count and should probably attempt to wrap this up somehow. An easy way? Next time the Akram Khan company shows up in your town, go buy tickets.

Dance, Montréal, Performance, Ramble, Review

Les Angèles ces derniers bleus by the Collectif C’est Juste Lundi

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Howdy!

Since my last attempt at a poetic review for a dance performance was a trainwreck (if you haven’t read Ken Monteith‘s comment, I urge you to drop everything right now, and do so, and while you’re at it you should read his blog as well.) I figured I can revert back to something a little easier this time…

I’m not certain I’m any closer to understanding Les Angèles ces derniers bleus (loosely translated to The Angels’ Latest Blues) but it somehow makes me smile and think that everything is linked. I went in thinking it was going to be some sort of dance performance. I came out realizing it was something much more than that. Basically, a collection of things “Angel.” With a heavy emphasis on a certain American television show from the 1970s.

I wasn’t keeping track of how many angel references they actually used, but the ones that I did catch were Bobby Helms‘ (the voice behind Jingle Bell Rock) You are My Precious Angel.

Doreen Virtue’s Angel Therapy [no video, click on the link to hear her radio show] and most obviously (although, believe it or not, it took me about 20 minutes into the performance to realize it) Charlie’s Angels

.

I’m not much into angels, but some that they missed were AngeNeige, the angel store run by my friend Franceen, up the street from La Chapelle (the theater where they performed it). The Blue Angels, the United States’ Navy’s flying aerobatic team. And The Blue Angel, the Marlene Dietrich film, directed by Josef von Sternberg.

I’m certain I missed scads upon scads. Both in the performance and not in the performance. Feel free to let me know what I’ve missed (and bonus points for doing it in rhyme). But you get the idea.

Initially and for a good half to three-quarters of the performance I was trying really really hard to figure out (or perhaps impose) a plot on it. I’m not entirely certain why. Possibly due to some outdated belief that if there are characters, there must be some sort of narrative. Kind of like still arguing for the Ptolemaic system, old habits die hard. It was only when I realized that there wasn’t any real plot, that I was able to realize that it was a pretty gosh darn good performance.

To get the easy stuff out of the way first, it was a minimalist set. Two table lamps (one with what looked like goldfish embedded in the base), three manequin heads, a TV and a phone. There might have been some other things as well, but the action started and I got distracted while I was writing things down, so I don’t know if my list is a complete or incomplete inventory.

Pierre-Marc Ouellette came on stage first in a red suit and started doing some kind of disco dancing that veered towards Elvis

then towards a more freer hippy style, before going all YMCA, but spelling A-N-G-E-L-E-S instead.

The three other members of the C’est Juste Lundi collective come on stage, Hinda Essadiqi, Karina Champoux and Emmanuelle Bourassa Beaudoin. They shake, they emote and then they start doing some rather complicated and fast moves. Up and down, kind of dog-like but I was very impressed with how tight they were, Anne Thériault their rehearsal director did a mighty fine job. Their timing was impeccable and incredible.

They do some more emoting, use some finger guns, run around and then bring out a TV which shows an edited version of the opening sequence from Charlie’s Angels (and at the same time allows everyone to catch their breath and change costume). Then M. Oulette and Ms. Champoux do a duet that involves some blue clothes. Ms. Bourassa Beaudoin comes on stage and uses one of the mannequin heads as some sort of appendage to her body. Ms. Essadiqi then gets a solo that has something to do with an address book and a pen, and then Ms. Bourassa Beaudoin brings a cassette player out and sticks her head above a fan so her hair can billow. Everyone starts go-go dancing and finally Ms. Champoux starts playing a ukelele and whistling while the others are doing bird calls and the lights fades.

You see? No real plot to speak of. But to repeat myself that is not a bad thing.

While I generally prefer not to single out specific dancers, Ms. Essadiqi definitely got the lion’s share of my notes and attention. In retrospect I found it a tad strange, because as an adolescent I definitely preferred Sabrina Duncan and Jill Munroe to Kelly Garrett. And Ms. Essadiqi was playing the Jaclyn Smith character.

