Dance Like No One's Watching

Friday night, I attended a NextStep dance performance at the Fleck Theatre. I have a love/hate relationship with the work from the Toronto Dance Theatre. Some pieces I enjoy, others I can't stop rolling my eyes. Looking over the program called Triple Bill, I noticed that 2 of the works involve improvisional movements. Oh, dear. It's going to be a long night.

The 2nd piece was the most enjoyable. A remount of Early Departures (1992), this work originally looked at gay relationships during the HIV/AIDS era. As such, 4 men dressed in business attire come together and split apart. Each pairing usually involves one man who collapses or falls. His partner(s) attempt to revive, manipulate his body or carry him. Eventually, they give up. This theme iterates over several evolving scenarios. The work was both strange yet compelling.

The book-end pieces Martingales and Pond Skater had dancers create spontaneous movement. With the first, the underlying theory of Brownian motion originally has dancers playing a game of ball in which they twist and spin to throw a ball. Then the movement translates to masses of people who race around the stage: backwards, forwards, in pairs. They never touch but their motions do impact each other. If some begin to spin and twirl, then others eventually adopt these movements.

Pond Skater had a similar approach. But the work was broken into several segments. Within each segment, a particular set of movements predominate forcing the dancers to improvise within constraints. I do admire the body control and spatial awareness needed for improvisation. But I think it leads to safe choreography (nobody wants to fall on their ass) and not much partner work. It was like watching a long and ultimately boring game of "I'm not touching you".