And Now ... Showcase Showdown

I went to see Canada's National Ballet School put on their 2010 Spring Showcase at the Betty Oliphant Theatre. Luckily, at 30 minutes before showtime, there was 1 ticket left for the 2 pm show.

The first thing I noticed about the show is that the audience is primarily women. Thus any piece that featured mostly male dancers got noticeably louder applause. Secondly, most of the women were among the slimmest in their age group and some were probably in the lowest 10th percentile weight-wise with respect to the general population. In other words, if you are looking for slim women, get yourself to the ballet.

The second thing I noticed was the calibre of the dancing. Even from the first piece, the skill and talent of these young dancers were an order of magnitude better than the kids at Momentum 2010. It went up again in the 3rd act when the alumni took the stage. Astonishingly, most of the alumni were only in the corps de ballet of their respective ballet troupe with two attaining 2nd and 1st soloist positions. It was just a reminder that when it comes to some careers, like professional athletes, dancers are on a whole other level compared to the average person.

The 1st act started with Paquita by Marius Petipa. It comprised of dancers from grade 10, 11, and 12. A ballet in the classical style, it was meant to showcase the techniques of the mostly female dancers from the corps, to the demi soloists, to the principal dancers. After you marvel at their age, especially the tiny grade 10 female principal dancer, it became a little tedious to watch the footwork, spins, and so on with each repeated multiple times so you could see their control. Next came "That's What the Matter" from Yondering by John Neumeier. An old Americana song is played as 15 male dancers from grade 10 to the professional program danced, cavorted, and cart-wheeled as Union soldiers. As expected, the short piece got a rousing cheer from the audience.

The 2nd act began with "Excerpts from Sequentia" by Sabrina Matthews. This was an exciting piece and I would like to see the whole work. Lights projected a large white square onto the stage. Performers stood frozen around the edges of this space. A dancer began to move, soon joined by a 2nd. Together they performed an intricate pas de deux. Finally the 1st dancer ran off-stage and the 2nd dancer is joined by a 3rd. This sequence continued until all dancers did their steps. Then all dancers came back on, streaming from one side of the square to another, echoing each others' movement.

"5 views of the temple garden" by Peggy Baker was inspired by the Eastern influence of Japanese gardens, Asian temples, and so on. Various calligraphic strokes projected onto a transparent front scrim in front of the dancers while the backdrop had abstract shapes invoking mountains, trees, and other natural scenes. The dancers did 5 short pieces: some were frenzied, others meditative. My only complaint is that it's a little cliché: Eastern music invoking Eastern movement especially in the hand and arm gestures. I would like to see a piece incorporating Eastern music without Eastern "dancing" and vice versa.

"Excerpts from 30-Minute Beauty Makeover" by Matjash Mrozewski is a work that concentrates on the dance aspect of the parodic "30-Minute Beauty Makeover" which takes a playful poke at the classical ballet "Sleeping Beauty".

The 3rd act welcomed back some CNBS alumni in 4 pas de deux. I don't know if this happens every year or to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the school. In any case, it gave me an exceptional close-up of some professional ballet dancers. (And I thought I was sitting close during this occasion.) The first up was the "Bluebird" pas de deux (Rudolf Nureyev) from "The Sleeping Beauty" danced by Naoya Ebe, a corps member of the National Ballet, and Jillian Vanstone, 1st soloist of the National Ballet. The second piece was the "White Swan" pas de deux (Erik Bruhn) from "Swan Lake" performed by Brett van Sickle and Elena Lobsanova, both second soloists of the National Ballet. Both were exquisitely danced but, as commented on by a blue-haired maven sitting next to me, a little "old-fashioned".

The next work was my favourite of the evening: Trois Gnossiennes (Pianovariates III) with music by Erik Satie (Trois Gnossiennes) and choreographed by Hans van Manen. The dancers were Erica Horwood and James Stout, both corps member of the Dutch National Ballet. The piece used classical dance techniques in new and innovative ways, especially the interesting lifts. In one simple lift, James lifted a perfectly rigid Erica by her arms like a life-sized ballerina doll.

