Vancouver: January/February 2020
By Kaija Pepper
Musical discoveries are a welcome part of many dance shows, and Flying White, at Simon Fraser University’s downtown theatre at the end of January, offered just such an opportunity. The evening brought together choreographer Wen Wei Wang with two composers: Owen Underhill from Turning Point Ensemble, who has collaborated with many local dancemakers, and Dorothy Chang, on faculty at the University of British Columbia, whose music I hadn’t heard before.
Flying White is titled after an early method of inscribing Chinese calligraphy, in which a flat brush is used to create ribbon-like strokes, the black ink defining itself in relation to the white paper beneath. This poetically named brush style provided a hook on which to hang a mixed bill showcasing compositions by the two composers, only some of which were accompanied by dance. Wang is a busy man these days, running both his own Wen Wei Dance company in Vancouver and leading Ballet Edmonton in neighbouring Alberta, which perhaps explains the choice to present separate, loosely related pieces.
Chang proved especially memorable for two compositions that involved dance. First, the opening piece, Breath/Balance, with its cascades of sound from the guzheng, a traditional Chinese instrument (similar to a zither) played by Dai-Lin Hsieh. It was an ideal foil for Wang’s tense, cleanly embellished choreography, each move by the six dancers appearing to be a deeply held physical reflection on the guzheng solo.
The second highlight involving Chang was the drum solo for solo dancer, at the end of Wild Grass. In a warm and spirited improvisation, dancer Ralph Escamillan seemed fired by Jonathan Bernard’s explosive drum beats, resulting in an equally explosive full-body response that sent an excited buzz through the audience.
Flying White was one of three dance shows at PuSh International Performing Arts Festival. The first was Frontera, for one night only, on January 30. The piece was a collaboration between Dana Gingras and her Animals of Distinction dance company with Fly Pan Am, a mega-rock-styled group with its own following that probably helped fill seats in the large Queen Elizabeth Theatre, where contemporary dance seldom plays. Both groups are Montreal-based, though Gingras is well-known here as part of the hard-dancing Vancouver duo Holy Body Tattoo.
Frontera was built around Fly Pan Am’s dark, impenetrable wall of sound, often with an under-layer of screeching vocals, which established the tone of the show, whose “guiding ideas” are described in the program as being “borders and surveillance.” For me, Fly Pan Am’s hard amplification swallowed the frantic comings and goings of the 10 dancers, who seemed to be way off in the distance on the huge stage. Perhaps they needed to be amplified, too, projected on a large screen that would have helped them hold their own beside the music.
The third PuSh dance show, also from Montreal, came from Dana Michel, presented in the round at Scotiabank Dance Centre’s Faris studio theatre. Michel, the recipient of the Silver Lion for Innovation in Dance at the 2017 Venice Biennale, certainly didn’t present any usual form of choreographic virtuosity in her 2019 solo, Cutlass Spring. Instead, she set up several scenarios involving fairly ordinary movement that becomes dance through its formal presentation and repeated cycles. Really, it was performance art, an established genre of its own.
Over about an hour, Michel hunches, sort of invisible under a large plaid shirt, for quite some time, and later lies inactive on the floor; she exits the theatre for a few minutes (twice, I think); she undresses and then dresses (more than once); she stands rocking back and forth while pulling on a rope attached to some curtains, lifting them into the air. In Cutlass Spring, Michel intends to “map a sexual education — with all of its embodiments, fabrications, and disassociations.” I only got this theme afterwards, when I read the program; the piece itself mystified.
Tentacle Tribe, another Montreal group, built their show from the movement itself, allowing meaning to grow out of initial research into breathing techniques and meditative states, according to the program note. Ghost, at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre mid-February, was choreographed by Tentacle Tribe founders Emmanuelle Lê Phan and Elon Höglund, who perform here with four members of their company. All are strong personalities with smooth street dance moves, and their engaging performances let the dancing do the talking, as it were.
The pulse of the movement was subtle and rich, flowing in and out as the sextet form group tableaux textured with surprising shapes and the relationships of one body to another. Each body had its own dialogue within itself, too, finding a physical impulse that provided reason to move. Mecdy Jean-Pierre seemed to channel water through his hands, arms and shoulders, while a duet between Lê Phan and Höglund was an intimate architecture of interconnecting bodies and spirits.
Rosalie Lemay’s costume design was appropriately ghostly. The dancers start out in shades of white, their tops and pants artfully textured with frills and stylishly disrupted with various cut-out holes. Later, they are shrouded in black hoodies and pants, sucked into the breathless dark.
Ghost offered comic relief when white balloons replaced the dancers’ faces and their now weirdly elongated bodies shook in ghostly laughter. It was a fun change in tone, with the balloons used afterward as props that helped bring the hour-long piece to a well-paced close.
Finally, another musical discovery — Inuit throat singers Tooma Laisa and Leanna Wilson. The two young woman from Iqaluit were at the Anvil Centre in New Westminster, just outside Vancouver, for Coastal Dance Festival’s February 28 showcase. Their percussive vocals ranged from playful to harsh and guttural, often intimately shared with each other as they stood face to face, arms linked. Later, beating out a percussive rhythm on the lightweight drum that each one held and waved about as they gently stepped and swayed, the music and the movement were in sweet harmony.
