Fall For Dance North 2024 / Homecoming: 2024 Signature Program — Choreography by Daile Carrazano, Emma Portner and Anne Plamondon, The Creative School Chrysalis (formerly Ryerson Theatre), Sept. 26 and 27. Tickets here.
Fall For Dance North is celebrating its 10th season with its usual potpourri of eclectic events featuring both international and homegrown companies.
Before going any further, we should give a shout out to departing FFDN founder/artistic director, Ilter Ibrahimof, the visionary behind this important dance festival. His legacy is monumental in terms of making Toronto a dance city of note.
During this first decade, FFDN has become one of the most important dance festivals in Canada for the sheer length and breadth of its programming, which includes ticketed events, live freebees and digital fare. In other words, between Sept. 26 and Oct. 6, Toronto is awash in wall to wall dance. The festival is also deliberately affordable as all tickets are $25.
The first two ticketed programs are a good example of what makes FFDN so appealing to dance audiences.
Homecoming: 2024 Signature Program (Sept. 25 and 26), personally curated by Ibrahimof himself, featured three choreographers whose careers were nurtured by showing works at FFDN — a Cuban from Havana, a Canadian based in New York, and a Canadian from Montreal. The second event presents Company Wayne McGregor (Oct. 1 and 2), which brings to Toronto an international superstar of choreography.
Here are reviews of the three works on the Homecoming program.
The Last Song (La Ultima Cancion), choreographed by Daile Carrazano, performed by Malpaso Dance Company and Guests
Carrazano originally set this piece on the students of Toronto Metropolitan University, and it was such a success, she then took it into the repertoire of her Malpaso Dance Company, an acclaimed contemporary ensemble based in Havana. For this performance, four dancers from Malpaso were joined by three graduate TMU students from the original production.
The piece is a tribute to Cuban singer and pianist Bola de Nieve, who was represented both by recorded sound and by live pianist Katherine Dowling. The music certainly had a Latin flavour, but also featured some modernist jazz dissonance.
Carrazano’s The Last Song is what I call a perfect opener — attractive to look at, but one that doesn’t ask too much of the audience.
At the beginning of the piece, the dancers executed individual poses and balances, before breaking up into duets and trios. Ballet combinations were interspersed by movements that were decidedly quirky, for example, performing chimpanzee arm swings or dancers rhythmically twitching their behinds, or doing duck waddles, or suddenly falling to the floor. It was a work full of choreographic surprises.
The combinations and isolations were executed in a very deliberate manner, and coupled with inbuilt moments of stillness, produced a feeling of resignation and melancholy. As the piece continued, the dancers seemed to grow more aware of each other, but the emerging theme of the choreography was a picture of people trying to break free of something that held them in its grip.
A final note. It was impossible to tell the Malpaso dancers from the TMU students, so well did they perform together.
islands, choreographed by Emma Portner, performed by Alexandra MacDonald and Hannah Galway, First Soloists, National Ballet of Canada
What a treat it was to see this mini masterpiece again.
islands (lower case) was part of the National’s winter mixed program last season, and as intriguing as it was there, the Four Seasons was too big a venue for it. Being at the smaller Creative School Chrysalis was a much better setting for such an intimate piece.
Ottawa-born, New York-based Portner is a real prodigy. Just 29 years old, she already has a formidable international reputation having choreographed high profile musicals, music videos and dance works for major companies.
islands was created for Norwegian National Ballet in 2020 and instantly became the stuff of legends. The work features two women in an astonishing duet that goes through a rollercoaster of emotions. From erotic to combative and back again, islands is built on a series of gestures and limb thrusts that are so intricate, you don’t know which arm or leg belongs to which dancer.
In this smaller venue, you could see the ingenious costume that showed that the two dancers were really conjoined in a pair of pants with four legs. They do shed the pants mid-dance but the images created at the beginning are imprinted on the mind to such a degree, that they inform your reaction to the rest of the piece.
MacDonald seems to take on the male role as she actually partners Galway in lifts and carries, but the major part of the piece is how they are joined together. In fact, as I said in my review of the National program, islands is an exercise in how many ways two bodies can be connected to one another.
The nervous, edgy electronica score underpins the angst the two are experiencing in what is essentially a pull/push scenario, but the bottom line is the fact that they can’t stay away from each other.
What Portner has achieved in islands, (which, believe it or not, was her first work for a ballet company), is a remarkable study of a relationship. I learned more about these two women this time around, and I’m sure each new viewing will reveal even more about this fascinating couple.
MacDonald and Galway gave a committed taut performance that brought down the house.
Feel no more, a world premiere choreographed by Anne Plamondon, performed by Ballet Edmonton
I had raved about Ballet Edmonton when they first came to town last year, and the company dancers do not disappoint. They are sensational.
That being said, Plamondon’s work takes a while to catch on fire. But, when it does, the choreographer provides an unbelievably powerful ending, aided no end by composer/pianist Zach Frampton and his frantic, tortuous, wild performance.
The dancers begin on the floor and work their way up, so to speak. At first they move individually, and then gradually begin to form an ensemble, performing more expansive movement, propelled by the pulsing score. As much as they are in sync, they feel distant from one another.
They do come together, finally, in a clump, where they pull and push and carry one of their members. Sometimes a dancer leans so far back as to fall, but is caught at the last moment, and is lifted high above by the others.
The most unnerving part of the work occurs when a dancer, after performing twisted, distorted body movements, seems to snap back to normal, and calmly walks away. All feeling has been suppressed. Feel no more.
Plamondon, however, is full of surprises.
The Frampton’s dramatic piano doesn’t happen until near the end, and this seems to at least infect one dancer who literally throws himself at the piano to create a very emotional moment.
Overall, the work is filled with a tension and frustration that is palpable, and that is why, perhaps, the dancers wish to feel no more.
This is the kind of work that has to be seen again in order to delve deeper into Plamondon’s structure, because Feel no more has a definite trajectory that has been very carefully embedded in the choreography.
Final Thoughts
Whoever thought of the name The Creative School Chrysalis for the former Ryerson Theatre has a screw loose. It is simply the silliest name I have ever heard, besides sounding like pretentious twaddle.
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