Review: (Toronto / Dance) Around

(photo by David Hou)

Dancemakers and 40

by Beat Rice

This year, Dancemakers celebrates its 40th anniversary and premieres a new collaborative work, Around. The first thing you experience before the show is the space. For this production, the arrangement of the viewing space inside the studio was very meticulously planned and executed. The audience sits in two circular rows facing the centre, with the circle being enclosed by a white curtain on a track.  

Sitting in the round forces an awareness of space and the proximity of people near and far from you, performers and audience members alike. It creates a strong feeling of intimacy, which in turn creates a tension that is only increased when the performance begins. I became incredibly conscious that I could be watched. 

Bonus Feature: First-Person - Choreographer Michael Trent on Around

On How I Make Work
by Michael Trent

Toronto-based dance artist Michael Trent was appointed Artistic Director and Resident Choreographer of Dancemakers and the Centre for Creation in August 2006. He has garnered national recognition as a choreographer, dancer and teacher in a career spanning over twenty-five years. He is the co-recipient of the 2004 K.M. Hunter Award in dance, presented to Ontario-based artists who are making an impact in their field. Trent was nominated for a 2006 Dora Award for best performance in Louise Bédard’s Ce qu’il en reste, is a member of Project bk and the 8DaysII community. In 2000, Trent founded the empty collective, a crucible for the creation and presentation of collaborative projects that involve two or more media. The collective’s 2001 inaugural project, The Memory Show, brought together works by Trent, Sarah Chase and Laurence Lemieux. It subsequently toured to the National Arts Centre (Ottawa) and Dancing on the Edge Festival (Vancouver) with a repeat Toronto performance at Spring Rites. The collective’s second project, invisible borders, premiered at the Harbourfront Centre Theatre, Toronto, in November 2004 with work by Trent and guest artists Louise Bédard and Doug Varone. invisible borders was co-presented by DanceWorks and co-produced by the Dancemakers Centre for Creation in association with Le Groupe Dance Lab.

From the informal to the highly institutionalized - performance is made in a thousand different ways under a slew of structures. 

Around 
I’m in the  process of creation right now so my focus is in the studio. I have the pleasure of working with 14 exceptional artists on this : five resident company dancers, five emerging dancers, one dramaturge, a composer and lighting and costume designers. It’s a four week process which may seem like a normal amount of time if you’re producing a play with a script but we start ‘writing’ the show the day the collaborative team comes together. I bring a question or curiosity into the room that I am thinking about and researching but other than that we begin with a blank page. Scary and exhilarating. I love it.

The new dance is called Around. “Around” as in a circle, literally: the audience sits in a circle. And “Around” as in approximate, relative, ”It’s around 10 o’clock.” I like this contradiction between perfection of a circle and the inexactitude of estimation because life strives for the former but often ends up in the later. And I am OK with that. I love the grey area; it’s so much more fun.