What Happened to Bodies, Part 1

Drowning in schoolwork, I have disappeared from Indyish this past month. This is not to say however that I have not found the time to excessively indulge as usual in the Montreal dance scene, seeing work after work in an effort to cash in on all the dance available before things calm down for the summer. No doubt a lot of this has to do with the newly born Festival TransAmeriques, which so far has already provided us with some of the best dance shows of the season. But before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s backtrack to the end of April.

Amjad, La La La Human Steps/Edouard Lock
My disappearance was punctuated by the much-anticipated new creation by Montreal’s own Edouard Lock. Unfortunately, I have to admit that Amjad is surprisingly the most disappointing of the shows I have seen this past month. It is especially unfortunate given the incredible amount of hard work that obviously went into it. But for all its constantly high energy and the remarkable technical skills of the dancers, Lock forgets to give us the variety that would be necessary to maintain our interest in his ambitious 100-minute show.

The Works, David Albert-Toth, Julia Male, Cora Marta
The Concordia dance students who had participated in independent studies presented their work at the end of April. As usual, the quality of their choreography was impressive, even though these works differed greatly from what we have come to expect from Concordia students. Marta’s a woman performing a simply but necessary task is a duo for two women that is exquisitely beautiful in its abstraction. Leaving theatricality aside, the dancers become merely lines and shapes in motion. Male’s solo Hold Petname might look less demanding physically, but it successfully creates an indescribable mood that slowly creeps up on the audience. The evening ended with Albert-Toth’s fusion of contemporary dance and breakdancing, Scale. It boils with an energy that is positively contagious.

Nocturnes, Deborah Dunn
At the beginning of May, Deborah Dunn presented her new work at Agora de la danse. The choreography for Nocturnes is inspired by melodrama, with its over-the-top theatrical gestures, which Dunn pushes even further until they become dance movements. Needless to say that Nocturnes is often hilarious as a result, but more surprising are the moments of sheer beauty that emerge when the theatricality gives way to pure motion.

Axes, Hideo Arai, GaPa & Shinya Ochida
As part of Festival Acces Asie and also as the last work in Tangente’s Crossings program, this time a collaboration between artists from Tokyo and Montreal, Arai’s Axes is a truly playful work that actually manages to include its audience in the creative process. One of the highlights of the show is when photographer Ochida takes pictures of Arai as he dances, which are then projected on a screen at the back of the room. The disjunction between the photograph and what we have actually witnessed is so great that it exposes the fallacy that photography reveals the truth. Instead, it condenses time to offer us pictorial art, which live dance is unable to do, constantly needing to be performed in the present in order to maintain its life.

This finally brings us to the Festival TransAmeriques, which is currently underway until June 7, but the last thing I want to do is cause a dance overdose in my readers. But if the beginning of the festival is any sign of what is to come, I would urge you to get tickets to any of the dance shows presented. Reviews of the first shows presented at the festival to come soon…