Reviews

How Can We Be Fine?

Festival Quartiers Danses’ quadruple bill By James Oscar

Festival Quartiers Danses offered works by Morgane Le Tiec, Anne-Flore de Rochambeau, Elizabeth Suich and Mélanie Demers. The evening’s performances might have asked, “How might one differently totter, differently walk or differently move beyond our present fragile contemporary lives?”

Posted October 25, 2017

One Waltz, One Requiem

Belinda McGuire performs two new works By Colleen Snell

Waltz and Slaughterhouse/Requiem form a double bill of powerful and compelling solo work danced by Belinda McGuire. Both are world premieres, one constructed by Sylvain Émard and one by McGuire herself.

Posted October 5, 2017

The Embodied Remnants of Relationships Past and Present

Saudade by Joshua Beamish and MOVETHECOMPANY By Brittany Duggan

Joshua Beamish’s Saudade, which was commissioned by Theater Freiburg in Germany, takes its name from a Portuguese word for having a deep incompleteness and recognizing that feeling as familiar. For the men performing, this idea comes across as a variety of relationship-based scenarios – romantic or not. The work depicts a range of relationships that we can relate to, those that are fleeting for us and others that have been lasting.

Posted September 29, 2017

Sizing Up a Double Dose of Summer Dance

Skeels Danse and Tentacle Tribe in Saint-Sauveur By Philip Szporer

What does it mean to (p)review evolving choreography? Philip Szporer reflects on two works-in-progress from the Festival des Arts de Saint-Saveur.

Posted September 11, 2017

Funhouse Benediction

Tanja Faylene Woloshen’s Holy Wild By Holly Harris

Winnipeg-based contemporary dance artists Tanja Faylene Woloshen and Lise McMillan presented Holy Wild, a surrealistic walk on the wild side inspired by nature and siren calls to freedom.

Posted September 2, 2017

Pasties and Politics

The Toronto Burlesque Festival opens with a Red Carpet Reveal By Grace Wells-Smith

The Red Carpet Reveal opened the tenth annual Toronto Burlesque Festival. Filled with diversity and body positivity, it achieves what some other western styles of dance are still trying to catch up on.

Posted August 10, 2017

A New Spin on an Old Classic

Punyah Krishna and other works by Parshwanath Upadhye By Aparita Bhandari

Rockstar bharatanatyam dancer Parshwanath Upadhye performed in an evening of contemporary bharatanatyam, presented by Sampradayada Dance Creations. Upadhye’s interpretation of a devotee’s adoration of Shiva, more specifically at the famous Chidambaram temple, was both athletic and graceful. His high kicks, leaps and knee turns did not come at the cost of nuances such as beautifully articulated mudras or clarity of movement in his adavus.

Posted August 9, 2017

Carrying a Collective Burden

Michael Greyeyes and Yvette Nolan’s Bearing By Emma Doran

Bearing is a dance opera co-created by Yvette Nolan, Michael Greyeyes and a cast of dancers, actors, singers and musicians, that will become a vital piece of Canadian theatre. Working with the idea that every Canadian has been in some way impacted by the disgraceful legacy of residential schools, the work is meant to encourage a collective carrying of the burden of this ugly and still present history. Bearing is a high concept work that offers a new model for catharsis via theatrical embodiment.

Posted August 5, 2017

When a Painting Breathes

Marie Chouinard’s The Garden of Earthly Delights By Sheenagh Pietrobruno

In 2016 Marie Chouinard was commissioned by the Jheronimus Bosch 500 Foundation to create a dance piece based on his paintings. United by fearless creativity and twisted beauty, Bosch’s images and the choreography of the Québecois/Canadian choreographer cut through facets of humanity. Her painting respires before our eyes.

Posted July 28, 2017

The Shape-Shifting Serpent

Aanmitaagzi draws from an historic Anishinaabe story to narrate contemporary issues By Molly Johnson Serpent People Presented by Coleman, Lemieux & Compagnie

Serpent People, takes its inspiration from an historic Anishinaabe story, The Black Sturgeon of Nipissing. While this story is an Anishinaabe one, the performers are artists from a range of communities, nations, clans and ancestries. The ensemble is appealingly egalitarian, a cast of varying ages, identities and skill sets who together create an image of real community – people working together across differences. The mythology of the serpent as shape-shifter and realm-crosser that Serpent People draws on is apparent in these artists, who shift from scene to scene adapting to fulfill roles foreign and familiar.

Posted June 30, 2017

Impressions from Montréal’s Festival TransAmériques - Part II

Three works from Mette Ingvartsen, Jocelyne Montpetit and Rachid Ouramdane By Mark Mann

Mini-reviews of works in Montréal’s Festival TranAmériques (FTA) - Ingvartsen’s 7 Pleasures, Montpetit’s Runaway Girl and Ouramdane’s Tordre. Part two of two of The Dance Current’s FTA 2017 coverage.

Posted June 19, 2017

Impressions from Montréal's Festival TransAmériques - Part I

Three works from Frédérick Gravel, Manuel Roque and Eszter Salamon By Philip Szporer

Mini-reviews of works in Montréal’s Festival TranAmériques (FTA) - Gravel’s Some Hope for the Bastards, Roque’s bang bang and Salamon’s Monument 0: Haunted by the War (1913-2013). Part one of two of The Dance Current’s FTA 2017 coverage.

Posted June 13, 2017

Dancers in Denim

Mile Zero Dance explores Edmonton’s historic Great Western Garment Company By Fawnda Mithrush Anything Goes: GWG Dance in 17 Parts

Part sound installation, part multidisciplinary performance, part massive pile of denim, Edmonton’s Mile Zero Dance presents a work inspired by the Great Western Garment Company, which, after many decades of storied success, finally shut its doors in 2004.

Posted June 2, 2017

All About Giselle

Giselle by Coastal City Ballet By Brittany Duggan

First staged in 1841, Giselle is often thought of as a straightforward story ballet. Vancouver-based Coastal City Ballet, a repertory company founded in 2011, stuck closely to the very specific and illustrative music by French composer Adolphe Adam, and choreographer Irene Schneider does an impressive job of working with the score to create scenes that challenge the various levels of dance ability within the company.

Posted May 30, 2017

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