GRAND FINALE
Acclaimed creator brings humour to show about the world falling apart around us
New Shechter show is about finding the human in the apocalypse,
Hofesh Shechter figures humanity has about a century left at the rate it’s currently despoiling the planet. And the idea of a coming apocalypse is very much a part of the choreographer’s latest work, Grand Finale, which expresses through dance and music varying human reactions to the world falling apart around us.
But if that sounds bleak, there is a through-line of hope in the production and in all of Shechter’s creations. The Israeli artist, who now lives in London, England, says his work is about “bringing people together and … creating a camaraderie of men and women … going beyond borders, skin colour or religion, or culture.”
“It’s really about the human being in the most basic and simple way, trying to understand how and why we behave the way we do.”
Grand Finale features 10 dancers and six musicians in what Le Monde described as “choreographic fireworks” and the Evening Standard called “wild, frenzied and utterly beguiling.”
It has already been seen in Paris, London, New York and Montreal, and will be at Toronto’s Bluma Appel Theatre in a Canadian Stage presentation Wednes- day to Sunday.
Shechter, on the phone from London, said Grand Finale has no political agenda, but is meant to convey the different emotions that people bring to a seemingly dire situation.
“Either we are burning petrol like there’s no tomorrow or we’re (using) water like there’s no tomorrow; we’re killing animals. We have maybe 100 years in the tank before this is all going to hell,” he said.
“Another question that rises is whether every generation comes to a spot where they feel it’s all going to go to hell and actually it never does. Maybe it will get better for the next generation. It’s really hard to say.”
Part of what attracted Shechter to dance — instead of a career in the math and physics he excelled at in school — were its “mysterious power” and how, through dance, you can express feelings that are hard to explain in words.
In trying to convey what Grand Finale is about, Shechter used words like “energy,” “grotesque,” “touching,” “disturbing,” “dignified,” “undignified,” “gentle,” “powerful” and “beauty.” He also said it is much more complex than the last production that brought him to Toronto in 2012, Political Mother.
And there’s another word, less obvious for a piece about people reacting to their potential doom: “humour.”
“I think it’s a very Jewish thing, you know,” said Shechter, 43.
He recalls first learning about the Holocaust when he was 5 or 6 years old, and as he grew and began talking about it with friends, “lots of the conversation about the Holocaust was full of humour, very black, very sarcastic. It’s a real coping mechanism.”
“When I started to create Grand Finale” — some of which includes dancers imitating corpses — “there was something so bleak and dark about it that humour just had to make its way in to balance the whole thing and make it digestible.
“Humour is the only spice you need to get through life in a healthy way,” he added. As a choreographer, he sees his role as taking his emotions and experiences, and those of the people around him, and crystallizing them for audiences in a way that is “powerful and valuable and communicative,” but not self-indulgent. “It’s really about giving them a powerful experience that is beyond their thinking mind.” The former rock drummer, who composes the music as well as the choreography for his works, has received some heady recognition — including an honorary Order of the British Empire, an Olivier Award nomination and a Tony Award nomination (for Fiddler on the Roof) — but he considers contemporary dance a weird and experimental art form.
“It’s a quirky, awkward bag of surprises,” he said.
“There’s a real sense of belonging to a little special cult. I like seeing contemporary dancing that way because it makes me feel like everything is allowed. You can use text, film, music; you can use the stage bare; you can do whatever you want.”