Preview
SLY VERB
Toronto Dance Theatre
Dancers’ Studio West
Choreographed by Christopher House
Runs November 5 and 6
Vertigo Playhouse (Tower Centre)
The exploration of the senses is one of the biggest and most profound common denominators in all performing arts. For both the audience and the performer, there is nothing without the senses, and sensuality, to guide us through a performance.
A blatant example is Toronto Dance Theatre’s latest show, Sly Verb, in town thanks to Dancers’ Studio West for two nights next week, during an unusually extended seven-week tour for the company. As he watches the show develop on its tour across Western Canada, TDT artistic director and choreographer Christopher House has no trouble summing up Sly Verb’s premise.
"Our skin is the surface layer of our brain: without the sense of touch, we have no relationship with the present. Touch is the mother of all senses," he says.
Featuring 12 dancers in a world that often transforms around them, Sly Verb tackles touch, perception and the human gaze, often challenging our boundaries and the restrictions we face in society and place upon ourselves. House first started exploring the ideas behind the production after a colleague loaned him the book Job’s Body: A Handbook for Bodywork by Deane Juhan, which outlines the necessity of balancing passivity and endurance for good health and emphasizes the importance of touch in communication and the quality of living. It was a great starting point for House’s rehearsals.
"The show is about the sense of touch, and the complexity of that word," he says. "It’s a rich trigger for sensations. This is about the body as an object and as a subject, and that dichotomy that we are our bodies. And it’s also about the boundaries of the body, people, performers and the audience."
Composed of a series of vignettes – some harsh and disturbing, others humorous – Sly Verb plays itself out in group form and in individual solos. Amid an original set of organic, metallic sculptures created by designer and architect Scott Eunson, with lighting by Toronto’s renowned Steve Lucas, the vignettes add up to a larger statement on the senses.
"We started by just going in and figuring it out together," says House of the show’s development. "The piece is really a living thing, very much in process all the time. Ultimately it’s less about the body as an object we look at mechanically, than the relationship with other qualities and sensations."
Moving to the tune of a pulsing soundscape by Phil Strong, the dancers have incorporated moments of video into the work for up-close-and-personal shots, allowing the audience to peer even farther into their sensations. There’s also a point in the show when the dancers descend into the audience to make a connection. On the whole, it’s a sensory experience for everyone.
"It’s sensuous because it’s dealing with the senses all the way through," says House, "and what I’ve discovered, in theory, is that all senses come back to touch. Sound is touch, for example. Without touch you wither away and die quickly."
Toronto Dance Theatre has already visited Edmonton, Vancouver, Banff, Vernon and Whitehorse, and recently developed its alternate season work, Persephone’s Lunch, at The Banff Centre, a location House has frequently visited and where he received the 1986 Clifford E. Lee Award for choreography. This is the company’s first visit to Calgary in 10 years and Sly Verb features a particularly talented team, both onstage and off, so don’t miss out on reaching for a ticket. |
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