Fall for Dance North's 2020 Signature Program

Originally published on Blue Riband, Oct. 7 2020

In a season when performance venues are purchasing house plants to take the seats of their patrons, the impressive effort that Fall for Dance North put into digitally staging their 2020 Signature Program will be a welcome respite for dance lovers isolating at home. Their six world premieres—some broadcast live from the Fleck Dance Theatre and others prerecorded—are available on demand from now until the 18th, meaning you can stream and restream performances that would otherwise already be the stuff of memory. Embracing the ephemeral has always been a necessary element in dance appreciation, but audiences have a fresh opportunity to go back and experience these works throughout the festival. And the greatest benefit of their remote program? You can exclaim, gasp, sigh, and respond any way you like without disturbing other patrons in a darkened theatre.

Decidedly Jazz Danceworks — Photo by Trudie Lee

The series of world premieres opened with Indigenous company Red Sky Performance’s piece, choreographed by Associate Artist Jera Wolfe and originally slated for the Meridian Hall stage. Scored and inspired by Third Coast Percussion’s album Paddle to the Sea, ‘FLOW’ transcended the curse-of-the-first and landed as one of the program’s most memorable offerings. As sincere and charismatic as the new work he presented, Wolfe said in a talkback with FFDN Artistic Director Ilter Ibrahimof that he used the term ‘flow’ often in rehearsal to effectively evoke the gestures and behaviour of water, hoping to do justice to the album. And so we begin with a performance by Third Coast Percussion recorded in Chicago this past September projected onto the back wall behind the dancers. Most notable among the instruments are hanging glass jars and metal bowls holding water, the inspiring element itself directly shaping the movements of the dancers on stage through sound.

Thematically focused with a simple, thorough concept, ‘FLOW’ explored the many ways that water behaves through the physicality of five dancers. The first of three sections featured a chiming percussive beat and gestures that rang, resounded, and rippled in concert with the materials underscoring the movement. Wolfe gives his dancers sharp knots of synchronized motion to execute while maintaining a legato fluidity between precise movements, free from hesitation. The ensemble is all female save for Connor Mitten, who I remembered from Human Body Expression’s ‘Resonance’ last year for his exceptional partner work. His skill and experience were well-utilized in a uniquely moving duet with Carleen Zouboules; there was a palpable tenderness and trust between the two evident in his confident, unhurried lifts and the way she poetically unwound from their entanglements, languidly releasing her limbs into the space. With the expressivity of moving sculpture, they effected a hypnotic intimacy that made their duet a gentle yet emotional standout of the program.

Lisa LaTouche — Photo by Kristie Kahns Photography

This duet transitions back into ensemble work with one of the most striking images: that of Mitten supporting the four women as they bend backwards with interlaced limbs, evoking the ‘bubbling up’ image that Wolfe described in his talkback. Some of his strongest choreographic choices were his most subtle: the slight nod of heads in time with an echoing chime, and the minute flexes that externalize the pulse of the dancers. These smallest of gestures grounded the deepening lunges and unlabored acrobatics of his ensemble, who executed challenging choreography with a fluid confidence that was stylistically integral to the tone of the piece. Never static, the dancers move from synchronized allegro sections to lengthened, resonant gestures as naturally as water adjusts its own pace and expression to the terrain it traverses. Earthy yet elegant, FLOW was a refreshing opener to the program. Its clarity, innovation, and lack of self-indulgence prepared the palette for the following pieces—and assured the viewer that their ticket price was already well-spent regardless of what came next.

In contrast to the naturalism of ‘FLOW’, the next piece by decorated choreographer Joshua Beamish was thrillingly unnatural, contriving an ominous, alien geometric style framed by the marvellous artifice of cinematography. Starring himself and Kidd Pivot regular Rena Narumi, ‘Proximity’ was filmed at Theater De Nieuwe Regentes in Den Haag, and the exceptional care given to its recording almost distracted from the choreographic choices. Describing in the talkback how videographer/editor Scott Fowler filmed 15 second passages from different angles, the impact of this piece can’t be separated from how the camera lingers on Narumi’s arresting gazes. The intense focus in her eyes is as much a gesture as her sharp angles, disciplined isolations, and sweeping lines. Though the piece was aesthetically spare and invigoratingly stark, the camera work remained highly intuitive to the shapes made by herself and Beamish.

