DANCE TO REMEMBER
Production tells the stories of Toronto men who fought and died at Vimy Ridge,
It was a Monday morning from hell. At the time, nobody knew it would become a defining moment for Canada.
At 5:30 a.m. on April 9, 1917, the infantry of four Canadian army divisions advanced on German forces holding the strategically important Vimy Ridge near Arras in northeastern France. Months of meticulous planning and preparation combined with unimaginable bravery in the face of enemy fire delivered a notable victory. The Canadians took Vimy Ridge, but at a grim cost; 3,598 dead and some 7,000 wounded.
While historians still debate the true significance of the Battle of Vimy Ridge within the broader history of Canada and the First World War, the event has acquired almost mythological status as the moment when the young Dominion came of age as a nation. But don’t expect to see the battle glorified as an act of chivalric sacrifice in choreographer Laurence Lemieux’s new work, Jusqu’à Vimy. The hour-long piece reminds us that, win or lose, war is always brutal and that great armies include a multitude of individuals, each with a story. By highlighting just a handful of these stories, evoked in movement, sound and projected imagery, and inspired by men who came from the area surrounding her company’s Citadel home at Parliament and Dundas Sts., Lemieux intends Jusqu’à Vimy as a humble tribute to their courage.
It was seeded by a request from the Vimy Oaks Legacy Corporation, which was looking for a way to mark the 100th anniversary of the battle in the form of contemporary artistic expression.
The volunteer organization is committed to memorializing the battle by nurturing and repatriating the genetic descendants of Vimy Ridge oak trees obliterated by the fighting.
Lt. Leslie Miller, a Canadian soldier who survived Vimy, managed to collect some acorns from a half-buried oak on the battlefield.
He later planted them on his farm north of Toronto.
Although the farm is gone, a stand of those oaks still adjoins Scarborough Chinese Baptist Church on Kennedy Rd., south of Steeles Ave.
“To be honest, I never imagined myself making a work inspired by war,” Lemieux says. “I approached it with trepidation, wondering if dance was the best suited form.”
As she pondered the idea, the thought of young Canadians, often poor, voluntarily crossing an ocean to fight for “king and country,” led Lemieux to wonder how many came from poorer Toronto neighbourhoods in the vicinity of the Citadel.
“Through my research, I learned that William James Hawkey, a young soldier killed in action, lived just around the corner in a house that remains today. We brought the artistic team to Vimy Ridge for the 100th anniversary to retrace the steps of Hawkey and his fellow valiant soldiers.
“After that experience, coming back to our home — the once-home of these young men — made their sacrifice profoundly more personal and it’s on this deeply personal level that I want to convey their stories.” Every dancer in Jusqu’à Vimy is matched to an actual soldier. Most of the nine-member cast made the April trip to Vimy. They visited the soldiers’ gravesites and performed a short excerpt of Lemieux’s work in conjunction with the opening of a new visitor centre at the Canadian National Vimy Memorial.
Dancer Luke Garwood’s great-grandfather was badly injured at Vimy and emo- tionally scarred for life. For Garwood, visiting Vimy a century later was a poignant experience; seeing the shell-ravaged battlefield, the surviving trenches and tunnels; imagining the exploding mortars and machine-gun fire.
“Sadly, we don’t know much about him,” Garwood says. “There are no photographs. From what I’ve been told, he was not a very nice man. His kids didn’t like him much. But you think of what he went through.”
It’s less the obvious valour and military camaraderie than the private terror and soul-numbing horror of war that animates Lemieux’s new work
William Edwin Standeven, great-greatgrandfather of dancer Kaitlin Standeven, the only woman in the cast, was at Vimy. Being short, “Willy” Standeven was ideally suited to the dangerous work of tunnelling under enemy lines. After the war, confined spaces, even a darkened theatre, could trigger traumatic memories and he would have to seek the security of the open air.
It’s less the obvious valour and military camaraderie than the private terror and soul-numbing horror of war that animates Lemieux’s new work. The soundscape by six-time Dora Award-winning composer John Gzowski, working in harmony with Jeremy Mimnagh’s production design, has an almost ghostly quality combining rare archival recordings with drifts of wartime songs and the incessant barrage of artillery.
Lemieux, 53, who grew up in Quebec City, chose to give her work a French title in recognition of her own ancestry.
She hopes Jusqu’à Vimy will offer audiences a new, more intimate perspective on one of Canadian history’s most famous battles.
The dancers of Lemieux’s Citadel + Compagnie will perform an “avant premiere” of Jusqu’à Vimy at Mississauga’s Living Arts Centre on Friday before opening an eight-show run in Toronto next Wednesday. Jusqu’à Vimy ( All the Way to Vimy) is at the Citadel, 304 Parliament St., Nov. 15 to 18 and 22 to 25; citadelcie.com or 416-364-8011.