Companie Marie Chouinard - Body Remix / Goldberg Variations
I love working dance shows....Any show that involves dance. STOMP, Ballet B.C. Kokoro Dance shows. They all feel like art. I sense, during those moments like I'm working on something special. There's this incredible cathartic release and connection I feel to dance. Something existential I don't really get from musicals or rock shows. There, I connect with the excitement in the audience. But, here I want to connect with and serve the dancers. Serve and be part of the art.
Of course there's no denying all the dancers tend to be hot. Male and Female they're all wonders to watch. And my favorite type of dancers are modern dancers, which in Canada, Marie Chouinard's group is the cream of that type.
( Years ago I worked a dance festival that had a woman do one of Marie's dance pieces from the early 80's. I didn't get modern dance then. The piece was her infamous one where Marie, the original dancer. Squatted over a a bucket and urinated on stage. When I witnessed the young dancer do this in front of a packed crowd at a local dance theatre. I realised this was what pure on the edge performance art was. the act, her sqatting made the audience squirm. And I loved it, and I got it. )
Modern dancers, they're more human in scope. Ballet dancers have to fit this sort of Neo Fascist body image that to me kind of strips away individual humanity. And with that, my relationship to the dancer, as the viewer, is sort of distant. A disconnection, because I can't relate to ( especially the female dancers ) super slim almost emaciated body type. I often want them to stop dancing. And eat something.
Where as modern dancers are more human. Their is variation in type. The men and woman are of all different heights and basic varied human body mass. The audience can relate to them feel for them. And their dance moves aren't so perfect. Modern art dancers moves are more in keeping with the human state of being.
What really makes dancers of all types fascinating, is their almost super human dedication to their art. During a tech they stretch and flex continuously. It's almost obsessive. And it's hard to take your eyes off them. And at the same moment wonder about your own stiff unmoving body beside them. Often their bodies, close up, especially their feet. Are thease road maps of injury and pain. Tattooed under the skin. So they fascinate me the way children are fascinated by old people.
This show itself is hard to describe. On a wide grey marley dance floor, with a white back drop cyclorama. Which made the stage look like an expanse of nothingness once it was lit. The dancers cavorted and careened around on crutches. Cut or manipulated to various human and inhuman heights. And scurried around on wheeled dollies and injury supports. Using them as funny, sexy and horrific modes of locomotion.
All to manipulate their bodies into resembling machines, tortured animals or insects. In another scene later they writhed through wooden practice bars, like a musical note, high on the movement of the music. And then ever increasing numbers of the dancers, danced and slid around the bars on semi pointe. All performing a crazy round robin of ever increasing frantic moves. Like the way children copy each other on a playground jungle jim. The company ended act one with a group romp while two of the dancers call out from the wings... bouncing and laughing while they sprung from body harnesses.
Through most of act two all the dancers wore custom made body harnesses that attached to the specialized, magnetic track rigging we'd set up over the mid stage. All to restrict or open up their ability to move through space and time in front of the audience. And more of this mad circus-like playing with forms and body constriction continued.
Watching it all at times was like an act of meditation. We the house crew stayed off the stage deck for the most part, entering their space except for our few assisting cues. As the dancers where crossing backstage at the run to get to their far more important cue positions. ( And the dancers were for the most part wearing almost nothing. - And there's this professional sense of leaving them to their nakedness. As we didn't pay for the privilege to voyeur. ) So, we watched most of it on big 37 inch T.V. Which made the performance to us even more surreal. Images on the old tube screen reminded me of that weird 70's cartoon sci-fi movie, Fantastic Planet. Where giant aliens play with tiny domesticated humans like they're objects in an ant farm. And exterminate the free ones like garden pests.
I kind of wished, watching the event from backstage on the monitor. That I could have been in the audience for once. With smart, sexy friend or date that I could have an interesting conversation with. And maybe go fun dancing with, after, at SinCity.
