Captured, November 9, 2014

The opera Silent Night - which will be playing a little everywhere this season but is starting out at Calgary Opera, tells the story of a wondrous and blessed time in the history of WWI when enemies came together. The magnificent photographer, Trudie Lee, has captured a moment in the opera which could just as well be the actual moment in history. The colour looks applied, the balance of light and dark perfect, the groupings of standing and sitting characters captured lovingly. It is dececptive too: posed as if for a camera from the first decades of the last century, but also strangely natural. The opera - and the photo - are a brilliant tribute on this, the hundredth anniversary of the war that was meant to end all wars.

Review: (Toronto / Dance) The Four Horsemen Project

Text, Sound, Poetry, Song
by Jasmine Chen,  Senior Contributor

“Language has been so misused by merchants, politicians, evangelists and materialists. Language has become abusive; sullied and souled by ulterior motives. Sound Poetry was an abandonment of language.” – Paul Dutton

This quote rings out with particular clarity in our contemporary society, when a single miscalculated comment can send the media into a frenzy or the twitterverse into a firestorm. When language can be manipulated towards different agendas, it is refreshing to step back from what we know as language. What the Four Horsemen and Volcano Theatre with Crooked Figure Dances and Global Mechanic are able to do is strip language of meaning so that we begin to listen to pure sound. When we begin to listen to sounds produced by the voice and human body, we stop relying on language to convey meaning. The result is a fully embodied form of expression that is exposed and surprising.

Review: (Dance / Vancouver) No. 29

White Act (photo: Michael Slobodian) 

From Athletics to Cerebral

by Jay Catterson

The Ballet BC 2014-2015 season launched on Thursday night with No.29, a bold collection of works from choreographers Jacopo Godani, Fernando Hernando Magadan, and Lesley Telford, which commemorates the 29th anniversary of the company as well as the 29th original work since the renewal of the company in 2009. 

The Abominable Showman; Baritone Étienne Dupuis

The triumphant homecoming of Etienne Dupuis

After receiving accolades across Europe, Montreal baritone Etienne Dupuis returns home to star in The Barber of Seville at L’Opéra de Montréal 

by Richard Burnett 

@bugsburnett

(Rehearsal photos by Yves Renaud)

Montrealers remember seeing rising baritone Etienne Dupuis when he was part of a flash mob of opera singers staged in the busy Marché Jean Talon market in his hometown of Montreal, to promote L’Opéra de Montréal in 2010. “I love people’s faces when I start singing opera in an up-close space,” Dupuis told the Vancouver Straight alt-weekly. “We were standing right in front of them and they just became statues. People don’t realize the nature of that sound and what it does to you. It can make you vibrate.”

Watch the clip here.

Letter From New York: The Death of Klinghoffer

Alan Opie (Leon Klinghoffer) and Jesse Kovarsky (Omar) in The Death of Klinghoffer. Photo credit: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera

Mixed Emotions.
There's a lot of post-9/11 baggage on this cruise. 
by Lisa McKeown, Senior Contributor

[PUBLISHER'S NOTE: In the past we have asked our contributors to send in reviews of productions in cities they were visiting: art as seen by Canadians abroad. In this case we asked Lisa McKeown, one of our most politically astute contributors, to review a highly controversial piece playing at the Metropolitan Opera both because it has become an international story, but also because it is a work which may, in some incarnation, make its way to Canada. I am very proud to be presenting this piece; Ms McKeown cuts through the noise. GLC]

The very controversial opera, John Adams's The Death of Klinghoffer, is currently playing at the Metropolitan Opera (Met) in NYC. The opera is based on the 1985 hijacking of a cruise ship by Palestinian terrorists. In the course of events, they shoot Klinghoffer, a disabled Jewish man who was celebrating his wedding anniversary, throwing his body and his wheelchair overboard.

Captured, November 3, 2014

This is one of those performance photos where you don't need to do a lot of blah blah blah to explain it's greatness - you just need to say, "Look at it!" Trudie Lee captures dancer Natasha Korney from Decidedly Jazz Danceworks for Year of the Horse, the completely fictional adventures of Josephine Baker.

Captured, November 1, 2014

Celebrate 25 years of Toronto's Kaeja d'Dance with this electrifyingly kinetic video!