Addicted To Love

Kaeja d'Dance, a contemporary dance troupe with a focus on contact improvisation, premiered 2 new works at Harbourfront. I went to their last performance on Saturday. The first piece, Crave, had Stephanie Tremblay Abubo and Michael Caldwell act out the typical courtship from initial coyness, to new passion, and proceeding to exasperated indifference. This work used sparingly Kaeja's kinetic lifts. It focused instead on repetitive movements, imitation, and jerky motions. The dancers' need, perhaps each other, intimacy, or connection was a recurring motif where they would convulse, twitch, and even have vocal tics unless they were physically touching. Yet human contact would inevitably drive one of them away. This was a work that started light-hearted and grew in intensity.

X-Odus stayed more light-hearted throughout. This was due to the presence of audience members on stage, and especially near the end, when they were engaged to do some spontaneous choreography of their own. Dance critic Paula Citron thought this work felt more like a "physical exercise" than Crave. I agree with her that the set-up: Allen Kaeja directing his wife Karen, the other dancers, and the volunteers throughout the piece gave it the feel of a "rehearsal". But for me, this brought it back to the foundation of "contact improvisation" dance, namely the improvisation. This was most evident in a segment where the dancers had to string together a short sequence chosen from random slips of paper. Given that Kaeja d'Dance created a piece last year for Porch View Dances where non-dancers were coached to perform in front their house, X-Odus felt like a continuing exploration of this aesthetic.

Removing the 4th wall was evident in both works. In Crave, couples were invited to slow-dance on stage before the show, and the Abubo and Caldwell started as 2 people sitting down in with the audience. Later, when they were watching TV, it was the audience they were looking at. X-Odus had volunteers, up close and personal, not only watching but participating as well. Another pleasant surprise was the amount of good-natured laughter from the audience. It was an engaging and accessible evening of dance.