Lang’s striking images linger long after curtain falls
It’s not often a costume merits applause before a performance begins. Yet that was the case Friday night, when Kana Kimura’s spectacular dress drew a swell of approval from the crowd before she’d taken a single step.
This four-minute work is The Calling, part of a mixed program performed this weekend in Victoria by New York’s Jessica Lang Dance. The white gown is indeed jaw-dropping, so long it extended several metres on stage like a giant upside-down lily.
The Calling is Lang’s homage to her late mentor, choreographer/ teacher Benjamin Harkarvy. In the opening moments, a single dancer — brilliantly lit against a dark background, her back toward the audience — appears to sink into the earth.
What follows is a solemn, slow, twisting dance, often with arms raised. Set against a haunting vocal track by Trio Mediaeval, the effect is that of a ritual or meditation. A crowd-pleaser, The Calling (an excerpt from a longer piece) is a work of substance, as if watching a statue come to dignified life.
This was an entire evening of Lang’s creations. She’s a thoughtful choreographer who blends contemporary dance and ballet with taste, sophistication and grace, offering striking visual images that linger long after the curtain falls.
The edgiest offering was the 20-minute Thousand Yard Stare. To create this, Lang interviewed shell-shocked veterans as well as therapists. The nine dancers, in military green, wore vests which, on the back, featured reproductions of drawings created by former soldiers.
In print, this may sound heavyhanded. In practice, Thousand Yard Stare works well, thanks to Lang’s ability to balance abstraction and the literal.
It begins with groups of dancers, in pairs and trios, semimarching back and forth in formation. There is, at first, no music. These soldiers appear broken — they move back and forth jerkily, sometimes pausing, one knee up, in mid-stride. They’re like frozen warriors — somehow bringing to mind China’s terracotta armies.
The entry of a lovely, warm movement from Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 15 offers some relief. Then, Lang subtly introduces powerful images: a female dancer lies on her back, arms and legs splayed upward, in a silent scream. A man crawls between the legs of dancers in centipedelike formation, as though avoiding barbed wire. Another performer is caught frozen in a flight-like pose. Flashes of light suggest exploding bombs.
The idea behind the evening’s other major piece, Lines Cubed, also sounds as if it has the potential for over-literalness. It is inspired by the geometrical work of artist Piet Mondrian, whose paintings often depict blocks of primary colours.
Lines Cubed features a backdrop suggestive of a Mondrian grid (the accordion-like dividers are by Molo, a Vancouver design firm). The dance is divided into coloured segments: black, red, yellow, blue and, finally, a combination of all.
The performers’ movements and formations are often “geometric.” One man, typically, bent his arm into a zig-zag shape. Legs are raised in right-angles. The coloured costumes suggested various moods. Yellow, not surprisingly, appears to represent happiness; the movements were playful, spritish — more lyrical and human than what had come before.
Dance by colours might sound simplistic, yet there’s real depth to Lang’s vision. The percussive, plinking score by Thomas Metcalf — relentlessly modern — has shifts in mood and direction carefully reflected in the dance. Tellingly, the piece ends on an ambiguous note; a prone dancer lies with a divider on top of her, perhaps consumed by the unrelenting regimentation of urban life.
The evening included Among the Stars, a dance about two lovers. This simple and elegant pas de deux was defined by Lang’s sculptural use of a long rectangular fabric, wrapped about dancer Laura Mead at the finale. She and partner Jammie Walker performed with the sort of effortless ease that typifies this troupe. One lift, for which Mead was held upside down, legs straight in the air, was quietly spectacular.
The gentle Mendelssohn/ Incomplete, for six dancers, was notable for the lovely arm work and classical grace. Here and throughout the evening, there was a sense of organic fluidity working in tandem with a certain formality — a potent balance suggestive of nature itself.