>>PREVIEW
DRAGONFLY EPISODE IV: IDENTITY
Opens May 9
Theatre of the Living Statue
Big Secret Theatre (Epcor Centre)
A day after the Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo swept through the Stampede Roundup Centre, Anita Miotti sits down in a coffee shop to discuss superheroes. At the moment, one of Calgary’s most prolific choreographers seems relatively unassuming with her 12-week-old son strapped to her chest and a piece of carrot loaf in front of her. But, in the tradition of disguised superheroines, Miotti is set to make a drastic transformation, albeit more likely in the green room than a telephone booth.
With Dragonfly Episode IV: Identity, Miotti’s Theatre of the Living Statue will remount a Fringe production fusing the seemingly unrelated threads of superheroism, dance and a troubled love story. In the dark romance between the struggling, bookish Delia (Miotti) and a police officer and clandestine villain named Lawrence (David van Belle), addiction and supernatural emotional powers clash with dance and heightened dialogue. All, of course, informed by worlds of fantasy that make theatre’s suspension of disbelief look positively tame.
"We’re trying to pay a bit more of a homage to different comic books," says Miotti of the show’s second production. "So there’s a V for Vendetta moment, a Spiderman moment, an X-Men moment, a Fantastic Four moment."
Even with homage, however, dance may not be the first association for fans of hyper-machismo and futuristic technology, spandex notwithstanding. Yet, Miotti explains that the panel structure of these same stories is a natural fit for choreographed movement, with isolated moments fitting seamlessly into the process of moving actors’ bodies.
"The comic book is image based, and choreography is about making moving images," says Miotti. "So we might go to a lot of those comic book movements in our bodies, and we move through them, make them look beautiful on the stage.
"Dance is a performing art," she adds, "but choreography is a visual art."
A dance piece with plot and dialogue, what Miotti and her collaborators have termed "comic book performance theatre," Dragonfly’s second production has been a chance to refine the piece beyond the original production’s ambiguity. Even if comic fans can find familiar moments, they still demand a discreet journey from point A (Earth) to B (Rann) that dance pieces don’t necessarily afford.
"I’m learning that when you’re doing anything to do with comic books, you have to know the origin, you have to backstory," says Miotti. "Especially with the origin stories, because it’s the world of comic books and that’s what aficionados are looking for."
Though Miotti is not a comic book aficionado herself, her husband, Ty Semeka (frontman for the Plaid Tongued Devils), had an impressive stash in their basement. Fascinated by the esthetic and mythology of the heroic story, in 2002 Miotti began building a prosthetic head, an act of subconscious compulsion that may belong more to straight science fiction like Close Encounters of the Third Kind than comics. With the character, a cerebral telepath with a giant cranium, Miotti produced a trio of plotless dance pieces that premiered at Dancers’ Studio West. It wasn’t until playwright Ken Cameron began collaborating with Miotti that the piece began to take on an organized story.
"Ken was really the initiator of the project, even though I had done two pieces of dance theatre prior to this collaboration," she explains. "I didn’t really know where to go with it. Ken called me up, and said, ‘I’m really interested in that character and I would really like to write an episode, and collaborate with you.’ Then David Van Belle, who is a really great writer and just all around great guy, he agreed to collaborate with us as well."
Directed by Abby Charchun, Miotti and Van Belle toured the Calgary and Edmonton Fringes with Dragonfly, at one point leaving Miotti’s parents slightly lost in the play’s plot, a situation she has resolved to correct in its second run. Now, with Charchun currently starring in Trout Stanley, Ron Jenkins (Confessions of a Paperboy) has taken over the director’s chair with the goal of amping up the play’s comic book influences and clarity. Making the show, as Miotti says, "funnier when it’s supposed to be funny and more maudlin when it’s supposed to be maudlin."
Her carrot loaf still half eaten and her son’s head lolled to the side, Miotti still seems more mild alter-ego than towering super hero. For an avowed comic nerd, it’s still difficult to imagine her holding her own in a fistfight with Darkseid. But even without a secret identity, Miotti at least proves she has a handle on the dual identities of her audience – audience telepathy that would make Professor X proud.
"It’s got boy theatre and girl theatre," she says. "Boy theatre ’cause it’s based on comic books. It’s cool, everything has a stylized feel to it, and you can totally geek out on it.
"And it’s also girl theatre because it’s a love story," she adds. "Maybe I’ll get in trouble for saying that." |
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