Review: Dark Matters

It’s not without a minimal amount of expectations that one walks into a Crytal Pite show. One of the most renowned choreographers in Canada, she can fill Agora de la danse for two straight weeks, which is no easy feat. So does her latest work to show in Montreal, Dark Matters, deserve such a welcome? Definitely, though not without some reservations.

Like most of Pite’s works, Dark Matters has a strong theatrical component, but here she does something unusual and interesting with it: she divides the show in two parts of about 40 minutes each, the first being almost exclusively theatrical, and the second, barely. Though the first half is entertaining, Pite is much more in her element in the second half.

Backed with a large set for a dance show, the first half introduces us to an inventor submerged in a world of shadows as he creates a marionette. The music is reminiscent of a film score (a bit over the top) and even the numerous lighting fade-ins and fade-outs have a cinematic quality about them. His Pinocchio quickly turns into a Frankenstein and just as we wonder whether Pite is serious or not, she pushes everything over the edge and it becomes clear that she’s having fun. Before this section is over, we have also gotten a taste of The Matrix and The Phantom of the Opera.

After the intermission, there is no longer any trace of the set. While all the performers but the inventor were covered in black from head to toe in the first part, they now come out wearing plain but colorful clothes. The dance begins.

The choreography is typical Pite. The dancers get in formations where they are all touching before breaking away from each other as the movement carries them across the stage. Despite their broken down postures, the movement remains highly fluid. The choreography demands that the dancers extend into space, their limbs stretching out as far as they can, as if the body has become too small for the life it contains. In this vein, dancer Jeremy Spivey is phenomenal.

The choreography gains in complexity as the movement of the dancers intersect. When it comes to dance, Pite doesn’t take the easy way out. The movement has a complex progression, never going where one would expect it to naturally go. The fluidity is not in the movement itself, which is often fragmented, but in its execution.

With such strong choreography, it’s hard to figure out why Pite seems to often feel the need to bring things back into a more concrete sphere. Maybe it’s because she has such a distinct signature that she uses theatricality as a way to differentiate one show from the next. To offer just one example, in her final duo with Peter Chu, the two share a rather unnecessary kiss. Though it might not be intended that way, their bodies remain gendered and the kiss suddenly inscribes the scene within a simplistic heterosexual resolution. Before that moment, the relationship established between the two through dance was much richer. Pite’s work is at its best when she capitalizes on the spirituality that already emerges from her movement. There really is no need for her to cheapen it by tying it down to the material world.

Dark Matters continues until Saturday, May 9, at Agora de la danse. Tickets are 26$, 18$ for students. For more information, visit www.agoradanse.com or visit 514.525.1500.

PREVIEW As Peter Trostzmer himself pointed out on my last post, Thea Patterson’s rhyming couplets is already underway at Tangente and this until Sunday, May 3. New York’s Julian Barnett fills the other half of the show with Echologue. At Place des arts, Danse Danse is bringing back La La La Human Steps/Édouard Lock’s Amjad. I have to admit that I was disappointed when I saw it two years ago, though based on the press release I am inclined to believe that the duration of the work has shrunk since then. Next week, Tangente presents another double bill, Marc Boivin’s Impact and 2 by New York’s Bill Young/Colleen Thomas & Co.

Tangente: www.tangente.qc.ca & 514.525.1500
Danse Danse: www.dansedanse.net & 514.842.2112