FFWD Weekly
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| DANCE Trading Hearts Trading Hearts fuses dance with theatre to create a psycho-sexual drama that attempts to communicate to its audience through both text and movement. The piece, conceived and fleshed out by two exciting members of Calgary's artistic community, Brian Hansen and Nikki Lundmark, has been two years in the making. Hansen and Lundmark used to teach together; Hansen teaching dance and Lundmark teaching theatre. One night, while discussing the various shows they had seen, Hansen told Lundmark, "There has got to be more movement in plays." This comment proved to be a seed that has come to fruition as this full-length, highly collaborative dance drama. Lundmark and Hansen worked out the initial concept of the dance drama and decided to take their idea to Edmonton actor and playwright Trevor Schmidt. "Trevor came up with this relationship piece and left it open to interpretation for movement," says Hansen. "It was stream-of-consciousness for him. He wrote 15 little poetic scenes, and we took them and worked on them." Although Schmidt's script was exactly what Lundmark and Hansen were looking for, the direction he then wanted to go in was very different, indeed. "Trevor wanted to put it up quickly as a Fringe show and Nikki and I were more interested in the process of figuring out how to work with it," Hansen says. The trio separated amicably and Schmidt went to work on other things. Schmidt will see the play for the first time when the company travels to Edmonton to do a set of shows, a fact that seems to amuse Hansen. "Nikki and I took the script and imposed a lot of things on it. We built a story out of it and edited it quite a bit. We ended up saying, 'This can be said through movement.' It was hard finding just the right balance between movement and text," says Hansen. The drama focuses on a developing relationship that Hansen describes as an "every guy, every girl kind of relationship." "A girl might be able to relate to my side of the relationship and a guy with hers. We don't even have names - just female or male." What makes this erotic, psycho-sexual exploration different is that it is seen and interpreted through the eyes of a voyeur living next door. "The voyeur interprets what we're doing. As an audience member you kind of become the voyeur. Because he can't hear us, he sees mostly through movement how we're feeling," he explains. The role of the voyeur has changed since Lundmark left to do work in the Shaw Festival, because Barry Thorsten has stepped in to act as assistant director. More people means more ideas, and Trading Hearts, like a living entity, seems to be constantly growing and improving itself. Hansen also credits lighting designer Terry Middleton with helping to stimulate that growth. "His lighting on top of the movement on top of the text adds to these images. It's exactly what we're looking for." Anita Miotti plays opposite Hansen in the production and Robert Aaron Browning, a relatively new addition to the cast, plays the coveted role of the main voyeur. The supporting cast of voyeurs will have to line up for tickets. |