Preview
ANTHOLOGY
Suzanne Miller and Allan Paivio Productions
Starring Suzanne Miller
Created by Suzanne Miller and Allan Paivio
Runs March 11 to 13
Dancers’ Studio West
On Montreal’s contemporary dance scene, popular choreographers such as Édouard Lock, Marie Chouinard and Louise Bédard have become familiar touring institutions. In the city’s less commercial areas of contemporary delights, however, another well-travelled artist quickly comes to mind: Suzanne Miller. After two decades, Miller is packing and unpacking a lot these days as she takes her solo show Anthology on the road.
"I’ve been working with large groups for some time," says Miller, explaining her decision to do the solo showcase, a trilogy of works now visiting Dancers’ Studio West. "I wanted to return to the place of the singular, where all of humanity is represented through one form and relationships are not the focus. Solos are very generous that way – they can extend themselves to individual audience members."
However, one relationship is in focus in Anthology. Miller is sharing the stage with musical collaborator Allan Paivio. Their composer-choreographer chemistry fuels their conceptual approach to creation and, while this relationship is nothing new, it has a particular significance after 20 years.
"All the music and sound design is tailored for the work," says Miller. "For death between two arcs (the show’s finale), we’ve transformed the theatre into a musical instrument, by stringing a piano wire across the stage. It creates two points, two sides of the stage, and the line connecting them in between."
Miller and Paivio’s own "points" connect from Montreal to Banff, where they completed Anthology last October. Over two years in the making, the trilogy has already toured to Halifax, New York, the Contemporary Dance Festival in Guelph, Ontario, and to Mexico City. The latter also influenced their second piece, Zocalo, which means "meeting place." Miller and Paivio explored the rhythms, sounds and ambience of the city’s communal town squares during an international residency in 2002. Although they hadn’t intended to create work around Mexican culture, they couldn’t resist it.
"We really immersed ourselves," says Miller. "It resulted in this extremely colourful piece. I’ve taken a couple hundred plastic bags, sewn together – recycling garbage – and transformed (the result) into different shapes, references and fantasies. It’s a transformable blob."
Paivio’s score is as varied as Miller’s three solos. In Heart Solo, for example, a distorted human heartbeat pumps life into Miller’s equally primal performance. Dressed in 28 costumes, all worn at once, the dancer gradually sheds her garb, in an undulating and sensual rhythm influenced by Kundalini Chakra meditation. "It’s very centred-centric," says Miller with a laugh.
Meditation, yoga, music and visual arts, as well as dance technique and tradition, have all played significant roles in Miller’s career. In the death between two arcs, she turned to choreographer José Limon for inspiration. Another Mexican connection, Limon became a principal dancer with Martha Graham and, independently, a master of modernism. His technique is based on principles of weight, fall and recovery. As the piano string divides the stage in Miller’s dance, we become aware of what Miller calls "the unknown, indescribable place in between." It is a place between suspension and release, the two fundamental elements of contemporary dance.
The death between two arcs investigates life to rebirth in no time flat. "There’s a journey and wonderment about it," says Miller. "Discovery, participating, struggling, we fall in our paths. But we get up again as well."
Miller is up and ready for both Calgary and a return to Mexico City, where Anthology will be performed at the city’s national arts centre. Although she continues to work on dance contracts in between, her solo adventure is life to rebirth in itself.
"The experience at once reminds you of the place of the artist and the place of the dancer," says Miller. "I’ve been really lucky to re-connect with the origins that launched my career in the first place." |
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