Sign Language Created and performed by Denise Clarke at the Big Secret Theatre in Calgary
One Yellow Rabbit's Denise Clarke has always had an audacious streak. At the company's High Performance Rodeo festival in Calgary a couple of years ago, she choreographed the entire OK Computer album by Radiohead just for a lark. At her last appearance in Toronto, in Thunderstruck at the Factory Theatre, she was virtually unrecognizable in the role of a bashful teenage boy. Now she has upped the ante once again, with a show that dares to demystify that most esoteric of performing arts, interpretive dance.
Sign Language, subtitled A Physical Conversation Performed by Denise Clarke, consists of two parts. In the first half, Clarke performs, often stunningly, a 70-minute abstract dance. Then, after the interval, she hosts an informal "salon" in the theatre, where she explains her creative process and takes questions from the audience. Not one to hide behind intellectual constructs, Clarke lets it all hang out: why she chose to wear a frilly pink nightgown at one point in the performance; what the music (by Estonian composer Arvo Part) says to her; why her socks don't match.
Gazing out into the house on Thursday's opening night, Clarke spied her grey-haired parents, introduced them, and then apologized for the show's nudity. "Sorry I showed my boobs, Dad. Sorry I shook my bum." That led her to discuss "this taking-off-my-clothes thing." She said it all goes back to childhood. "It's related to being three years old and getting out of the bath and just running around. I find I cannot lie when I'm naked."
Clarke's honesty is a refreshing antidote to the hermetic atmosphere that surrounds so much modern dance, and makes it a closed shop to all but the initiated. The irony is that her own work needs little explanation to be enjoyed. An actor as well as a dancer, she emotes, mimes and recites text to accompany her already-eloquent choreography. The springboard for this piece is a riff on Radiohead's Fitter, Happier litany, in which Clarke comically assures us she's on the path to inner peace, signing her words as she speaks. Those bits of sign language become signposts for the dance to come, as she plunges into a vortex of moods and emotions that reveal someone who is anything but tranquil.
Sign Language is an experiment, a dance created intuitively in the studio without any preconceived ideas or themes, and is still evolving as Clarke performs it each night. Clearly, the war in Afghanistan has coloured its making, as has a preoccupation with religious faith. There is a startling sequence in which Clarke slithers out of her tight black dress and uses it as headgear, transforming it in a flash from the wimple of a coy nun to the muffling burkha of a wary Afghan woman. Later, she crouches in awe and terror in the light from stained-glass windows before humbly offering up a prayer that swiftly turns into a heated argument with the Almighty.
As with any work-in-progress, there are rough spots and ideas that haven't yet gelled. But most of the time, Clarke is compelling. The thundering chords and soaring choirs of the Part score inspire her to produce some powerful movement and images, from those agonies in the cathedral to a cathartic climax in which, she whirls wildly in a pool of light, turning from a dancing gypsy into a demented diva as she lip-synchs an aria with a silent scream.
But Clarke's inherent sense of humour won't let her go through a dark night of the soul without frequent comic pit stops. In one funny and magical sequence, she deftly mimes a small, delicate object, which she then "inflates" into a big beach ball -- a weighty sphere that she shoulders Atlas-style -- and, finally, a mass so enormous that it takes up the entire stage. Then she steps insouciantly into the middle of it and swivels it on her hips. The world is her Hula-Hoop.
Clarke's physical vocabulary is so fluent that she seems to change her age and body before our eyes. At one point, she is sweaty and muscled, straining like a sprinter in the homestretch. Then she dons the nightgown and suddenly becomes a lithe young girl, skipping gracefully in a state of ecstatic abandon. She crouches and jives, and her Botticelli nymph has downgraded to a bowlegged tomboy.
At 44, Clarke is in splendid shape, but like Mark Morris she is one of those defiant dancers who is not afraid of her aging and imperfect flesh. She displays her glorious buttocks like a horse's croup, then, discovering that they jiggle, turns it into a joke for us.
The most telling moment comes right after that when, ignoring the audience, she continues jiggling delightedly as she hops across the stage.
We might have guessed. But thanks to the salon, now we know: That's the three-year-old, fresh from her bath. Sign Language runs through Saturday at the Epcor Centre for the Performing Arts in Calgary. For information, call: 403-264-3224.