Category: Dance

Betroffenheit :Corporeal exchange as innovative now as the work of Pina Bausch in the 1970’s

Betroffenheit :Corporeal exchange as innovative now as the work of Pina Bausch in the 1970’s

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Betroffenheit.
PhotoMichael Slobodian

Betroffenheit (consternation, a state of shock, dismay) a coproduction by  Kidd Pivot Company and the Electric Company Theatre. Written by Jonathan Young, Choreographed and Directed by Crystal Pite.

Here Betroffenheit  indicates very quickly,  a state of trauma, set off by a personal crisis that the individual, a lone young man enclosed in a hospital room, has experienced but , cannot get out of his mind. In spite of the presence of a psychiatrist, and of  individuals who seem to want to help him, the grief and the personal tragedy have possessed him deeply and we see how he can never escape their consequences no matter how hard all those around him appear to be helping  him. …

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SIENA by la Veronal : Self contemplation, imagined self- destruction and a terrifying sense of the human body!

SIENA by la Veronal : Self contemplation, imagined self- destruction and a terrifying sense of the human body!

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Siena, Photo: Jesus Robisco

 

 

European  performance is slipping through boundaries, transforming relationships between film, dance, painting, dramatic texts and the human body  and in all this apparent chaos which redefines   live performance,  the world of the “post-text”  and all forms of creation in space speak equally to each other in unexpected ways.    In Canada, Robert Lepage opened  the performance space many years go to this kind of visual/corporeal /technologically based work that one could no longer call simply “theatre” but that seemed to relegate the text to another conceptual dimension, thanks to his collaboration with European festivals and creative centres across the Western world.    Now, a lot of companies are moving in that direction, apparently  feeding off the imaginative style of  Italian performer Romeo Castellucci’s   work that unites the  troubled  subconscious  of  victims of  violence of our contemporary world.  His bits of spoken word and dialogue often based on the great founding narratives of the Western World,   take audiences far away into  visually disturbing places of  pre-civilization, where we can rediscover  the human body and rethink its role in the human uhrschleim of existence.  …

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Nijinsky at the NAC: a truly cathartic encounter between the dancer and his creations

Nijinsky at the NAC: a truly cathartic encounter between the dancer and his creations

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Guillaume Côté (Nijinsky) and Heather Ogden (Romola)
Photo:Chris Sonnemann

 

 The National Ballet of Canada’s staging of   John Neumeier’s Nijinsky, the artist who, by his personal and professional life, has certainly had the most influence on contemporary dance in the world, will go down in the annals of dance drama performance.  For the spectator, it does help if one is aware of the history of the Ballet Russe and the different individuals who worked with Nijinsky during his brief professional life because  Neumeier’s vision of the work does not try to reproduce autobiographical  accuracy or even imitate the many performances that attracted attention to Nijinsky’s dancing .  His emphasis is elsewhere. …

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L-E-V OCD : Dancing the Pain Away

L-E-V OCD : Dancing the Pain Away

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Emily Blake,  November 26th 2017

In Patrick Langston’s criticism class.  

 

Silence speaks louder than words, and in that silence is all the meaning in the world. LEV’s OCD Love is a powerful commentary on what it like to be plagued by OCD, shedding light on the realities of those who are faced with this disorder every day. LEV is an Israeli dance company founded by choreographer Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar. They are joined by techno musician Ori Lichtik, working together to create this hypnotic masterpiece. …

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OCD Love: L-E-V Dance company delves into a paradox, the strange psychic disruption of the troubled body!

OCD Love: L-E-V Dance company delves into a paradox, the strange psychic disruption of the troubled body!

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OCD Love (L-E-V Dance) Photo. Courtesy of the National Arts Centre

This latest work by the Israeli dance company LEV Dance, created by  Sharon  Eyal and Gai Behar is a terrifyingly complex moment of corporeal  inventiveness that subjected  the dancers to the most demanding  feat of choreography I have ever seen.

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Semperopera”s Swan Lake moves forward to a heightened emotional and psychological performance!!

Semperopera”s Swan Lake moves forward to a heightened emotional and psychological performance!!

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photo Ian Whalen
Photo Ian Whalen
Semperoper  Dresden Ballet company

The renowned  Semperoper Dresden Ballet under the artistic direction of Canadian Aaron S. Watkin,  has just whirled through  Ottawa this past  weekend with their moving romantic  performance of Swan Lake, one of the world’s  most famous narrative ballets.

