Reviews

What We Talk About When We Talk About Death

A discussion of Andrew Henderson and Eroca Nichols’ Taking it to the Grave By Jillian Groening

Promoted as a living funeral, Taking it to the Grave was artist, performer and stage manager Andrew Henderson aka Glamdrew’s parting party, a defiant reclaiming of death and a lesson in letting go.

Posted November 22, 2016

Can Choreography Really Change Music?

By Lori Straus petites danses

The concept behind Marie-Josée Chartier’s petites danses is a simple one: how does choreography change the way we hear music?

Posted November 21, 2016

Strength in Unity

By Kate Stashko Encounters

Encounters, the company’s season opener, is a double bill featuring world premieres: Jacinto by Morris and Herd by Toronto guest choreographer Alysa Pires. This is a different Citie Ballet than from the last time I saw them perform.

Posted November 16, 2016

Love Hurts

By Catherine Genest Danse de nuit

Danse de nuit by Québec City-based choreographer Karine Ledoyen looks at nightlife and sentimental wounds. It gets at the crazy stuff we do as we attempt to heal ourselves.

Posted November 9, 2016

Call of the Wild

By Philip Szporer Pour

Daina Ashbee, a Montréal-based dance artist with Cree Métis and Dutch heritage, shifts her compass northward, beyond the treeline, to awaken an essential part of her emotional fabric, embodiment and essence with Pour.

Posted October 11, 2016

The Leap: Bold Moments in Time

35th Annual Alberta Dance Festival By Marie France Forcier The 35th Annual Alberta Dance Festival | The Leap: Bold Moments in Time

Strong Albertan ties was the common denominator for the ten choreographers selected by Dancers’ Studio West to present work as part of the Annual Alberta Dance Festival. Bold moments in time was the broad thematic glue binding their works into a couple of distinct programs.

Posted October 3, 2016

Dance for All the People

By Lucy Fandel Quartiers Danses Festival

The fourteenth annual Festival Quartiers Danses strung together themes of accessibility, originality, history and joy in contemporary dance today.

Posted September 29, 2016

The Dance Deck Trois is Rich, Intimate and Authentic

By Rachel Silver Maddock The Dance Deck Trois

Grassroots performance series pairs dancers’ personal explorations with live classical music in a garden setting.

Posted September 6, 2016

Performing Performances

By Kathleen Smith SummerWorks Festival

Dance was front and centre at SummerWorks this year, building on some serious bonds forged during past editions of this annual contemporary performance festival in Toronto.

Posted August 27, 2016

Why Love What You Will Lose?

By Don Rieder Lighted Rooms Company of Angels

Lighted Rooms is a hybrid performance that defies categorization. It is a series of poems, story monologues, dance, song and bawdy limericks, an hour-long string of pearls whose thread is the energy and commitment of an extraordinary group of performers.

Posted August 24, 2016

The Range at ROMP!

From experimental solos to Le Jazz Hot By Robin J. Miller ROMP! Festival of Dance

Joshua Beamish opened the nineteenth annual ROMP! Festival of Dance, presented by Victoria’s Suddenly Dance Theatre, with a solo show called Lone Wolf.

Posted July 26, 2016

Edge 2 and 3

Dancing on the Edge 2016 By Rachel Silver Maddock Dancing on the Edge Festival 2016

Kaleido by Tentacle Tribe for OURU Collective, Dialogue by Wen Wei Wang, the neck to fall by Ziyian Kwan and more in this series of capsule reviews.

Posted July 20, 2016

A Wild Way Home in Le Petit Prince

Choreography by Guillaume Côté By Mark Mann Le Petit Prince

Le Petit Prince is both a perfect and a problematic choice. Perfect because the story is already furnished with all the necessary components for a conventional ballet, and problematic because Le Petit Prince is actually a dark and confusing book.

Posted June 20, 2016

Memory, Music and Dance

EDAM presents Induction By Rachel Silver Maddock Induction

Induction presented three new works by local choreographers Amber Funk Barton, Anne Cooper, Tom Shroud and Peter Bingham. As the audience gathered at the warm, intimate EDAM space near the intersection of Main and Broadway, I noticed the casual coziness of the place, worn in by years of dancing and performance.

Posted June 15, 2016

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