Art of Time Ensemble’s dance production returns with expanded cast,
Award-winning production features five more scenes and an expanded cast
Artists tend to be stubborn beasts. They frequently need to be. Fortunately, they can also be open to persuasion; case in point, James Kudelka.
When pianist Andrew Burashko, founder and artistic director of Toronto’s Art of Time Ensemble, first approached the renowned choreographer with the idea of participating in an April 2015 program featuring Johannes Brahms’ beloved piano intermezzi, Kudelka resisted.
“I’d done a lot of works to Brahms,” Kudelka explains. “I was not sure I was ready to return to him.”
Art of Time is committed to engaging diverse audiences with innovative ways of presenting music and Burashko has a lengthy record of collaborating with choreographers. For his planned program, Intermezzi, Burashko wanted to offer different choreographic responses to Brahms’ solo piano works: the revival of an early solo by Peggy Baker and a new work by Kudelka.
Kudelka finally acceded to the proposal, creating an episodic, openended drawing-room drama called #lovesexbrahms including all five intermezzi used by Baker for Her Heart, plus eight additional pieces. It went on to win Kudelka that year’s Dora Award for Best Choreography and another for Simon Rossiter’s lighting design.
Now, under the auspices of Coleman Lemieux & Compagnie, where he is resident choreographer, Kudelka has extended that 2015 original to include five additional scenes and all 18 Brahms intermezzi. The original eight-member cast has also been expanded to 10. The revised work, now roughly an hour in length, is retitled Love, Sex & Brahms.
Kudelka jokes that he’s often been labelled a purveyor of “love, sex and death” but says the title of this most recent choreography, while not biographical, is reflective of Brahms’ romantic and emotional yearning, in- tensified in the intermezzi, most of which were among his last compositions.
Kudelka has conceived Love, Sex & Brahms as a series of interactions among what look to be the afternoon guests at an early 20th-century Edwardian salon or perhaps at a weekend house party. The costuming, along with a crystal chandelier and a grand piano, again played by Burashko, denote social elegance, but the passions that seethe beneath the surface, confined by a veneer of polite manners, sometimes erupt dramatically.
“My original thought was, ‘What if we had characters but not a story?’ ” Kudelka explains. “I wanted to see where they might lead. Returning to the piece allows me to go deeper into the characters.”
Adding a faintly sinister note, Kudelka includes a cloth doll; a bald, barefoot man with minimally drawn features, costumed, as is the rest of the cast, by Hoax Couture.
“He’s Sarkis, Malcolm’s cousin,” jokes Kudelka, in reference to another doll featured in several earlier works. “I wanted something a little enigmatic.”
Sarkis sits in a chair and observes. Sometimes he is manipulated by individual dancers or in groups. His role, if any, is slippery, perhaps func- tioning as a proxy.
Choreographically, Kudelka has approached Love, Sex & Brahms less as a dance than as a drama in which actors move.
“The idea was that it would all come out of walking,” Kudelka says.
Another hallmark of many Kudelka creations is his interest in casting dancers who span a wide age range. In the case of Love, Sex & Brahms, the most senior is former prima ballerina Evelyn Hart, reprising her role from 2015. While no longer in point shoes, the choreography is often physically challenging.
“It’s amazing what Evelyn can do, but it’s also amazing how little she has to do,” says Kudelka, noting the physical wisdom that comes with experience.
Hart has worked with Kudelka several times in the past and will perform in his upcoming Vespers for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet in May.
“I’m having the time of my life and am so grateful to James for presenting this opportunity to be doing what I love. And he is really fun to be with in the studio. He has a great sense of humour but always finds a way to get the most from each one of us.” Love, Sex & Brahms is at the Betty Oliphant Theatre, 404 Jarvis St., March 1619; colemanlemieux.com or 416-3648011.