Canada Dance Festival is a go
05 Jun 2010 Leave a Comment
in anecdote, Canada Dance Festival Tags: CanadaDance, festival, modernDance
The Canada Dance Festival actually started yesterday, but I saw my first event today. It was the ‘Pre-profeessional Training Programs’ which I think are done by college-going/graduating dancers. The event took place at the Arts Court Theatre (which is actually across the street from the hotel I stayed at in on my first trip to Ottawa, yet have not gotten around to checking out till now). Not since I attended the great Florida State University Dance programs have I seen something as good and as reasonably priced (ticket was $10). The program consisted of four pieces performed by three schools. The first was ‘Concerto pour Danseurs et Violoncelle’ performed by the School of Dance, Contemporary Dance Division. An interesting piece where the dancers performed with and around an actual cello and the music was cello centric. Next was ‘Particle Theory (2009)’ performed by the School of Toronto Dance Theatre. The music more avant-garde for this one. Third was ‘Seuls ou avec d’autres (Alone or with others)’ performed by L’École de danse de Québec, which was my favorite piece. The music sounded mechanical and the dance mirrored that with clock-work like repetitions. Last was another by the School of Toronto Dance Theatre, ‘excerpt from Chiasmata (2007)’. One thing that stood out for me was implied attack/assault imagery. When I see modern dance, I’m usually struck by the physical similarity with martial arts. The reasoning and motives are very different between the two, but when you get down to the physical actions, there is striking similarity between the two. Especially in the first two pieces, there were forms that not to just my biased eye, must have resonated with others. Twirling and flipping other dancers, along with bumps and shoves. It makes me wonder if that is somehow the ‘it’ idea in dance currently. So in summation, highly recommend this show, looking forward to the rest of the Dance Festival and going to try to figure out how to see more of these dance theatre groups.