I should also make mention of Denis Lemieux who helped with the costumes (I’m not sure exactly how or what he did to help, but that’s what it says in the program) and the costumes were pretty darn good as well.

In the program and the press kit and the website, they emphasize the word ludique, which because I’m a bloke with a bad vocabulary, thought had some connection to being a Luddite, and not the notion of playing. After looking it up in numerous dictionaries (just to be certain) it made perfect sense.

I’ve said this before (and I’ll probably repeat myself again) but I absolutely love the fact that Montreal, and by extension Quebec, is a place where artists are allowed to play and experiment with form and content. Les Angèles ces derniers bleus effectively is just that. But unlike an awful lot of other performances I have seen, it also manages to be entertaining for the audience (or at least this audience member) at the same time. It bodes well for future projects by the C’est Juste Lundi folk.

Yes, there are things that didn’t quite work, or could have worked better – but unless you’re Robert Lepage or Marie Chouinard you’re never going to get absolutely everything right all the time. And that’s my point exactly. Having the ability to try out things in a trusting and comfortable environment is a good thing.

I was somewhat at odds over, or maybe just confused by, the choice of angels as the overriding theme. I’ve never been religious, and have actually been accused of being an anti-spritualist (whatever that is). I’m certain if I sat down with Ms. Bourassa Beaudoin (who gets credit as the artistic director of C’est Juste Lundi) she would be able to explain in plain language how and why angels were chosen. But it was not immediately self-evident. Nor did it make itself known in the 72 hours following.

Playfulness is not normally something that is immediately associated with a strong sense of spirituality, although there are some paintings I can think of where the cherubim aren’t exactly moping around. Towards the end with the ukelele and the bird sounds, someone probably could point out some sense of spirituality, but it still would be a stretch.

However, since Les Angèles ces derniers bleus is definitely absurdist (in the best sense of the word) choosing to use angels as the main characters could be considered an absolutely brilliant choice just because of its oppositional quality. The performance is not something that is easily digested and sometimes in situations like that it’s best just to swallow it whole without chewing.

I wouldn’t (ok, maybe I would) try to figure out where Les Angèles ces derniers bleus and C’est Juste Lundi fit in in the grand scheme of things performance in Quebec. But they (and it) definitely belong. I haven’t looked all that hard, but I didn’t see them on the cover of Voir, nor did I hear anything about them on Radio-Canada, which is kind of a pity, because many other less deserving projects have gotten both.

And then finally (‘cuz I definitely have rambled on for far too long) after some reflection; Les Angèles ces derniers bleus by the Collectif C’est Juste Lundi, is trying to incarnate some kind of mythical childhood. None of the performers is old enough to have even been thought of by their parents when Charlie’s Angel’s first aired, and as it was most definitely an American (as opposed to Quebecois) television show, they all are starting out with two strikes against them. So the entire production must be based on some sort of concept that never existed in anything except their minds. And I like that.

Dance, Montréal, Performance, Rave, Review

José Navas, Personae

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Howdy!

About two weeks ago I saw José Navas’ Personae. Since I’ve been on a poetry jag for a while, I wasn’t quite certain how I would write about it in humorous verse. But then it occurred to me, instead of humorous verse, I could write a sonnet.

Sonnets are not easy.

And this isn’t a sonnet either. It’s got four too many lines, the meter is all over the place. It also probably could be helped with some judicious editing. But instead of having it hanging over my head, like so many other things, I made the executive decision to get it out.

I have no idea if there are still tickets, but he’s still performing it at the Cinquieme Salle until the 28th.

José Navas sits quietly before
Dancing solo in his piece personae.
It is constructed in six parts not four.
Saw it at Cinquieme Salle not Corona.

The first image to try and remember
Are the amazing muscles on his back.
After watching I hope it will recur
A great way to start, we’re on the right track.

Arms waving, arms moving, return to start.
Next part is a divinely danced salsa.
Channeling Merce is deep in his heart.
The next one borders on erotica.

Some swaying and impressive pirouettes
Wolf’s head and noises like a panting dog
Water over rocks as good as it gets.
His moves a triumph of the analog.

Small vignettes, tiny, precious, intimate.
Danced with grace, I’d call them/him passionate.