Krishnan’s I, Cyclops a homoerotic brew
CanAsian International Dance Festival
(out of 4) Choreography by Susan Lee, Jocelyne Montpetit, Hari Krishnan.
www.canasiandance.com
Hari Krishnan is a Very Naughty Boy. Fans of Monty Python’s Life of
Brian will understand the implications.
Krishnan, founder-director of Toronto’s InDance, is sometimes looked upon as the saviour, albeit the local one, of Indian classical dance. Krishnan is happy to scoff at tradition, turn things upside down and shake out all the cobwebs.
In the case of I, Cyclops, however, he’s playing priapic naughty boy to the point that any serious Postmodern purpose he might have in mind is lost in a whirl of outrageous provocation.
I, Cyclops, given its premiere at last Wednesday’s opening of the CanAsian International Dance Festival, mixes Indian mythology and 20th-century popular iconography into a transgressive, homoerotic brew; call it Bharatanatyam at the leather bar.
To a suitably propulsive recorded score by Niraj Chag, Krishnan’s international — Canada and Singapore — cast of four men and six women perform choreography juxtaposing the rhythmic intricacy and gestural symbolism of Indian classical dance with bold, slicing contemporary movement and erotic crotch-to-crotch grinding.
Designers Boyd Bonitzke and Rex, InDance’s longtime costumier, evoke a dark, smoky netherworld. Leather strapping for the barechested men abounds.
There are hints of ballet tutus and classical Indian dance garb among the women.
Except for the brief introduction of a blood-red cape, it’s all fashionably black.
Krishnan’s title references Marvel Universe’s superhero X-Men with, one deduces, the show-stealingly charismatic Paul Charbonneau, he of the undulating torso, portraying Cyclops. Charbonneau is supported in his clash with hidebound tradition by fellow X-Men Roney Lewis and Benjamin Landsberg. Hiroshi Miyamoto, meanwhile, plays an ambivalent Hindu god.
What a contrast this rambunctious closer was to the two, introspective, contemplative and thoroughly earnest solos that preceded it.
In Trace Elements, Toronto choreographer Susan Lee uses projected video imagery, some of it live-captured, to explore the nature of identity. Performer Takako Segawa is thus viewed from multiple perspectives, real and virtual; a metaphor for the search for true identity or perhaps a recognition that the notion of self is always a shifting target. Jocelyne Montpetit’s La danseuse malade (The Ailing Dancer) offers up hard-core Butoh, the snailpaced, angst-ridden dance form in which the Montreal choreographer immersed herself during a lengthy sojourn in Japan. In this case she dispenses with Butoh’s trademark body ash, but not much else. The construction is circular with Montpetit, at 60 still mesmerizing. The CanAsian festival, which very broadly features dance works conceived within a variety of Asian esthetics, also included film screenings and workshops for both professionals and amateurs that extend for another a week beyond the event’s public performance schedule, which wrapped up on Saturday evening.