Toronto Dance show is enigmatic but compelling
Marienbad
(out of 4) Toronto Dance Theatre. Choreographed by Christopher House and Jordan Tannahill. Until Saturday, Winchester Street Theatre, 80 Winchester St. marienbadtdt.eventbrite.ca or 416-967-1365 If Jordan Tannahill isn’t all black and blue today, it’s not for want of trying. As one half of Marienbad, jointly made and performed with Toronto Dance Theatre artistic director Christopher House, Tannahill throws and slams himself around with such alarming abandon that, at times, you feel an empathetic “ouch.”
Tannahill is widely celebrated as one of Canada’s most accomplished young playwrights, filmmakers and all-round multidisciplinary artists. Dancing, until now, has not been a prominent feature of his public profile. You could argue that the movement in Marienbad is more akin to physical theatre than what is conventionally understood as dancing.
That said, Tannahill acquits himself impressively in the strange and enigmatic new duet at Winchester Street Theatre that formally closes Toronto Dance Theatre’s 2015-16 season.
For this, its second collaboration, the layout of the company’s intimate studio theatre is reversed. The regular audience seating has been stripped from the eight levels of bleachers and resituated on risers on what is normally the stage. House and Tannahill perform on the denuded bleachers.
When they move apart, their remoteness from each other seems amplified by elevation as well as distance. When they come together, the act seems more intense.
They walk and romp and run, fast or in studiously slow motion; together and apart. At times they seem almost oblivious of each other. At other points they grapple in a conflicted cross between wrestling and mating.
In a short program note, House describes Marienbad as “a wayward dance,” which in its unpredictability it certainly is. The 50-minute work is thoroughly choreographed yet retains a feeling of spontaneity, as if anything might happen.
House is a big fan of ambiguity and there’s plenty of it in Marienbad. Its German title, unexplained by House, offers its own puzzle. In the 19th century the spa town of Marienbad was the haunt of the rich and famous, drawn by its healing springs. And then there’s Alain Renais’ baffling 1961cult film Last Year at Marienbad, whose characters seem to inhabit a realm between dream and reality.
There’s something of that strange feeling in the relationship, if such it can be called, between House and Tannahill. Are they playing characters or aspects of themselves?
Tannahill recently turned 28 and, although he scarcely looks it, House is 61, comfortably old enough to be the former’s father.
The intergenerational aspect is underlined by Tannahill’s physical agility and recklessness and by House’s more carefully measured exertions. There’s also a hint of cat-and-mouse courtship. The whole languid opening suggests a coy cruising ritual.
Its advance billing described Marienbad as placing “two queer men in a landscape of shifting meanings and intentions.”
Frankly, the “queer” part is a bit of a red herring. Two guys together, whatever. Sexuality aside, Marienbad has universal resonances about the elusive search for intimacy.