Kinesis lights the way for a wildly surreal trip

DANCE

IN PENUMBRA

A Kinesis Dance somatheatro production. A Vancouver International Dance Festival and Dance Centre presentation. At the Scotiabank Dance Centre on Thursday, March 2. No remaining performances

In Penumbra is its 2The star of

spangly light-bulb canopy, a scalloped silver mesh covered in an array of glowing glass. Sometimes it buzzes like its own energy force; at others in this whimsically surreal production, it pulses along with the dancers’ heartbeats. Not surprisingly, it was Instagrammed like crazy at Kinesis Dance somatheatro’s show last week.

In his company’s 30th-anniversary production, Kinesis founder Paras Terezakis is interested in the grey area between light and dark (penumbra is the half-light of shadows), and that overhang, with its dimmable lights, is an apt artistic expression of that. Similarly, his performers seem to be suspended in some kind of dreamlike purgatory. In his program notes, the veteran choreographer says he’s continuing his study of characters searching for utopia in a dystopian universe. (That search for utopia stems from the Greek- Canadian artist’s ongoing interest in the Odyssey myth.)

The idea plays out in Terezakis’s physically charged dance-theatre style, with five people awkwardly almost-coupling, stripping off their clothes and putting them back on, as if the performers can’t quite connect. In a recurring sequence, two dancers waltz while the other three grab on and try to follow, forming a clumsy, desperate dance train behind them. Another moment finds four of the dancers lifting the fifth repeatedly toward a dangling tangle of lit light bulbs on cords, only to have them rise just out of reach. It’s a direct metaphor for people reaching for enlightenment, but being held back by themselves and others.

Sometimes the imagery reaches bizarre, David Lynch–ian heights, such as when a couple repeatedly poke to kiss each other through a red scarf while, under the throbbing mass of light bulbs, another dancer lies on his stomach and unsuccessfully flaps a cape to get liftoff. The mood is one of restless, circling frustration, with the action reaching a buzzing chaos in the final act, that five-person waltz now devolving into a crouched-over mess.

As ever, Terezakis gets playful with his entrances and exits, the dancers entering on a surprise ladder, the show ending abruptly and rather wittily. (We’ll leave that staging element a surprise.)

The troupe of dancers—arash Khakpour, Elissa Hanson, Hyoseung Ye, Renée Sigouin, and Diego Romero—is strong and never less than committed, affecting just the right expression of stern deadpan in this strange world. Natalie Purschwitz’s costumes evoke a cool nostalgia, especially in the women’s ’40s-style coats, giving the work an even more disorienting, suspended-time feel. And the magic Terezakis and lighting designer James Proudfoot achieve with their glowing bulbs is atmospheric to the max—enhanced by Nancy Tam’s heady electro score.

The show works best on the level of hallucinogenic imagery, enjoyed with a dream logic. Yes, it could be more taut, as a few sequences feel like studio tasks sewn together: playing with a microphone, wrapping and unwrapping bulbs on cords around the dancers, and fooling around with LED headlamps (though a bunch of them create a truly frightening, lit-up mask at one point).

Still, you have to hand it to Kinesis, which, after three decades, pushes onward to offer up this kind of fearless work. Terezakis is clear and confident in his intentions, and more committed than ever to conjuring them, making it a real trip to head under that light-bulb canopy with him.

> JANET SMITH CARMINA BURANA

A Spellbound Contemporary Ballet production. A Chutzpah Festival and Italian Cultural Centre presentation. At the Norman and Annette Rothstein Theatre on Saturday, March 4. No remaining performances 2Can an artwork be bawdy and

sophisticated at the same time? In the case of Carmina Burana, yes. That’s the beautiful paradox of Spellbound Contemporary Ballet’s fascinating and fun new dance work in the Italian company’s second visit to the Chutzpah Festival. The episodic piece, like the medieval poetry and songs it’s based on, is basically all about lust. But choreographer Mauro Astolfi stages it all with such fast, flickering, light-asChampagne-bubbles movement, it’s as gorgeous as it is rude and risqué. It feels like the highest form of play.

Set amid the kind of dramatic shadowy lighting you’d see in a Goya painting, the dancers splay their legs, stick their heads under skirts, and windmill their arms. The impression is of restlessly arcing, scissoring, tangling pale limbs.

Astolfi, costume designer Sandro Ferrone, and set designer Stefan Mazzola give everything a sleek, contemporary look.

The female dancers wear modern grey dresses emblazoned with stark red crosses on the chest—more like the appropriated symbols of today’s T-shirts even as they’re a nod to the clerics’ wear of the 12th century.

A monastic bench and long table, as well as a big cabinet, dominate the stage, and Astolfi moves, upends, and innovates with them throughout. At several moments, men tilt the tables so women slide down toward them; at others, they jump and reach at the females trying to flee over the top. Late in the piece, the cabinet becomes an even more fun device, almost literally referring to the skeletons we hide in our closet, the doors opening and shutting to reveal an ever-naughtier array of entwined, humping couples.

Rome’s Spellbound is known for its dancers, and the nine here show up with the balletic finesse, otherworldly suppleness, and endless energy needed to pull off Astolfi’s dazzling, inventive movement. Stage-filling group numbers give way to solos and duets, set not only to some of Carl Orff’s epic Carmina Burana cantatas but to Antonio Vivaldi’s Dixit Dominus. The dancers embody the melodies and harmonies in dizzyingly complex patterns. Nothing here is angular; limbs scallop through the air, and spines curve back into spectacular Cs.

Yes, the guys get a bit handsy with the women, who spend a lot of their time either trying to flee them or pushing and high-kicking them away. You could read it as a nod to the puritanical times the Carmina Burana manuscripts were defying, and the way females weren’t supposed to give in to their desires (maybe still aren’t, to some degree). The original 11th- to 13th-century manuscripts are really about religious hypocrisy and mockery, and our more base human urges. So is this rendition an elegant game of guys chasing girls, flirtatious fun, or the occasional slip over the line into harassment?

Whatever the answer, and however base the urges on display here, you can’t really go wrong with this much stunning dancing, beautiful music, and stage magic.

> JANET SMITH

Inpenumbra

FLAMENCO GOES GREEK

Want to see and hear more passion on-stage? Contemporary flamenco and ancient Greek tragedy meet head-on in at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts this Sunday (March 12). The multimedia production by New York company Noche Flamenca explores one of the classics of western drama—about a woman defying the authorities, determined to honour her dead and disgraced brother. It could be the Middle East, circa 2017. Artistic director Martin Santangelo brings theatre, live music, and dance to his creation based on the play by Sophocles. The charismatic Soledad Barrio performs in the lead role of Antigona.

Antigona,