Getting together with Christopher House is an interviewer's dream. The artistic director of Toronto Dance Theatre is always articulate, candid and provocative. Our conversation this time centres on his musings about his 30 years with the company and his new full-length work Dis/(sol/ve)r which premieres tomorrow. And House does not disappoint. He looks at the good, the bad and the ugly of his career with remarkable objectivity.
House was a choreographic wunderkind of dance which is surprising because he came to the art form later than most. Born in St. John's, Nfld., he was studying political science at the University of Ottawa when he fell in love with dance through Ottawa dance teacher Elizabeth Langley's movement classes.
Langley continues to be an influence. "She always has a question that she's grappling with," he says. "This means constantly setting challenges for yourself. There must be the feeling that there is something more. Step back and shake it up! That's my motto." House graduated from York University in 1979 with a BFA in dance. His first professional gig was performing in a revival of David Earle's Atlan tis in 1978. He joined TDT (which was founded in 1968) and by 1981, was appointed resident choreographer. The supremely gifted House was the obvious heir apparent to TDT co-founders Earle, Patricia Beatty and Peter Randazzo, and assumed the artistic directorship in 1994. "I had no idea that my entire professional life would be with one company," he says.
Soon after his appointment, the founders disassociated themselves from the company. The estranged relations are still a sensitive topic, one House has not spoken about before: "When you look at the history of the arts," he says, "there is a pattern of founders finding it difficult to let things go and see them evolve in a new direction. I had to make the company my own. ... I look at this rupture with deep regret. Everything I do is informed by my experience working with the founders. I think of them with only good will and gratitude."
His early choreographic career with the company shone brightly with short pieces like Glass Houses (1983) which he describes as growing out of his own dancing. Says House: "People loved them for their musicality, playfulness, kinetic invention, surprising elements, sense of form, and whimsical nature. In 1985, Anna Kisselgoff wrote in The New York Times that my choreography showed a direct lineage back to American modern dance."
When House discusses the pieces he made after becoming artistic director, it is with a surprising confession. "For the first three years, I didn't really create anything I liked," he says. "I was coping with learning how to be an artistic director, I was feeling isolated, and I just fed works into the repertoire which were all about experimentation with dance language." Then in 1998, he created the stunning Vena Cava which was breathtaking wall-to-wall dance. It was the spurt of energy he needed. "I stopped experimenting and went back to what I did best," he says, "a real old-fashioned dance piece, a summing up of modern dance, the kind of work that Kisselgoff had praised, the kind of piece that gives both the dancers and the audience a kinetic rush." The company took Vena Cava to New York with great success, but it was the late Benjamin Harkarvy, the legendary American teacher, choreographer, artistic director, and sometime mentor who burst House out of his bubble.
"He told me he'd seen it all before," says House, "and it was an epiphany. I had to find a completely new challenge." On a retreat at the Banff Centre, House came to a few home truths. He realized that his dance had always been subservient to music, even when it was a commissioned score. His new form of expression would be a freedom away from rules. He had always been interested in words and the visual arts, and he would incorporate these elements into longer pieces of choreography. He would create movement before he had music. "There would be no compromises," he says.
This new spirit of adventure produced Nest in 2000, and for TDT watchers, it was a radical sea change, a full-length work brimming with intellect and wit that was as much dance theatre as it was dance. Its theme was a clever and challenging metaphorical examination of the creative process. The reinvigorated House then produced an acclaimed string of far-ranging "extended statements" like the glorious Severe Clear (2000), inspired by his trip to the Yukon, and Timecode Break (2006), his ground-breaking homage to dance, the dancer and technology.
House rejects the idea that he is an intellectual. "I'm just an enthusiast," he counters. "I like to learn about things and I get obsessive about knowing everything I can." The inspiration for his new work Dis/(sol/ve)r is particle theory, particularly as stated in Gary Zukav's new age 1979 book The Dancing Wu Li Masters which links quantum physics to Eastern mysticism. Says House: "In the subatomic world, an elementary particle is unpredictable. You can't know its momentum and position at the same time.
There is a choreographic logic in that world, the exquisite nature of serendipity, the coming together and the pulling apart." House comes to the interview armed with a list of themes that form the tapestry of Dis/(sol/ve)r. What is completely fascinating is that in human and dance terms, he translates particle theory and quantum mechanics into moments of joy, unexplained liaisons, the lightness of being, the comfort of cruelty, dissolving lovers, the insistent hand, ascent and descent, and collapsing waves. And, oh yes, there is no text. His collaborators are composer Phil Strong, set designer Cheryl Lalonde, lighting designer Roelof Peter Snippe and costume designer Philip Sparks.
Says the 53-year-old House: "Once you get to middle age, you start to see things differently. I'm a much more social person. I have more friends now than I have ever had in my life. This is all reflected in Dis/(sol/ve)r.
Dance for me, with its shifting perspectives, varying ensemble of dancers and changing relationship with the audience is a gorgeous continuum. I have developed a deep love for dance's river of souls."
Dis/(sol/ve)r runs at the Fleck Dance Theatre Nov. 18 to 22.