Set to the music of Tchaikovsky, performed by the orchestra of the NAC under the direction of Mikhail Agrest, the tragic story inspired by  Russian folk tales concerns the handsome prince Siegfried who falls in love with Odette, the young  woman bewitched by an evil magician who can only retain her human form for a brief time every day but who can be released from the spell if she has the  true love of a human.   …

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Café Müller and The Rite of Spring. The Wuppertal Tanztheater returns to its origins

Café Müller and The Rite of Spring. The Wuppertal Tanztheater returns to its origins

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The Rite of Spring, Wuppertal Tanztheater at the NAC
Photo Alexandra Campeau

 

The ghost of Pina Bausch was no doubt fluttering with excitement around the NAC last night  as  the contemporary formation  of her company brought us all back to the very origins of  the idea of  Tanzteater , dance that incorporates words,  foregrounds a heightened form of theatricality  and much much more. All that came through very strongly last night in the Opera of the NAC before a packed house, waiting religiously to see the company from Wuppertal perform works that most people have not seen before in Ottawa. …

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Avignon. Dance poem by Radhouane El Meddeb: Face à la mer, pour que les larmes deviennent des éclats de rire.

Avignon. Dance poem by Radhouane El Meddeb: Face à la mer, pour que les larmes deviennent des éclats de rire.

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FACE A LA MER - 71e FESTIVAL D AVIGNON -

Concept, dramaturgy, choreography Radhouane El Meddeb; Artistic collaboration Moustapha Ziane; Stage design Annie Tolleter; Music Jihed Khmiri,  Production: La Compagnie de SOI; Tunis – Paris

A reflection on movement, music and chanting, this performance is about the pain of exile, the impossibility of return or of changing history.  Radhouane El Meddeb, a Tunisian-French dancer and choreographer,  dedicates his work to the people of Tunis, those who left and those who stayed behind. The central image is the sea towards which all the  dancers’ gazes are directed. They  come onstage, one by one, moving past each other, looking intensely at the audience, or rather at the sea.

In the first part of this one-hour show, there is not much action but rather tension and mistrust. The dancers move across the stage, stiffen their bodies, afraid to brush by each other, avoiding eye-contact. Their only point of connection is that sea, the gaze they cast towards the spectators. This sense of discomfort is transmitted to the audience as well: how do you react to action that is devoid of any internal  movement?

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Dance at the NAC. The Jardin Des Délices – Marie Chouinard renews her sources of inspiration and the effect is magic

Dance at the NAC. The Jardin Des Délices – Marie Chouinard renews her sources of inspiration and the effect is magic

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Marie Chouinard admits that this performance   represents the “joy of bowing before a masterpiece (NAC program p.3) as she subjects her choreography to the spirit of Bosch’s Triptych  The Garden of Earthly Delights.  The one dimensional  language  of the painter that spreads out on a   flat canvass  before us, marked by the visual esthetics of  the Northern Renaissance ,  is  given a new  spirit on the NAC stage. Contemporary androgynous bodies  moving in space  with musical accompaniment,  subjected to predetermined steps and a form of perfectly orchestrated chaos, reveal the  enormous  shift in creativity that was required by Chouinard to capture the spirit of  Bosch’s  three movements  that inspired her work: The  Garden of Earthly Delights, Hell and Paradise. …

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Arrabal: A Story of Love and Politics Told through the Tango

Arrabal: A Story of Love and Politics Told through the Tango

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Photo: Celia Von Tiedeman.

Arrabal, now playing at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge in its U.S. début, premiered in Toronto in 2014. In its present state, it is a fascinating theatre experience, a political drama told without words via the tango and music. It is also an immersive show where some audience members, supposedly at a tango club in Buenos Aires, sit at tables downstage as well as on the orchestra floor, which had several rows of seats removed. In the first scene which takes place in the present spectators are invited to join the performers onstage for a tango lesson.

The joyous mood changes abruptly as the story begins. A projection announces that it is 1976, the year in which Isabel Peron’s government was overthrown by a right-wing junta. We meet Rodolfo (Julio Zurita), an endangered resistant, bringing his infant daughter to his mother who lives in a slum (arrabal in Spanish) outside Buenos Aires. He dances a tender tango with baby Arrabal (a word also associated with the tango) before putting her into the bassinet and leaving her a red scarf. …

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