Sticks To You

I came to see Loan Sharking, a dance recital at the Enwave Theatre on Saturday, in a roundabout way. During a recent chat about dancing, I highlighted the fun that is the Dusk Dances program. I mentioned that one of the more innovative pieces I saw a few years back was a hip-hop inspired ensemble dancing to classical music. People were unable to wrap their head around that juxtaposition or how the dancing would look. So I downloaded an example of a hip-hop pas de deux as seen in the video Man I Used To Be by k-os. It turns out that the group featured in that video, RUBBERBANDance, was visiting Toronto for a 2-show stint. So I simply had to check them out in person.

Loan Sharking is a repertory program highlighting choreography of Victor Quijada, who is also one of the dancers. He has choreographed for RUBBERBANDance and other companies. The first half are 3 pieces entitled Dr Ib Erif (Stravinsky's Firebird), Soft Watching the First Implosion (Vivaldi's Cello in A minor), and Attempt #2 at Reinventing the Hip Hop Routine (Brubeck's Take Five). The second half is a 30-minute condensed version of the full length piece Punto Ciego.

The group is a very dynamic, athletic group who is always in motion. Although some moves are easily recognized from hip-hop (the various hand-stands from break-dancing), it's not always obvious to a casual viewer the interesting mix of contemporary and hip-hop styles. During a portion of Punto Ciego, a female dancer moved through a series of postures, only to do them in the reverse order; she continues this forward and rewind, adding more and more movement. This is a re-working of the locking and popping style of choreography.

The pieces have a distinctive dance vocabulary. In addition to the mix of street dance and contemporary moves, there is a lot of interactions between dancers (Victor Quijada, Karen Castleman, Emmanuelle Le Phan, Marc Macaranas, Daniel Mayo, and Lila-Mae G. Talbot). Hands grabbing wrists and feet, elbows joining, lifts and rolls, the dancers are usually always in contact with each other - pushing and pulling. This may be common in contemporary dance but not in the usual hip-hop routines which usually emphasize either coordinated precise movements (e.g., the typical music video) or individualized acrobatics (the b-boy battle). On the other hand, the poses and movements often come from athletic and aggressive street dancing.

It was an evening of enjoyable dancing with Punto Ciego being the highlight. This piece also came with the tensest audience reaction I've witnessed. During a dancer's solo, a phone went off. Not only did someone answered it, but his disruption became louder and louder as it sounded like he was arguing vehemently with the usher who was escorting him out. When he finally jumped up on stage and his actions "became" part of the piece, the amused relief from the audience was palpable. The only downside to the recital is that Victor and Michelle were much stronger technically and more expressive than the other dancers. But since these were ensemble pieces and not 2 principal dancers with a corps, there was some balance issues with the choreography in the sense that some sections seemed weaker without their presence.