I was rushing to get to Fleck Dance Theatre on Friday night. The Greenwood bus was as bad as transit in Ottawa and my allocated 1-hour was barely enough. This was DanceWorks' first recital since they had shut down for the pandemic. As such, I thought there would be a full crowd but it was only about 40% full. Toronto missed out on a great show.
Fila 13 Productions came from Montreal to present Lina Cruz's Morphs. The title seemed to have two meanings. The first was about transformation or metamorphosis. The most obvious was when a male dancer was strapped into an evening dress while his female compatriot strutted around with a LED-lit cod piece. But throughout the show, things and people changed: clothes get re-purposed, props are manipulated into different configurations, dancers contorted into various shapes to suddenly burst out with sharp, staccato choreography. The second was about snippets of sounds and words (morpheme). In addition to pre-recorded sounds, an older gentleman provided percussion by tapping on objects, played a piano, sang several numbers (Radeau Médusé, Ferré's La Lune). But the dancers also knocked on the stage, clapped rhythmically, and harmonized song snippets.
With mismatched costumes of jutting pads or clear, plastic helmets that glowed, the show reminded me of an apocalyptic Mad Max but set in the gentler future of Station Eleven. They could have been a troupe here to entertain us with props made from the detritus of the 21st century. It was a fun show, lacking the seriousness of some contemporary recitals in Toronto. There was something French or Montreal about its whimsy. One of my favourite blink-and-you-missed-it was a performer's laughs that became for a few bars the famous Queen of The Night aria.
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