>>PREVIEW
MAGNETIC CONSEQUENCES
Opens May 30
Decidedly Jazz Danceworks
Max Bell Theatre (Epcor Centre)
Snapshots of various relationships – this is one of the ways Decidedly Jazz Danceworks artistic director Vicki Adams Willis describes Magnetic Consequences, the company’s last performance of its 2006-07 season. After a cross Canada tour that started last March, Willis has seen Magnetic Consequences properly seasoned with a rhythm and blues flavour for its Calgary homecoming. "It’s a great cast – the band, dancers – you can just tell that they’re all on the same wavelength together," says Willis.
Kimberly Cooper, DJD resident choreographer and artistic associate, has returned to the stage as a dancer in the show, with most of the choreography based on improvisation. "It’s really fun to do something like this," says Cooper. "We did this with (2005 show) ¡Bulla!, where we take the show on the road first, then bring it home. Usually it goes the opposite way. Calgary gets sort of the freshest, rawest look at the show. What we’re bringing home is something that is really polished and deep."
The production marks the second project that Willis has constructed with Jackie Richardson — one of Canada’s most notable gospel, blues and jazz singers (as well as an actor appearing on both the stage and the screen). "Richardson is an amazing vocalist," Willis says of their work in the 2001 show Longings... for the Invisible. "At the time, in 2001, we sort of focused on the blues, and act two was all about relationships. Then I thought, ‘I’d love to do a whole evening about relationships.’"
As Magnetic Consequences’s start point, Willis asked Richardson what she’d like to sing that would fit with DJD. The singer opted for rhythm and blues. "She was originally an R&B singer," explains Willis. "So the evening has a lot of R&B. There’s blues as well – everything else imaginable musically. She and Kristian Alexandrov, our musical director, started out by just sitting down and brainstorming all these fabulous old R&B tunes. They came up with a very long list, and it was my job to just pull the list and sort of find a journey within all of this."
The resulting journey is a production with nine dancers, four musicians and Richardson. It’s an ode to R&B, blues and romantic love – in all of its humour and heartbreak. "The evening is about romantic attraction," Willis says, noting the show highlights a particular stage couple, played by Cooper and dancer Ahmed Fernandez Hodelin. "Our couple is attracted to each other from the very beginning of the show, and throughout the evening they are constantly trying to get together, but various forces keep them apart."
"There are scenes where dancers physically tear us away from each other and hold us back from each other. In the moment, that can get really frustrating," Cooper notes of her role, adding, "I remember in rehearsal Vicki saying, ‘No, you have to get more frustrated.’ Now I just feel like I’m hurling them away. It’s really intense."
While the first part of the show may read as a complete production in itself, Willis notes the second act presents the lighter and often ridiculous side of romance. "In act two, we plant our tongues in our cheeks and sort of take a lighter look at our romantic foibles," Willis laughs. "There’s several dysfunctional relationships. With one couple, both of them are very fickle, and one is going for the relationship and the other is pulling away from it. You know they’re like this magnet that keeps going back and forth this way. They push one another."
Both Willis and Cooper note there is a relationship in Magnetic Consequences that anyone can relate to in the audience. "I think there’s a very personal connection for a lot of people to what’s happening onstage," Willis says. "We take a little bit more of a serious look at things in act one, so we really hit the audience emotionally, in a very deep way. In act two, we just turn around and we laugh at ourselves."
Magnetic Consequences highlights what DJD is renowned for – stylized jazz movement and character work with accessible variations on forms such as hip hop, funk, swing, African, salsa and contemporary dance. Compositions and arrangements by Alexandrov draw from ’60s and ’70s jazz and R&B with live musicians. Poems by Harlem writer Langston Hughes, with his comments on attraction and loss, will also be woven into the show. |
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