I love working dance shows....Any show that involves dance. STOMP, Ballet B.C. Kokoro Dance shows. They all feel like art. I sense, during those moments like I'm working on something special. There's this incredible cathartic release and connection I feel to dance. Something existential I don't really get from musicals or rock shows. There, I connect with the excitement in the audience. But, here I want to connect with and serve the dancers. Serve and be part of the art.
Of course there's no denying all the dancers tend to be hot. Male and Female they're all wonders to watch. And my favorite type of dancers are modern dancers, which in Canada, Marie Chouinard's group is the cream of that type.
( Years ago I worked a dance festival that had a woman do one of Marie's dance pieces from the early 80's. I didn't get modern dance then. The piece was her infamous one where Marie, the original dancer. Squatted over a a bucket and urinated on stage. When I witnessed the young dancer do this in front of a packed crowd at a local dance theatre. I realised this was what pure on the edge performance art was. the act, her sqatting made the audience squirm. And I loved it, and I got it. )
Modern dancers, they're more human in scope. Ballet dancers have to fit this sort of Neo Fascist body image that to me kind of strips away individual humanity. And with that, my relationship to the dancer, as the viewer, is sort of distant. A disconnection, because I can't relate to ( especially the female dancers ) super slim almost emaciated body type. I often want them to stop dancing. And eat something.
Where as modern dancers are more human. Their is variation in type. The men and woman are of all different heights and basic varied human body mass. The audience can relate to them feel for them. And their dance moves aren't so perfect. Modern art dancers moves are more in keeping with the human state of being.
What really makes dancers of all types fascinating, is their almost super human dedication to their art. During a tech they stretch and flex continuously. It's almost obsessive. And it's hard to take your eyes off them. And at the same moment wonder about your own stiff unmoving body beside them. Often their bodies, close up, especially their feet. Are thease road maps of injury and pain. Tattooed under the skin. So they fascinate me the way children are fascinated by old people.
This show itself is hard to describe. On a wide grey marley dance floor, with a white back drop cyclorama. Which made the stage look like an expanse of nothingness once it was lit. The dancers cavorted and careened around on crutches. Cut or manipulated to various human and inhuman heights. And scurried around on wheeled dollies and injury supports. Using them as funny, sexy and horrific modes of locomotion.
All to manipulate their bodies into resembling machines, tortured animals or insects. In another scene later they writhed through wooden practice bars, like a musical note, high on the movement of the music. And then ever increasing numbers of the dancers, danced and slid around the bars on semi pointe. All performing a crazy round robin of ever increasing frantic moves. Like the way children copy each other on a playground jungle jim. The company ended act one with a group romp while two of the dancers call out from the wings... bouncing and laughing while they sprung from body harnesses.
Through most of act two all the dancers wore custom made body harnesses that attached to the specialized, magnetic track rigging we'd set up over the mid stage. All to restrict or open up their ability to move through space and time in front of the audience. And more of this mad circus-like playing with forms and body constriction continued.
Watching it all at times was like an act of meditation. We the house crew stayed off the stage deck for the most part, entering their space except for our few assisting cues. As the dancers where crossing backstage at the run to get to their far more important cue positions. ( And the dancers were for the most part wearing almost nothing. - And there's this professional sense of leaving them to their nakedness. As we didn't pay for the privilege to voyeur. ) So, we watched most of it on big 37 inch T.V. Which made the performance to us even more surreal. Images on the old tube screen reminded me of that weird 70's cartoon sci-fi movie, Fantastic Planet. Where giant aliens play with tiny domesticated humans like they're objects in an ant farm. And exterminate the free ones like garden pests.
I kind of wished, watching the event from backstage on the monitor. That I could have been in the audience for once. With smart, sexy friend or date that I could have an interesting conversation with. And maybe go fun dancing with, after, at SinCity.
bedwelld:
I envy dancers. It is definitely an art.