Tentacle Tribe’s Prism makes intricate play with perception
Colour, light, reflection, and hip-hop-influenced moves as Montreal troupe’s kaleidoscopic new piece hits The Cultch
Tentacle Tribe’s Prism. Photo by Djemil Matassov
The Cultch and New Works present Tentacle Tribe’s Prism at The Cultch’s Historic Theatre from October 23 to 27
WATCHING TENTACLE TRIBE’S new Prism, you’ll lose track of what is real and what is reflection—and that’s exactly the point. Dancers decked out in a full spectrum of colours create an ever-morphing array of kaleidoscopic patterns that are multiplied across the set’s six moving mirrored surfaces, prompting the viewer to question how much that they’re seeing is illusion.
Canadian–Swedish dance artists Emmanuelle Lê Phan and Elon Höglund tell Stir some of their earliest duets—including the Nobody Likes a Pixelated Squid that marked their Vancouver debut at Dancing on the Edge in 2015—experimented with mirroring, or at least merging two bodies into a single moving organism. “So now, if we have five dancers, they still move as one body‚ and the mirrors are allowing us to have the feel like we have 30 dancers,” Höglund says. “It feels like a natural progression in that idea of the symbiosis of movement.”
The pair, who also dance in the work, began the creative process for Prism with the concept of moving mirrors, experimenting with reflection and light with their dancers throughout the pandemic.
“We like playing with illusion and hiding things, sometimes, or, like, deceiving the eyes,” his partner in life and art adds, the duo joining Stir on a Zoom call from a tour stop in Powell River. “I even made a little prototype with a doll in it, using mirrors to see how many times it would reflect her if the floor was mirrored.”
As the Montreal troupe’s most ambitious piece yet, Prism marks a major step forward for Tentacle Tribe—its creative duo constantly pushing the urban-dance form into new contemporary realms. The large mirrored set pieces have prompted an exploration of geometry, colour theory, and the balance between the organic and mechanic. Amid the shifting, fluid forms in Prism, you’ll spot elements of breaking and popping.
That’s no surprise considering the creative duo’s backgrounds. Stockholm-born Höglund has danced hip-hop since age seven, blending his B-boying with kung fu, capoeira, tae kwon do, and contemporary circus over the years. Ottawa-raised Lê Phan, known as Cleopatra in hip-hop circles, has taken part in breaking and freestyle battles for more than two decades. She holds a BFA from Concordia in contemporary dance and has performed with Vancouver’s Out Innerspace Dance Theatre. Both have also danced with Montreal’s form-pushing Rubberbandance. Drawn to each other’s drive to meld and push hip-hop, they’ve been working together since 2005, forming Tentacle Tribe in 2012 for their first official collaboration, choreographed for the Cirque Du Soleil stage in Quebec City. The company has grown to become one of the country’s most in-demand touring groups, selling out their show Ghost at the Cultch just before the pandemic in 2020.
Some have described what Tentacle Tribe does as “contemporary hip-hop”. So how does the dance company categorize itself? “We feel very comfortable doing hip-hop festivals—that’s where it feels like home,” allows Lê Phan, admitting that’s even though Tentacle Tribe gets labelled more as a contemporary troupe at those events. “Of course, at the core, we are a B-boy, a B-girl. But then when we do a contemporary dance festival, then we are also labelled.”
“We chose to call ourselves a tribe, even though there was just two,” Högland explains. “There was always that idea, coming from hip hop, around the importance of the crew mentality or family mentality.
“Even though Emmanuelle and I really like to set and choreograph our show so everything is very detailed, when we train, it comes from that raw improvisation, tapping into that zone from when we started as freestyle dancers—going to the clubs, throwing down, catching the ghost, getting in that vibe,” he continues, “like when there’s a circle of energy and people are not there to spectate but co-creating. So that's a difference for us.”
Tentacle Tribe. Photo by Pho Phan Hoi
For Prism, Högland has gone beyond choreography to create a full-length score, a mesmerizing meld of orchestral sounds and percussive beats that flows organically with the ever-morphing sculptural dance.
In all there are multilayered ways to enjoy Prism. On the surface, it’s a straight-up cool, hypnotic display of visual and sound artistry. But with the Tribe, there are always deeper philosophical questions underlying the intricate choreographic experimentation. In Prism’s experimentation with light, colour, and reflection, the duo is questioning perception itself—and what goes on beyond its edges.
“It’s the idea that what we see is just a tiny fraction of reality itself—the visible light is only not even half a percent of what we can actually experience,” riffs Högstrom. “So I think in terms of dancing, we are trying to express something we can't perceive, something that we maybe can't even explain, but we feel it, and we can try to channel that.” 
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