VANCOUVER — To celebrate Dancing on the Edge's 20th anniversary, festival producer Donna Spencer has commissioned 10 new works, seven from choreographers who participated in the very first year and three from festival favourites. The rest of the programming is mostly Vancouver choreographers.
New, however, does not necessarily mean wonderful. In fact, of the opening weekend's nine choreographies, which included three of the commissioned pieces, there was little excitement. For the most part, the pieces were competent, both in creation and performance. Four deserve special mention.
Lola MacLaughlin is one of the Edge's original participants. The Vancouver choreographer premiered an excerpt from Princess, Infanta, Queen, performed by Susan Elliott, one of this country's best dancers. I hope to see the full-length work one day because the excerpt is compelling.
Although not mentioned in the program, clearly MacLaughlin's inspiration was Diego Velazquez's paintings of infantas of Spain, particularly Infanta Margarita in Blue (1659). As the piece begins, Elliott is in voluminous petticoats, while two stagehands put on her blue overdress. Like Margarita, her hair has a side part and ribbon. The score uses Spanish period music.
Anik Bissonnette & Andrew Giday in James Kudelka' s Fifteen Heterosexual Duets, part of the Dancing on the Edge festival in Vancouver. (Handout: Michael Slobodian)
What follows is a fascinating dance that conveys boredom, resignation, frustration, desire and anger all at the same time. Elliott never changes her bland public face, and the glory of MacLaughlin's choreography is that the body language says all, whether in the violent manner the dancer swishes her skirts, the fierce, sudden out-thrusts of limbs, the wild turns, or the sudden sinking into her billowing skirts.
Toronto's Karen Rose also uses found music for her The (Remembrance) Trilogy. To the stately and elegiac scores of Henryk Gorecki's Symphony No. 3 and Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings, Rose presents a powerful three-part lament for woman as widow, victim and survivor of war.
She begins in a red gown with a very long train, and this material remains onstage like a giant bloodstain for the following two sections. Each section has her clothed in ultra-feminine dresses that epitomize woman's vulnerability.
Rose's choreography is minimal and emotional. She is a beautiful dancer, and each movement is clean, clear and expressive. Her repeating motif is a back arch followed by a sinking to the knees that connotes a cry of anguish.
From the first part's stately, restrained measures ( The Widow's Walk), to the suffering lunges and heaving sobs of the second ( Helene), to the third's fast runs and furious falls ( HALT), Rose has created a memorable dance of grief.
Edmonton's Brian Webb, also an Edge original, has collaborated with singer Sheri Somerville in the full-length Nine Points to Navigate.
Guitarist/singer Howard Fix and pianist Haley Simons have put together a wonderful score that includes songs by Johnny Cash and the Rolling Stones, among others, performed with spirit by their live band. The piece is an homage to Webb's and Somerville's fathers, particularly how they were shaped by the Depression and war, which in turn had an impact on their children.
The title stands for pointers used to navigate through life, or what the children learned from their fathers. This is shared through personal stories, song and movement.
Webb was born in 1951, and is no spring chicken. Somerville is a singer, not a dancer. As a result, the movement parts are the least of this work. In fact, the forced, contrived physicality seems jarring, particularly the positioning of chairs and the changing of clothes.
What saves this piece is the storytelling, which is at once charming and compelling. Their truthfulness, no matter how hurtful, captures the imagination, while the songs add vitality. They should jettison the movement and costumes and convert the work into music theatre.
Finally, there is Montreal's hip hop-based Solid State, which I reviewed recently from the Newfoundland Festival of New Dance in St. John's. The second viewing of their sly Take it Back is as delightful as the first, as the four dancers blend showy urban street moves with 1940s jitterbug to explore why people don't dance together any more. The group is currently performing at the Toronto Fringe Festival and should not be missed.
Dancing on the Edge, Festival of Contemporary Dance 2008, continues in Vancouver until July 12.
