Abstract dance piece premieres at Harbourfront
Teenage dancers perform Petits rêves as part of annual Wintersong program
It’s a late Sunday afternoon and choreographer Sylvie Bouchard watches intently as the young members of Toronto-based Canadian Contemporary Dance Theatre (CCDT) perform their first complete studio runthrough of Petits rêves. Bouchard claps as they finish.
“These dancers are amazing,” she later shares, after the cast, elated but weary, has headed home. “I’m very specific in what I want and that can be a challenge for them, but their attitude is totally professional.”
That’s a common response from the many choreographers who’ve worked with this company of schoolage dancers, co-founded in 1980 as Canadian Children’s Dance Theatre by Deborah Lundmark and her husband, Michael de Coninck Smith. They later modified the name to reflect the kind of choreography they dance and the high professional standards of the young troupe members.
Petits rêves (Little Dreams) is a short work, less than 15 minutes, with a teenage cast of three women and two men, choreographed to a James Bunton arrangement of music by Arvo Pärt, the celebrated Estonian composer. The sound is almost otherworldly and celestial, which is exactly what Bouchard wants.
“There is a pause in the sky,” she says. “And that’s where little dreams happen.”
While her new piece is abstract and poetic in its imagery, Bouchard says the dancers represent beings or entities, rather than humans. At some points, they evoke thoughts of the sun’s rays spurting out through the universe.
Obviously, Bouchard has given thought to the central idea behind Wintersong, the CCDT program in which Petits rêves will have its public premiere (there are several student shows this week) on Friday night. It’s all about the solstice.
Long before inclusiveness had moved to the centre of the politically correct radar, CCDT was offering audiences a culturally wide-ranging way of viewing the holiday season; a reminder that celebrations focused on the winter solstice are much, much older than Christmas. CCDT launched Wintersong: Dances for a Sacred Season, at Harbourfront Centre’s Fleck Dance Theatre in December 1988. This year is the 28th annual Wintersong season. But even before Wintersong, CCDT performed a holiday season show called Simon Sorry in the Battle for the Toys that highlighted the way capitalism and commerce have essentially hijacked what had once been a spiritual occasion.
As Lundmark explains, Wintersong is inspired by the lore and traditions surrounding that moment in the Northern Hemisphere when the sun’s movement south appears mo- mentarily to stop, until, after the solstice, it begins its welcome trek northward, bringing with it warmth and a rebirth of life.
Rituals aimed at making sure the sun reverses course and celebrations when it obligingly does, are evident in cultures reaching back as much as six millennia.
Many scholars argue that Christmas, commemorating the birth of Jesus, was aligned with the winter solstice in the fourth century because it could readily absorb existing customs and traditions.
Over the years, many choreographers have taken the symbolic signif- icance of the winter solstice and expressed it both abstractly, as Bouchard is doing, or with specific reference to past traditions.
When it came to commissioning a new work from Bouchard, Lundmark was specific.
“I asked for a small group work that’s different from all the big dancing in the show, something that would more highlight individuals,” explains Lundmark. “And now we have a little gem.” Wintersong is at the Fleck Dance Theatre, 207 Queens Quay W., Dec 11 & 12; harbourfrontcentre.com or 416-9734000.