The evening ended with Peter Dingle and Kiran West, first soloist and corps of the Hamburg Ballet, performing Opus 100 - For Maurice (John Neumeier) with a music collage of 2 Simon and Garfunkel songs (Old Friends/Bridge Over Troubled Water). As expected again, the male dancers got rousing cheers, especially for their lifts and interactions with each other. The same maven gushed about the novelty of the work. I enjoyed it myself though I wasn't quite as blown away as the dance and thematic components of Opus was quite similar to Soudain L'hiver Dernier by Kudelka.

It was a great showcase highlighting the talent of the National Ballet School. Apparently the evening shows also included pieces with Stephanie Hutchinson, Xiao Nan Yu and Rex Harrington - all principal dancers. I am also of the opinion that women like ballet because the female dancers are front and centre while the men provide a manly but secondary role: lending an arm for balance, a quick spin of the waist, or a lifted boost. Finally, you will need to recalibrate your brain to readjust your expectations. Those slender women in the audience? They look positively gigantic after you've been watching ballet dancers for 3 hours.

p = mv

The School of Toronto Dance Theatre, specializing in contemporary dance training, put on their annual student showcase called Momentum 2010 at the Winchester Street Theatre. The space is a small venue, seating about 200 people. The seats rise above the dance floor which is on ground level.

The evening program consists of 2 halves, each comprised of 3 dance pieces. Groups of typically 20 students dance 1 piece per half. I found that the size of the groups was the main drawback of the evening.

"Welcome" by Jennifer Dallas opened the show. We are in Lagos city with the sound of Mbira musicians in the air. The dancers act out scenes of play: copying each other's movements, shooting marbles, even kicking a soccer ball. They repeat patterns of movement that flow across the stage. However, when all 18 dancers are onstage, each with their own moves, the chaotic scene was too distracting. My first observation was that these dancers are quite young. I was expecting people in their early twenties but some of the dancers are in their teens.

"aquiver" by Darryl Tracy demonstrates the weakness of so many dancers. A lot of contemporary dance choreography involve fast disparate movements amongst the dancers. This works well with a small group but it becomes, pardon the mixed metaphor, cacophonous with a large group. The work, involving electronic dance beats, club lighting, and recitations from Wikipedia, is at its best when the group move in synchronicity. As any viewers of cheerleading, dance videos, drum corps, and military marches know, there is something thrilling about groups of people moving together with precision.

"Shangri-la Revisited" by Peter Chin mashes up Kashmir by Led Zeppelin and Tibetan Buddhist music to tell the story of a paradise lost. The slower, almost meditative, choreography was to the benefit of the student dancers. The asymmetric gestures had enough space and time to register with the viewers while any synchronized movements stayed cohesive instead of ragged.

After intermission, the first piece was "A Collection of Short Stories" by Massimo Agostinelli. This was the most accomplished and enjoyable of all 6 works. The smaller groupings of trios and duos allowed us to absorb the choreography. As well, the more advanced dancers had room in their pas de deux for exciting lifts and interactions. The final two pieces included the funny, hoe-down inspired "risible shift" by Julia Sasso and "excerpts from En Dedans" by Ginette Laurin. The latter piece had some interesting pas de deux repeating across the stage. It was also amusing to watch them move together with their eyes closed as each dancer takes turn counting out the step.

It was an enjoyable evening watching some young dancers put on a show. Though this school is a vocational school, given the precariousness of making a living doing contemporary dance, I doubt most of these dancers would continue after graduation. Also, though they were all good, very few were truly exceptional. On the other hand, it's a wonderful way to stay healthy, engage your body, and express your creativity. If you are a young man, the female to male ratio of 10 to 1 might tempt you to put on those tights.

Two Little Cups of Chawanmushi

The Mikado is a small restaurant in the Leaside neighbourhood. It claims to be the oldest Japanese-owned Japanese restaurant in Toronto and opened since 1978. I decided to try their omakase dinner which was quoted at $50 per person. However, with the addition of live soft-shell crab and a sashimi plate, the final tally was $95 per person (before tax and tip). Since both plates were shared, this came to an extra $45 per dish! This is totally unreasonable and I would suggest that you ask what is included with the standard omakase dinner and don't accept additional dishes.