His experience as a choreographer shone in the intricate details of how the two navigated the space around each other—never touching. Developing the piece in quarantine, Beamish chose to actively reflect the contact-averse state of our world and to devise a creative process that didn’t endanger anyone. Already partial to duets as a form, he captures the detached way that even the most intimate of partners must now interact with great care, maintaining a measured precision throughout while allowing domestic gestures to burble to the surface in lean-forward moments of familiarity. His interest in the architecture of the body was clear, combining human and alien elements while contrasting softer details with hyper-extended gestures that disturb and disrupt the coldly-lit space. While I breathed several “Oh, beautiful!”s during ‘FLOW’, ‘Proximity’ got me to remark “Interesting, interesting, interesting!”

We then were plunged back into the body by the afternoon’s most visceral offering from performer and choreographer Mafa Makhubalo who maintains his own company, Mafa Dance Village, here in Toronto. Pairing the fascinating, rarely-staged dance form—gumboot—with the semi-improvised accompaniment of on-stage drummer Walter MacClean, ‘Dialogue with DNA’ successfully facilitated several physical/musical discussions at once. Communication was not only central to Makhubalo’s choices as a choreographer and his collaboration with MacClean as a composer—it is the basis of gumboot as a form. Beginning as a subversive form of dialogue between South African miners forbidden to speak while they worked, these labourers evolved a new way to remain in connection with each other by slapping the thick, rubber boots they wore into the mines. Makhubalo describes how these rhythms developed from preexisting tonal patterns in the South African musical tradition, serving as an alternate means of expression and frustrating the European overseers who couldn’t restrict dialogues that escaped their understanding. During the talkback, he related finding resolutions and connections within himself to effectively transcribe these ancestral communications into his choreography. And so, rooted in creative defiance, Makhubalo’s piece brought him into dialogue with his own ancestry, into dialogue with his drummer, and the viewer into dialogue with their unique rhythmic alchemy.

With only two performers, an array of instruments alongside the drums, and a winding double-helix projected as a backdrop, Makhubalo and MacLean did the most with the least, evoking physical responses from me that eclipsed more resourced offerings. Using a call-and-response model, tight musical sections from MacLean would be echoed and expanded upon by Makhubalo who used stamping, whistling, exclamations, bird calls, and percussive strikes on his body as well as his gumboots. Alternating claps and stomps too fast for the eye to follow, I was physically grateful during this piece that the usual in-person theatrical experience couldn’t compel me to silence. The beat they created together was so infectious and intuitive that my own DNA couldn’t resist the rhythm, coming into chorus with the conversation by clapping from home. In dialoguing with his genetic code, Makhubalo tapped into one of the most visceral capacities of dance—that of bringing the audience’s body into sympathetic connection with the movement… neurologically replicating the experience of being in motion. He proved that gumboot as a form didn’t just subvert a colonizing oppressor, but can also subvert the brain’s synaptic perception by evoking an irresistible physical rhythm.

Continuing this refreshing exploration of dance as a form of expressive resistance, Lisa La Touche delved into the history of tap as another form of percussive communication—one that emerged after slaveowners took instruments away from enslaved Africans. Her piece ‘Fool’s Gold’ was filmed at the DJD Dance Centre in Calgary (the same facility that the following work was broadcast from) and boldly pushes into all the corners of possibility that this new remote model offers. She begins with an intriguing selection of spoken word, appearing as a character inspired by the protective, gatekeeping brothel madames of New Orleans where jazz was born.

