Standout moves

>> From lo-fi slow-mo to super-charged and
hi-tech, dance took on different incarnations

SELF-PROJECTION: Philippe Decouflé

by MARITES CARINO

I sometimes wonder if sitting face to face with a live dance piece is comparable to speed dating. Can that first impression, those first seven minutes, really make it or break it? During 2007, I met some duds, but there were definitely a handful of encounters worth a second date.

Flying solo

I have to admit it wasn’t love at first sight at the MAI last spring with Alvin Erasga Tolentino’s solo Field: Land Is the belly of man. The Vancouver-based Filipino choreographer used the theme of rice to trace a lone cross-cultural journey that dealt with hunger and globalization. Although I found the video projections unnecessary and distracting, the strength and beauty of Erasga’s fluid movements and tight choreography eventually won me over.

Other impressive solos of the year that successfully integrated projections were France’s Philippe Decouflé in his Solo: le doute m’habite at Usine C. With his technical wizardry we saw in Shazam!, Decouflé continues to use humour, illusion and dance in his quest to entertain. Montreal audiences recently saw Peter Trosztmer dancing with lines, spheres and shapes in Norman, a magical ode to the NFB’s Norman McLaren in collaboration with Michel Lemieux and Victor Pilon of 4Dart.

Getting back to more lo-fi movement for one, at the beginning of the year, Louise Lecavalier returned for a comeback performance in a trio of works that showed off her versatility. The closer of the evening “I” is Memory, which was conceived by Benoît Lachambre, was fascinating for its excruciatingly slow pace. However, it wasn’t for everyone. I noticed it lulled some to sleep during its languorous 45 minutes. Lecavalier, dressed in a baggy, hooded tracksuit, moved microscopically in a hyper-controlled butoh-esque creation—an extreme contrast to her days in La La La Human Steps.

In a more up-tempo work, Studio 303’s Vernissage-danse #135 was a sell-out. Local B-girl/choreographer K8 Alsterlund made her mark with a short solo Solitaire that touched upon the notions of power and femininity. Armed with a commanding stage presence, Alsterlund’s simple, concise movements concocted from a mix of breakdance and contemporary was a definite crowd pleaser.

Partner up

In dances for two, from Barcelona, the choreographer-dancer duet of Jordi Cortés and Damián Muñoz performed Ölelés, a visually stunning piece about the trials and tribulations of friendship at l’Agora de la Danse. In response to Sándor Márai’s novel Embers, and set against a backdrop dreamed up by the duo, the highly physical partnering of Cortés and Muñoz showed moments of violence and passion.

And on the same stage this fall, a mesmerizing duet choreographed by Crystal Pite and performed by Anne Plamondon and Victor Quijada was a highlight in the Vancouver-based choreographer’s group piece Lost Action.

Play group

This year marked the kick-off year of Festival TransAmériques a revamped contemporary dance-theatre festival that replaced the city’s long-running Festival de Théâtre des Amériques.

The opening show—Umwelt, by French choreographer Maguy Marin—left the audience in a sort of sensorial flatline with its repetitive, calculated movements that were set to the droning of electric guitar strings. The work, which made reference to the banality and drudgery of the day-to-day through its cyclical structure, featured nine actor-dancers continuously moving against a mighty breeze from the wings, while weaving through a kind of dance funhouse complete with rows of mirrored corridors. In endless costume changes, performers transported props like potted trees, slabs of wood and garbage, which they gradually discarded onto a heap at the front of the stage. While I inadvertently became preoccupied envisioning the backstage prop logistics and organization, the actual performance left me cold.

In contrast, local Dave St-Pierre knows how to provoke an audience with his love-it-or-hate-it choreographies. His latest, Un peu de tendresse bordel de merde, made its Montreal premiere at the festival. In this theatrical piece that scrutinized the vulnerability of love, St-Pierre organized chaos and interspersed it with moments of angst and tenderness with the help of a zany yet seductive master of ceremonies who cleverly strung the whole thing together with her witty bilingual text.

His work for a cast of 20, which includes in-your-face nudity à la St-Pierre, craftily manipulates audiences’ highs and lows where closing night culminated in thunderous whoops and cheers akin to a rock concert encore. If you didn’t score a first date with St-Pierre last spring, you’re in luck, he’s back in January at Usine C.