A description of the dishes can be found on chowhound by my fellow diner. I will simply add a few comments of my own. The soft-shell crab was sweet and crunchy, too bad only 1 was offered (and apparently $45!). I remember Omi gave each person their own crustacean. But this was before their recent relocation. The red snapper neck was done better at Yuzu. However, the nasu miso and chawanmushi were unusual and delicious while the ika tempura was perfectly tender. Both the sushi and the sashimi (another $45!) plates were so-so: the fish was simply adequate; the fatty tuna was possibly the stringiest I've ever had, more like a raw beef than the usual soft melt-in-your-mouth toro; and the rice was dry and lacked that hint of vinegar of well-prepared sushi rice.

So my advice is to insist on the regular omakase dinner, perhaps even skipping out on the raw fish completely and sticking with cooked dishes. In fact, I might do that myself with all my Japanese/omakase meals. Lately, I've found that the sushi offered by various Toronto establishments are decidedly mediocre: bland and without a good mouth-feel.

King of the Sugar Mountain

On the Cinco de Mayo, I saw a documentary about a pastry contest, or more precisely a "test", called the Kings of Pastry. Every 4 years, a number of pastry chefs, trained in the French tradition, try to prove their mastery of everything from lollipops, verrines, wedding cakes, tartes, and every sort of pastry over the course of 3 gruelling days. It is not a contest as there can be several winners. The winners may call themselves Un des Meilleur Oeuvriers De France or M.O.F. and wear a chef's outfit with a blue, white, red (i.e., the colours of the French flag) striped collar.

Over the course of the documentary, we learn that some pastry chefs have spent 12-16 years (3-4 tests) trying to get their MOF. For this year, we follow 3 chefs including Jacquy Pfeiffer from the French Pastry School in Chicago, Regis Lazard from Switzerland and Phillippe Rigollot from Maison Pic in Valence. However, the director revealed after the showing that she followed several chefs. Of the 3 profiled chefs, only Rigollot got his MOF.

The best scenes from the documentary involve the chefs using intricate pastry techniques, hashing out the details of their creations, and critiquing the final results. Unfortunately, these scenes were few and far between. We are left with the drama of chefs being stressed from daily practices, which isn't that dramatic in the grand scheme of things, and camera pans of a bewildering and overwhelming collection of pastries with no insight into the differences to their quality.

After the movie, I had dinner at Chimichanga. It was a 30 min. wait as the restaurant/lounge was packed because of Cinco de Mayo. It also lived up to the area's sobriquet of "Yonge and Eligible" as there was an astounding display of flesh, gelled hair, white teeth, and tight clothes. What a difference from my area which runs more to tasteful tattoos, skinny jeans, and ironic mustaches.

They Also Serve Who Only Stand And Wait

On the 2nd night of Hot Docs, I attended the premiere of Dish: Women, Waitressing, and The Art of Service at the Bloor Cinema. From Toronto and its environs, to Montreal, and onto Paris and Tokyo, we see how waitresses are treated and how they interact with customers. It's no surprise that men project their own desires onto their servers, and the women have to be friendly and sometimes flirtatious while deflating (ha!) any potential desire. But it is interesting that the people who give them the hardest time are women customers.

While women work many waitressing jobs in North America because it's seen as a menial occupation, the opposite is true in France. Restaurant servers are a serious vocation there, especially in the "grandes maisons" (haute cuisine restaurants), and women are perceived to be physically, emotionally, and traditionally unqualified to have those jobs. In Japan, the implicit role of a typical waitress as confidante and "girlfriend", is made explicit in "Maid Cafes". The customer's whims are catered to and their egos soothed.

The film doesn't really explore any situations that most people aren't aware of, except perhaps with "Housters", the Hooters substitute in Montreal, or the diner where topless waitresses serve food, also in Montreal. Both of these are revelation to me!

I feel that there is some bias or judicious editing with this film. North America doesn't just have diners and cheap restaurants. How do women fare as waitstaff in the high-end restaurants here? Also, what about the "ethnic" restaurants? Do women work there? Are their experiences similar or different? Similarly, not every Parisian boite serves haute cuisine. Finally, Tokyo is a megalopolis of almost 40 million people (in the Greater Tokyo Area). Maid Cafes represent such a tiny fraction of the Japanese restaurant business. Using them play nicely into the narrative of the "role-play" of waitresses that the film espouses, especially with a nod to the geisha tradition. But this feels too much the stereo-typical narrative of "subservient asian female vs. patriarchical asian male".

