Program’s gimmickry distracting
INTERMEZZI At the NAC Theatre Reviewed Wednesday night
Ontario Scene, the NAC’s provincially-focused arts showcase, opened last night with Intermezzi, an immersive performance involving some of the leading names in Canadian dance. The choice was fitting, since Wednesday was also International Dance Day.
Directed by Andrew Burashko, the Art of Time Ensemble is an eclectic Toronto group that brings musicians together with leading artists from other disciplines to explore common ground and uncharted territory. Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondaatje have collaborated with Art of Time; so have Branford Marsalis and Rob Piltch.
For Intermezzi, the Ensemble explores Brahms’ lush, melancholic late works for solo piano through contrasting works by two very different Toronto-based choreographers, Peggy Baker and James Kudelka. Burashko himself provided the live accompaniment; his playing had nobility, clear, well-balanced voicing and a satisfying, weighty legato.
Her Heart, an early solo by Baker, is set to four of the Brahms Intermezzi. Like the music, the choreography conveys rapturous lyricism rooted in strict form. The work was eloquently performed by Jessica Runge.
The evening also included Kudelka’s #lovesexbrahms, a brand new work choreographed for the dancers of Toronto’s Coleman Lemieux & Compagnie and set to the same pieces Baker used, plus several others.
The eight performers (including the still captivating Evelyn Hart, who can school dancers half her age on projection and port de bras) spend much of the time interacting with a kind of squishy, frock-coated homunculus.
It’s never clear what or who this doll-person is supposed to be. It can’t represent Brahms; if anything, it looks more like Bruckner.
The doll’s meaning is mystifying, but the effect is detrimental.
It’s silly, self-indulgent, and distracting, and gets in the way, literally and metaphorically, of the excellent dancing and the relationships onstage.
Brahms’ piano music expresses longing and loneliness so passionately and unequivocally that resorting to a puppet for dramatic expression feels like a cop-out.