Reviews
Songs for a Nervous System
Jean-Sébastien Lourdais’ Bleu By Philip SzporerLourdais’ work is concentrated on somatic states and he speaks in the programme notes about “refin[ing] the body’s state of awareness.” What’s clear in Bleu is the importance of touch.
Posted June 7, 2018
A Night at the Juke Joint
The latest from Holla Jazz By Valeria NunziatoUnder the artistic direction of Natasha Powell, Floor’d was a fresh spin on vernacular jazz – a journey to another era, complete with live jazz music that has spectators dancing along in their seats. From the strike of the first saxophone to the last dim of the lights, we were offered much more than a show: the audience was given an experience.
Posted May 22, 2018
Shadows Against a Sunset
pataSola dance’s Rift By Olivia C. DaviesResponding to the ongoing worldwide struggle of violence against women and girls, pataSola dance has created a theatrical performance work that pays homage to victims and survivors, while offering a transformative experience of surrender and sanctity.
Posted April 23, 2018
Blurry Reverie, Retinal Rivalry
Dana Gingras’s anOther, in collaboration with Sonya Stefan and Group A By Philip SzporerThe arrival of anOther, by Montréal-based choreographer Dana Gingras, in collaboration with Sonya Stefan and Group A, signals a turning point in the intersection between dance, media and an immersion into cosmic speculation and sci-fi realm. The work is ambitious in its conception and execution, where nothing is quite as it seems.
Posted April 19, 2018
“Story-Being”
Nova Bhattacharya’s Decoding Bharatanatyam By Brannavy JeyasundaramThe spirit of Decoding Bharatanatyam imitates the moments preceding the show – fluttering with discovery, while anchored in movement tradition.
Posted April 5, 2018
When Representation (Almost) Becomes the Norm
Contemporaneity 2.0 at Progress Festival By Molly JohnsonContemporaneity 2.0 is a curating and presenting series with an aim of “unsettling the widespread use of ‘contemporary’ as describing European and white American theatrical dance.” The series opened with Gitanjali Kolanad’s Gandhari. Using Gandhari, a mythological character from the Mahabharata and the martial art form of kalaripayatuu as dual channels of influence and expression, the work is an examination of loss and its effects on the body.
Posted April 4, 2018
What I Saw and How I Felt
Aria Evans and Lilia Leon's Prevailing Voices By Grace Wells-SmithPrevailing Voices features link, choreographed and performed by Evans, and Perdida, choreographed and performed by Leon and co-written with charles c. smith. The solos come together in a show about identity exploration and female self-empowerment.
Posted March 8, 2018
Discovering That “Little Girl”
Claudia Chan Tak’s Bienvenue chez moi, petite Malgache-Chinoise By James OscarOur particular moment could perhaps be qualified as one of the strides of disjuncture and difference across the country, but perhaps most acutely in Montréal. Claudia Chan Tak’s new work Bienvenue chez moi, petite Malgache-Chinoise speaks to this disjuncture of identity politics.
Posted February 26, 2018
Shadows, Portraiture, Mime and Velvet
Four works old and new at 3,2,1 Dance! By Lori Straus3,2,1 Dance! is a contemporary dance performance of four pieces, with choreography by Robert Desrosiers, Robert Glumbek, Jasmyn Fyffe and Tedd Robinson.
Posted February 21, 2018
Bgirls, Body Image and Being "Bossed Up"
that “F” word by SaMel Tanz By Aparita BhandariAfter SaMel Tanz won the a spot in last year’s Toronto Fringe Festival, which is programmed by a lottery system versus a juried selection, they started talking through ideas with other women dancers they have collaborated with in the past, Hart told me in a phone conversation several weeks before the show. Feminism – or the way many of the dancers were navigating their lives as women, dancers or not – was something they kept coming back to. The result was a show that featured moments in these young women’s lives told through movements from an assortment of dance forms – contemporary, hip hop, even a bit of Argentine tango.
Posted January 24, 2018
New Year, New Awakening
Soulful Messiah’s fifteenth year By Collette MurrayBallet Creole opens the holidays by intersecting the Toronto theatre community and the NextSteps contemporary dance series with its annual seasonal ritual – Soulful Messiah. The performance is Artistic Director and Founder Patrick Parson’s choreographic concept of navigating different emotional stages of life and spirituality and how one copes through its peaks and valleys.
Posted December 23, 2017
Hauntings and Bleeding Hearts
Reflections on Kayoi Komachi/Komachi Visited and a crash course in Noh theatre By Heidi SpechtKayoi Komachi/Komachi Visited is an ambitious new chamber opera that blends Japanese Noh theatre and western classical music. Produced by TomoeArts, the work is a collaboration between artists from Japan and Vancouver. The story combines two Noh plays about the renowned ninth-century Japanese poet Ono no Komachi, as well as five of her original poems.
Posted December 12, 2017
Provocative Impressions
Skeels Danse’s Rose of Jericho By Philip SzporerPhilip Szporer offers this follow up to his review of Skeels Danse and Tentacle Tribe – “Sizing Up a Double Dose of Summer Dance.” At the time of publication the works were still in progress. This completed version, presented by Danse Danse, allows for view of the piece in its mature form.
Posted December 5, 2017
Risqué Ballet, Risking Clarity
Alberta Ballet’s Dangerous Liaisons By Fawnda MithrushMounted by Alberta Ballet in 2008, Dangerous Liaisons is an epistolary exchange of manipulation, betrayal, greed and threats of public shaming: the story is fraught with ugly intentions and lurid schemes, told mostly in letters between two ex-lovers attempting to humiliate each other.
Posted November 21, 2017
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