Get Aua’

At the Queen Elizabeth Theatre April 8, 9, and 10

JONES

kay, I admit it, I was figuring O on tutus, toe shoes, and

anorexia nervosa on the hoof. Instead, my very first ballet just giggled at my outdated expectations and whisked me away on a night laced with irony, innuendo, and feathers.

Distinctive for its ribald humour, surprising choreography, and playful use of costumes and lights, Mark Godden’s Conversation Piece was the first and stongest of the four works scheduled from Ballet British Columbia. The shifting standards of sorrowful anger and righteous scorn were good for many an eyebrow twitch in this lively peek at the age- old tale of The Attached Guy (Sylvain Senez) and The Other Woman (Andrea Hodge).

Choreographer Mark Godden has put together traditional lifts, pointe work, and pirouettes with sponta- neous, natural gestures and cheeky movements to extremely accessible and entertaining effect. Hodge shows this combination of styles most strongly, from her gracefully ungain- ly feet-out lifts to her fluid, full body twists and curls. Seeing the influence of modern dance on ballet was an unexpected and jump-up-and- down-for-joy surprise.

Opening with an onstage strip as the prelude to illicit gymnastics for the impassioned pair, fun galore was had with Paul Daigle’s sleek cos- tumes, which doubled as energetic props for much of the performance.

Serge Bennethan’s The Fall, the next item billed, unfortunately didn’t live up to the previous Piece, although it actually had a wee chunk

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1 Dance

of set to it. Having not the best eye- sight, I thought that Buddy with the wings was actually a dancer, and sat through the whole performance hop- ing to see Lucifer stand up and do something jiggy. Ahem. Silly twit. Mannequins don’t dance. The other wacked thing with this work was Ame Eigenfeldt’s original score. Possibly there was something wrong with the sound system, but who knows, maybe Eigenfeldt, being evidently a composer of moody sound- scapey bass grumbly stuff, wanted the periodic

spoken seg- ments to come out so distorted as to be indecipherable. The choreography was interesting and well danced by Gail Skrela and Wen Wei Wang, but the dis- tractions of sound and set made it hard to focus on individual movements.

Next up was the world premiere of Dominique Dumais’ a/way inside, a strong piece with a defined storyline of need, escape and despair, also known as the joys of co-dependancy. Full of clear visuals and communica- tive gestures, the battle between Andrea Hodge and Miroslaw Zydowicz was physically compelling, forcing Hodge into repeatedly frustrated attempts at flight, and Zydowicz into progressively more desperate atti- tudes of clinging restraint. The only flaws for me were the sporadic forays

May 1999

into poetic fragments around Glenn Gould's piano tinkling. The motions onstage were fully eloquent, so telling us that somebody's a-feelin’ blue seemed pretty redundant.

The title draw, Bet Ann’s Dance, was the final work of the evening. Choreographed by John Alleyne, the

round-robin entrances and exits of the eight dancers kept the composition shifting from pairs to triads and solos, making the set-up onstage almost disturbingly lively, counterpointed by the frequent linger- ing exits close by the wings. Yeah, that doesn’t make a lot of sense descriptively, but visually it worked well to balance bursting ener- gy upstage with hesitant stillness downstage. The total soundcape seemed too independent of the dancers to fully augment the per- formance, but taken seperately it was quite interesting. In the combination of live percussion from Salvadore Ferreras, and recorded compositions from Gary Kulesha and Jean Piche, I found Piche’s work the most engross- ing. A mix of computer sampling, insertions of biblical prank calls, and tympani trills, it may not have had the funky rough polish of many sam- ple vets profiled on CBC’s Brave New Waves, but it still startled me into glancing at the speakers a few times.

Yes indeed, for the most part, this was a jim-cracker of a show. They danced, they pranced, I was’ entranced, I’m glad I went, and my brain is spent.