Interestingly, before the movie I had dinner at Insomnia and being cognizant of both the theme of the upcoming movie as well as this related human interest article. So I was bemused as mywaitress deployed the full arsenal of waitressing including: giving out her name, being extremely gregarious and friendly, calling everybody "honey" or "love", and wearing a tight-fitting dress that showed off her ample assets. It's like watching a magician when you know the secret to the magic tricks.

How Is Babby Formed?

On the opening night of the 2010 edition of Toronto's festival of documentaries, Hot Docs, I attended the premiere screening of Babies at the Winter Garden Theatre. This theatre, along with the Elgin Theatre, is the last of the "stacked" Edwardian theatre. It typically hosts live shows such as operas and musicals. Personally, I'm not too fond of the fake tree branches, leaves, and vines that decorate the walls and ceiling. There used to be a Peruvian restaurant on college that also had a fake grape trellis theme, but it worked better as you can imagine that you are sitting on a patio somewhere warm and fragrant for dinner. Inside a 1,500 seat theatre, it just seems tacky.

Babies follow the first year in the life of 4 babies: one in Tokyo, Japan; one in San Francisco, USA; one in Mongolia, near Bayanchandmani; and the last near Opuwo, Namibia. Though each belong to different families with different child-rearing traditions, they do share many common development: breast-feeding, crying, sleeping, learning, exploring, babbling, and finally walking. Given the response babies evoke in people, especially women, due to neoteny, it was no surprised that the film is a feel-good 80 minutes. Add in footage of babies interacting with pets such as cats and dogs, as well as more unusual domestic animals including goats, chickens, and cows, and you might overdose on the cuteness. However, as a documentary without verbal narrative or talking heads, and is meant to be experiental, it does drag near the end as there is no indication of an ending in sight.

The director, Thomas Balmes, was there to talk a bit about the process (2 years filming), the challenges (missing his own kids, coming close to being divorced), and so on. The first question was, actually, not a question. It was a rambling monologue which compares this documentary to other films, in my opinion nothing more than showing off, and ending with this gem, to paraphrase, about "how the Namibian baby may have been lacking in material goods but she was rich in love, as compared to the Japanese baby or the San Francisco baby".

I wanted the moderator to interrupt with a terse "Is there a question here?", although he did respond half-jokingly that this was more of a statement than a question. The director himself answered that he did not film this documentary with any "lessons" in mind.

If this supposedly sophisticated (in his own mind) movie viewer truly felt this way, then his own personal views and bias have blinded him to anything resembling reality. I have to also wonder if his own experience of the world is similar skewed.

First, about the parental love. It is actually the 2 "1st world" babies that received attention and parental care from their fathers. The papas were noticeably absent from any day-to-day child rearing in Namibia and Mongolia. They also received less constant attention. Often, they were left to their own devices, though the mothers were near. However, the variety in their surroundings: pets, animals, other babies and siblings gave them continuous stimulation as they explored and learned about the world. It might have been this that fooled our oh-so-aware critic.

If there are any lessons to be learned for Westerners, it is that babies don't need so much coddling. Also, being exposed to a "dirty" environment is not a disaster. Maybe we don't need to keep our place and our babies so pristine and clean. Finally, and this may be the hardest to copy, raising babies in a large extended family have many benefits.

But the truth is that all 4 babies were reared in an environment full of care and love. There are many documentaries that show what children raised in dysfunctional household without emotional support look like, in any part of the world, and they don't look like these lucky babies.

Second, about the lack of material goods. Oh look, the Namibian baby, and to some extent the Mongolian child too, are raised in a "primitive" milieu: flies, dirt, no indoor plumbing, animals running around, etc. Everybody walks bare-foot. Ergo, they must be so poor (but so rich in love.)

Look again. The African women are strong and fleshy, wearing beautiful decorations. Their children are active and lithe, as well as numerous. They own a herd of goats and other animals. The Mongolian family have cows, goats, pets, as well as a motorcycle. Their yurt contains a TV, beds, rugs and hangings, and other household items.

There are many reports on poverty and deprivation, here and elsewhere, and it is markedly different from these people. The 4 families are solidly "middle-class", living a comfortable life. It's just that "middle-class" does not mean cars and baby strollers in Africa. On the other hand, no toilet is not automatically a sign of poverty either.

Don't assume things, Mr. Hot Docs viewer. Keep your mind open to new experiences, just like those babies. Now there's a lesson everyone can take to heart.