The BC Movement Arts Society presented the Au Tour Dance Company in a series of five shows in Campbell River, Powell River, Port Alice and Sointula between April 24 to May 3.
The Au Tour Dance Company is a group of 12 graduates of the Arts Umbrella in Vancouver—a world-renowned professional training program for dancers—who were looking for the opportunity to perform together. The group encompasses young dancers from all over the world, including from BC, Saskatchewan, the United States and Australia.
A contemporary dance group that also makes use of classical ballet moves, their dances had a good balance between more “punchy” modern movement and light, uplifting ones. Also included in this high action performance were exotic motifs, like the dancing Shiva, and their unique and innovative very gothic “monster hands” pose with fingers held out like claws.
For the first dance, “A Fleeting Moment of Suspension” choreographed by Fernando Hernando Magadan, I saw a lot of what I could call “organic” movement, like flowing rivers, currents, eddies, even the slow build up and erosion of mountain ranges (but sped up considerably). Dancers, dressed in black slacks and moss green shirts, “sprout” like plants and fall to the ground with their lives are expired, as the earth around them shifts and bulges. It is the “dance of life” over eons of time. The use of the work of Johann Sebastian Bach, with its very spiritual and uplifting mood, compliments the work as a celebration of the magnificence of nature.
The second dance, “All Long Dem Day,” choreographed by Marko Goecke, was an interesting combination of what might seem to be incongruent elements. The dancers were dressed to look “nude,” suggesting vulnerability and sensuality. The music, “Sinnerman” by Nina Simone, was a jazzy religious song about redemption. The frenetic drumbeat of the music suggested both tribal ecstasies, but also a large noisy machine. Dancers’ arms often moved like circular gears and levers, like those of a mechanical clock. It might be saying that we are sensual beings caught up in the workings of a powerful engine of society, we are in a complex dynamic between freedom, ecstasy and control. On the other hand, it may just be a combination of seemingly incongruous elements thrown together to create a surreal feeling of ambiguity? Either way, the dance is dynamic and complex. It could be like a “nonsensical” free verse poem, the words don’t make literal sense, but their combination produces a distinct impact.
Dance 3, “The Truth is…” choreographed by Roy Assaf, started out with a single dancer dancing to spoken word, the reader of the verse being a volunteer from the audience. The poem was an existential musing of the validity of abstract and contemporary ideas. When the rest of the group joined the single dancer, a mechanical clock motif dance came to fore in a big way. We can muse all we want but the truth of the matter is that time passes, and the clock stops. Death is inevitable.
Dance #4 was choreographed by Rebecca Margolick, a familiar face in the BC Movement Arts community. At the talk back at the end of the show I asked her what her inspiration was. Her answer surprised me. She said she wanted to create a dance with the dancers moving at different speeds. I thought, for sure, she was going to mention something about representing a multi-dimensional universe!
The dance was very dream-like. Some dancers moved slowly as a group, reminding me of ghosts stuck on the Earth plane. Some moved erratically like they were in a delirium. Dancers lived out different stories, possibly different forms of existence, while sharing the same space without crashing into each other, even without seeming to be aware of each other. Sometimes individuals separated from the “ghostly group” to dance in another form (or speed), until they returned to that slower dimension between existences. It all coincides with the idea that we may be sharing our world with other forms of life that we can’t see because they are existing at different frequencies.
Very often artists of all sorts, painters, writers as well as dancers, infuse their works with a metaphor or a motif without realizing it. Margolick was focused on the movement aspect but ended up creating an ingenious complex metaphor.
Although the production that I saw did not have stage lighting, it certainly would have enhanced the ambience and emotions of the dances. Luckily, the dances had plenty of that to begin with.
This was a young but very disciplined group. I was impressed by how there was so many of them, but they were able to work together so smoothly in especially complex performances. They also gave all their heart and soul to the work, and it showed. The audience appreciation at the show I attended was effusive. This was another successful series on the North Island of “movement as poetry.”
Debra Lynn lives in Port Alice and has a BFA in art and design from the University of Alberta and an MA in art education from Concordia University in Montreal.
