Surrender Not The Future: ProArteDanza at Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre

ProArteDanza performing Future Perfect Continuous. (Photo: Aleksandar Antonijevic)

 Dance might not be able to save the planet from ecological catastrophe. But it can illuminate some of the anxieties surrounding the future of the planet, exposing the human vulnerabilities hiding in the shadows of emotionless science. To recycle or not to recycle, that is not the only question – nor is it the sole response to a world melting before our eyes. In Future Perfect Continuous, a new hybrid work of spoken dance which opened ProArteDanza’s 2017 season at Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre at the beginning of November, choreographer Matjash Mrozewski grapples with climate change and environmental degradation, presenting them as large and inchoate themes affecting us all but in multifarious ways.

The former National Ballet of Canada dancer collaborated with award-winning playwright Anna Chatterton on the text spoken by ProArteDanza’s distinctive performers as they move. The spoken collage of rumination, argument and expressions of hope and fear makes palpable the ambiguities that have made global warming something of an existential quagmire for the 21st century. The ensemble of 12 dancers, doubling as actors, are not eco-warriors but more eco-worriers who struggle with the very real role humans play in putting the earth at risk. They push the right buttons, giving the audience plenty to think about. Fake news, or an inconvenient truth? The fact of the matter is that no one is certain, a central dilemma of the piece. “I don’t want to know. I already know” is an utterance shared by several players. No one can say climate change isn’t confusing.

From Ballet to Bharatanatyam: Dance in Toronto Breaks New Ground in 2012

Piotr Stanczyk in Hamlet at the National Ballet of Canada (Photo: Corbin Smith)

With the Mayan calendar predicting the end of the world, 2012 was a year tinged with doomsday prophecies if not apocalyptic visions. But in dance, the zeitgeist was reversed. Instead of calling it quits, artists whose métier is choreographed movement instead ushered in a new era of renewal, presenting dance pieces that pushed forward into new directions. This feeling of regeneration was wide-spread, affecting a diversity of genre from ballet in the West to bharatanatyam in the East, all traditions re-considered and re-calibrated to make them more relevant and reflective of the times. Accepted notions of beauty were also re-investigated and re-invigorated, with some dance artists exploring the beast within as a way of unbalancing the audience, stripping away complacency, in presenting dance as a conduit for exploring the human condition. This transformational trend in dance was global but proponents of it reached Canada as a result of inspired artistic directors at the helm of the country’s leading and experimental dance troupes. looking to rejuvenate the domestic dance scene with work signalling, if not the end of dance as we have come to know it, then certainly its rebirth. Among them was Karen Kain who, as head of the National Ballet of Canada, this year ushered in the North American premiere of Hamlet by Ballett Mannheim artistic director Kevin O’Day – a dark and difficult and occasionally obtuse work that pushed both the ballet dancers and their audience members to the far-most edges of their comfort zone. For that, Canada’s former prima ballerina needs to be applauded. In adding non-traditional ballets to her company’s roster, Kain is helping to strengthen the dramatic, emotional and technical range of her dancers. Composer John King's electro score is largely improvised, forcing the dancers constantly to be on edge. No two performances are alike as a result of the dancers having to adapt the choreography to suit the music on a given night. There's nothing safe or predictable about it, for neither spectator or performer. And yet the NBOC took to it well, seamlessly holding together the fragments. Dancers include principal dancer Piotr Stanczyk, alternating with Guillaume Côté and Naoya Ebe in the eponymous role of the Shakespearean prince immobilized by analyzing situations he instead needed to act upon, performed acrobatic stunts on one hand but also soft shoe shuffles as part of his character’s schizophrenic relationship with both himself and his dysfunctional society. Stancyzk’s Ophelia was Sonia Rodriguez. 2012 was Rodriguez’s season to shine. Besides garnering standing ovations for her role in Hamlet, the wife of Canadian figure skater Kurt Browning, a working mother of two, went from strength to strength in the company’s revival of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in which she played the female lead. She rounded out the season getting a star on Canada’s Walk of Fame. The ballerina is back, but as new and revitalized artist. (See also my book!)

Emotion in Motion: ProArteDanza at Fleck Dance Theatre

Anisa Tejpar, Erin Poole and Tyler Gledhill performing Shifting Silence, for ProArteDanza (Photo: Geneviève Caron)

Funky, fast and fierce, ProArteDanza opens with a bang at Toronto’s Fleck Dance Theatre at Harbourfront Centre, affirming its status as one of the most exciting small dance ensembles in the country with a new showcase of original work and hard-core dancing that will have you panting for more.

Three eye-grabbing pieces dominate the approximately 90-minute program, which opened to an enthusiastic crowd on Wednesday night and continues through Saturday. Each is by a choreographer with an association with ProArteDanza (literally, for the art of dance) which was founded in Toronto in 2004 as a vehicle for new creation: Shifting Silence, by company artistic associate Robert Glumbek, is a reprise (and Canadian premiere) of a work the Polish-born dancer and choreographer originally created for Ballett Nationaltheater Mannheim in Germany in 2012. Beethoven’s 9th-3rd Movement is a world premiere created jointly by Glumbek and artistic director Roberto Campanella, while Fractals: a pattern of chaos, the third and final piece, is by guest artist Guillaume Côté, the celebrated National Ballet principal dancer recently appointed to that company’s newly created position of Choreographic Associate in recognition of his burgeoning talent as a choreographer.