Dance Like No One's Watching

On Saturday, I was at the Harbourfront for this year's CanAsian Dance Festival. But most of the pieces were more performance art than dance. The first was the only unambiguous dance piece. Highlighting classical bharatanatyam, Vivarta excerpted several segments from the longer Manifestations of Vishnu. Six dancers, in traditional costumes, dance and spun across the stage in unison. This style exhibited a lot of straight arms, foot stomps, and fingers shaping various mudras.

The remaining 3 pieces had less dance (and more theatre). I had seen NINEEIGHT last year. 3 Chinese dancers externalized the anxiety of Hong-Kong residents upon its return to China. Twitching and spasm were timed to jittery projected text and staccato electronic noises. They used the aesthetic of Mo Lei Tau, a style of comedic cinema, in several absurd encounters. The piece Everything was disappointing. Supposedly an immigrant's acknowledgement of the indigenous land upon which she moves, the dancer was to be inspired by the random scattering of ritual objecs like joss sticks and spirit paper. There were some serendipitous but gorgeous visuals. Such as the cascade of falling red incense formed a fragile temple. But the "chance-based" interactions had no charm.

After intermission, master dancer Natsu Nakajima danced a piece titled Like Smoke, Like Ash. Often using a piece of paper as prop, she evoked a letter or a kite to bring to life some childhood memories. Only sometimes does she moved in the slow manner associated with Butoh. She usually moved around the stage with straightforward movements, though the precision of her feet placement belie the "simple choreography". There were some beautiful visuals, too. I enjoyed the projection of a starscape onto the stage so that Nakajima seemed to become some enigmatic alien creature.