Dance reviews: Final weekend of Dancing on the Edge features masked figures and circling time
BABY pairs life-sized puppets and humans, while When I Think It Has Yet to Begin works looping movement to mesmerizing effect
Calder White in Baby. Photos by Tom Hsu
The Dance Centre presents glint until July 16 at the Scotiabank Dance Centre as part of Dancing on the Edge. Dancing on the Edge presents Calder White and Tara Cheyenne Performance as part of the EDGES mixed programs until July 16
EMERGING CHOREOGRAPHER Calder White, who performs with the likes of Radical System Art and MOVEthecompany, conjures some haunting and moving imagery in his new BABY, featured in the final weekend of Dancing on the Edge.
In the piece, White, Rakeem Hardy, and Jessica Mak partner with what can only be described as life-sized “jig dolls”—the wooden, faceless dancing dolls with jointed limbs. Both the performers’ and the puppets’ heads are wrapped in identity-obscuring gauze hoods, echoing each other’s appearance. Stephan Nazarevich’s score adds to the eerie human and nonhuman interaction.
One of the standout vignettes finds White and his dummy partner dancing to the French chanson standard “Ne me quitte pas” in a touching and sometimes funny exploration of intimacy and its inherent awkwardness. Slow-dancing with his partner, White’s faceless figure risks an extended kiss, the dummy collapsing in his arms. Flanked by two of the puppets in the opening sequence, White also pulls off a cool trio, loosely swinging his arms and hanging his head so he becomes one of “them”.
Other moments feature some innovative partnering between Hardy and Mak, both technically honed dancers (the former has performed with Kidd Pivot’s Revisor, the latter with Red Sky Performance’s Trace). The twist is that they have “faces” on both sides of their wrapped heads, giving a surreal, and, yes, wooden-doll-like quality to their turns and embraces.
Despite the characters’ creepy appearance, the piece gets at tender truths of human relationships. Striking looking, it has the potential to be pushed even further—into more complex thematic territory and staging.
BABY pairs with Pants, a work-in-progress by Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg, the artist behind quirky dance-theatre-comedy works from bANGER to Goggles. In development and expected to premiere in 2023, the piece employs a mix of brutal honesty and physical comedy to push into themes of middle age and looking back on the gender binaries forced on her. Watch for a review when it’s finished.
Francesca Frewer in When I Think It Has Yet to Begin. Photo by Erika Mitsuhashi
Over at the Scotiabank Dance Centre, glint finds Erika Mitsuhashi turning the site’s Birmingham Studio into a swirling, hallucinatory installation called on the cosmic shore. A haphazard array of shiny organza and cellophane is hung around the space, animated by cosmic projections by Daniel O’Shea and an immersive, haunting score by Adam Asnan. Dancers drowsily move between cloudlike forms in the dreamlike work-in-progress.
Downstairs in the building’s theatre, magnetic solo performer Francesca Frewer pushes herself to new limits in When I Think It Has Yet to Begin. With a small audience seated along four sides of the all-white space, Frewer circles repeatedly around the room, propelling herself in a complex sequence of rolling, lunging, whirling, and lurching backwards.
It’s mesmerizing watching her this close up, working her breath to the point that the arduous cycles seem almost effortless. The percussive electro-score gives it additional driving momentum.
Later in the piece the circling pauses, and she starts speaking in stop-start, non sequitur fragments while moving in phrases familiar from the first part. It’s heady stuff: the program notes say When I Think It Has Yet to Begin is about the “process of perpetual becoming” and “the moment of choosing to let go or continue on”. That’s an abstract idea, but Frewer captures it, creating the sensation of looping and pausing time. The text can be cryptic, but the big strength is the way the off-kilter words put the movement phrases into new light, inflecting them with different meaning—even if that meaning has a puzzling dream logic.
Both offerings continue tonight, the last evening of the fest.
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