Preview
TASTY
InTranzDance
Choreographed by Laurie Montemurro, Jason Stroh and Nicole Tritter
Runs until October 25
Dancers’ Studio West
Women and men celebrating the body. Gesture defining image onstage. While describing and interpreting dance can be altogether poetic, choreographer Laurie Montemurro of InTranzDance asks us to watch dance for ourselves.
"It’s good to remember that it doesn’t matter what I tell you, you’re going to walk away with your own images," she says.
Montemurro reminds us that there are multiple layers involved in dance, from the ideas of the choreographer to the ideas of the dancer to the ideas of the audience.
Tasty, a new show by InTranzDance presented by Dancers’ Studio West, promises to be a multi-layered production, featuring the works of three Calgary choreographers: Montemurro, Jason Stroh and Nicole Tritter. The three began working together as InTranzDance because of each other’s work as individual choreographers.
"We, all three, are independent artists who have had success," says Stroh, who spent six seasons with Decidedly Jazz Danceworks. "Our work complements one another."
"We each have a section of the show," adds Montemurro, a former artistic director of Springboard Dance. "So that you really can get the feeling of a full evening – and that each artist has their own space."
Tritter, fresh from dancing and choreographing for Springboard’s Vertical Summer 2003, contributes a piece called Devouring Ecstasy. The work explores notions of feminine beauty and what it means to be a woman.
"It’s a piece about women, and all the different parts of us that there are – that we can be soft, we can be hard, we can be sensual, that we’re never just one thing," Tritter says.
Tritter wanted to emphasize the dancers’ different body types in her piece, which is about feminine power as much as it is about feminine vulnerability. As a result, the costumes, as well as the movement, play an important role. She describes the dancers’ outfits as minimal, "the material just covering the nipples with lace, like an idea of a corset, but in a different way." They also wear tattered, ballet-style tutus.
Stroh has choreographed two pieces for Tasty. In the first, The Space Between, the movement grew out of an image that accentuated the elongated body of a dancer.
"I realized there are two images to her – the face is very human and relates to all, but the (lower half) does not – and I started looking at different images that metamorphosed throughout the piece," says Stroh. The piece works with isolated and sequential movements, and also plays with notions of what is animal and what is human.
Stroh’s second work, Study of Two, was originally performed a year ago with two male dancers, but for this show will be danced by two women.
Montemurro’s contribution to the program might be considered lighter fare than the typical modern dance work, but it’s still a social commentary. Entitled A Day in the Life of Mrs. Nos et al, the piece revolves around an alter ego Montemurro has created named Trixie – a giggly woman with an affinity for the colour pink who is quite the opposite of the choreographer.
"It’s a spoof about myself, doing the things I don’t (normally) pay attention to," she says.
Montemurro thinks audiences will enjoy the unpredictability of the work, but also the fact that it engages viewers on many levels. A mixture of clowning and modern dance, it is being performed by a variety of people from different backgrounds, including Montemurro’s daughters. |
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