Red Sky Performance — Photo by Bruce Zinger

Thinking about this matriarchal political character in the context of our times, La Touche begins her tap performance with fellow dancers Danny Nielsen and Laura Donaldson, interspersing her confident choreography with rap and protest chants. 2020 is the year to integrate ‘No Justice, No Peace’ into our artistic offerings, and La Touche effectively rooted the performance in the deep, organized intensity of a protest. The three tap dancers built momentum from a loose, relaxed opening stance to a fever pitch that was notably controlled despite the fiery emotion it channeled. My primary cultural association with tap is that of a white American man dancing (and singing) in the rain, but La Touche supplanted that very quickly: her performance had the righteous, focused energy of an experienced protest leader—or in her words, a brothel madame who knows ‘all the right cops and all the right politicians’.

‘Terra’, choreographed by Kimberley Cooper of Decidedly Jazz DanceWorks, also opened with a prerecorded introduction following a mysterious woman through the corridors of the DJD Dance Centre in Calgary, but it was less clear how this prologue related to the performance. The driving inspiration of the work is a mouthwatering jazz tune composed for the company by Brazilian bassist Rubim de Toledo. Though sporting some inadvisable skirts in their costumes that detracted from the atmosphere set by their excellent live band, the four female dancers managed to evoke the slinky, smoky atmosphere of a late-night jazz bar. Like Mafa Makhubalo and Walter MacLean before them, they remained in a fertile, explorative dialogue with their band, executing some intriguing interactions and responses to the musicians.

A sequence of solo improvisations in reaction to drummer Raul Tabera infused the second half with refreshing energy, but the chemistry between dancers and musicians didn’t really extend to the dancer’s chemistry with each other. It was fascinating to see each individual embellish her movement within the loose parameters of the choreography as jazz musicians do within chords, but their immersion in the music felt noticeably siloed from one another. This meant that the musical performance overshadowed the dance it inspired, and felt less satisfying than if the dancers were vibing off each other’s energy as much as they were the live music. The thrilling, protean variables of jazz are those subtle, non-verbal cues that arise from the deep listening between artists on stage, and I wish I’d had more of an entry point into the very clear joy that the dancers take in the music. Cooper will be an artist in residence with FFDN this coming season, so I’m looking forward to seeing what she works on in that capacity.

Sonia Rodriguez — Photo by Jeremy Mimnagh

The program concluded with a charming collaboration between two principal ballerinas born in Spain and working in Canada—Sonia Rodriguez, founding board member of the festival, and choreographer Vanesa Garcia-Ribala Montoya, dancer with Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal. It was refreshing to see the National Ballet of Canada hire a choreographer of colour to produce their contribution to the Signature Program, and Montoya’s first crack at choreographing pointe work showed her eye for building the elements of story and relationship. Recalling Rodriguez’s memorable performance as Carmen from 2013, the piece began with some intriguing interactions between herself and pianist Kevin Ahfat.

However, with so many smaller companies managing to combine a rich musical experience for their performances, with some individuals taking on multiple musical roles, the single piano playing these classical Spanish compositions couldn’t help but feel a bit flavourless next to the other offerings. I found myself wishing that there were a guitarist or wind instrument present to add some dimension to the musical accompaniment, though this isn’t to say that Ahfat didn’t do a marvellous job. Montoya builds in some lovely moments for her ballerina to convey emotional beats in stillness and reflection, and the elegantly restrained solos she creates for first soloist Spencer Hack were executed with weightless vigor and a notable sense of enjoyment. And as always, the effortless partner work between Rodriguez and longtime stage-husband Piotr Stanczyk was above reproach. Montoya was utterly charming in the talkback, grateful for the opportunity to work with such experienced artists and looking forward to diving deeper into the classical vocabulary in projects to come.

For only $15, you can fall asleep to ‘FLOW’ and start your day with ‘Dialogue with DNA’ until the 18th, getting the most of a remote festival experience while the houseplants keep our seats warm.