Review
VELVET
Decidedly Jazz Danceworks
Created and directed by Kimberley Cooper and Hannah Stilwell
Runs until June 14
Max Bell Theatre (CPA)
Decidedly Jazz Danceworks is best known for razzle-dazzle choreography that makes you want to leap out of your seat and join the hoofing.
So the 19-year-old Calgary troupe is taking a risk with its current production, Velvet, an exploration of the eerie, anxious, often baffling mindscape of dreams. It’s commendable that DJD keeps working to expand its boundaries, both conceptually and by embracing more contemporary movement. But the show is a string of sketchy, sometimes trite ideas that aren’t effectively developed. It’s also clear that the nine-member company is not in peak shape technically, and needs some new dancers (especially men) to recapture its usual spark.
Co-creators Kimberley Cooper and Hannah Stilwell set out to explore both the "underbelly" of jazz and the shadowy psychological territory of the night. The show gets off to a promising start, evoking the steamy, bawdy atmosphere of New Orleans in the early 1900s. John Dinning’s set is highly theatrical by DJD standards, ingeniously incorporating elements such as tall wooden shutters, shrubs, brick, wrought iron and tattered fabric to suggest a run-down (haunted?) nightclub or brothel. There’s perhaps too much murky green lighting and haze. In a break with tradition that will disappoint some viewers, Kristian Alexandrov’s band does not appear onstage.
We immediately feel we’re supposed to be creeped out, but it’s like being plunged into the heart of a horror movie without a context or build-up. It’s unclear who’s haunting whom, or why, and there’s a decided lack of virtuoso dancing to make up for the confusion.
There are some strong theatrical effects, such as a woman with a stretchy white gown through which a spooky face protrudes like a hologram. But each time we’re introduced to an elaborate costume or set piece, we wait in vain for inspired choreography to fully exploit it.
A large ramp, for instance, is employed to stage the kind of repetitive dream in which a person tries to accomplish a task, but gets nowhere. A dancer attempts to run up the slope, but repeatedly slips down, to the point of tedium. Later, two dancers tiresomely use the ramp as a see-saw. Just beforehand, one of them mimes animatedly to a group of domestic servants, resulting in one of the maids doffing her apron and confronting her on the see-saw. (Huh?)
In another number, dancers are dressed as bugs. Their costumes are cool, but all they can really do in them is scuttle around and roll over. There’s an awful piece in which angels rush about to bombastic music, evoking rock videos of the Gowan era. Then there’s the number featuring three figures in Japanese kimonos wearing bizarre animal heads. It’s the kind of surreal image you might find in a nightmare, but so what? Some of their moves aren’t much more creative than the Macarena.
Velvet certainly doesn’t rank with the company’s best productions, but it does include three first-rate pieces. Cooper’s Hypnagog, to music by electronica artist Amon Tobin, is a deliciously quirky Latin trio for two retro, druggy beach boys and a doll-like babe.
Stilwell’s beautiful K-Complex, which provides much-needed musical relief from relentless percussion and heavy bass, is a languid depiction of a sleeping couple whose drifting and disconnection are a poignant metaphor for emotional separation. The dreamy music is by Afro-Cuban pianist Omar Sosa.
Best of all is Cooper’s mesmerizing Distemper, a taut, funky blast in which a Metropolis-era sci-fi movie meets 2003 hip-hop, again propelled by Tobin beats. Four faceless creatures (androids? pod people?) bob, stamp and pump like pistons with their fists clenched at their butts. The whole stage pulsates with urgent energy. Suddenly, their mad-scientist creator swoops down to collect his harem. It’s the only piece in Velvet that swept me away. |
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