Powerful life force ebbs, flows, comes full circle

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This article was published 15/04/2023 (1261 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeg’s Contemporary Dancers’s 58th season closes with the world première of artistic director Jolene Bailie’s Retuning, a swirling, kaleidoscopic world filled with movement and physical/human connection befitting a time of recalibration after the gut-punch of a three-year pandemic.

Performed entirely in the round — with Thursday night’s preview audience seated around the circumference of a large white circle — the three-performance production boasts a strong ensemble of six dancers: Carol-Ann Bohrn, Reymark Capacete, Julious Gambalan, Shawn Maclaine, Warren McClelland and Shayla Rudd.

Lighting designer extraordinaire Hugh Conacher creates dramatic shadows and highlights individual performers. His work is matched equally by Emma Hendrix’s powerful, driving electronic score, which flows seamlessly through sonic vistas. Megan LaTouche’s costumes — simple, earth-toned shorts and shirts — are both practical and effective.

Bailie wisely leaves room for personal interpretation with her dynamic, highly visceral choreography, with dancers often flying through the air, leaping onto each other’s backs, being held aloft as though in sacrificial rite, or striking their own skin and slamming their fists into the ground.

There are arguably too many hip thrusts and other, overly repetitive movement phrases, such as running in place (and lying flat on the ground will always dissipate energy); however, other moments take one’s breath away.

One of those, which comes near the end, is harrowing and chills the blood. The dancers stand around the edges of the circle suggesting planet Earth, their mouths agape and gasping for air as they gaze into the audience, while Hendrix’s score growls like a primal cry. This fleeting image — bookending the ensemble’s rhythmic breathing, which begins the show — becomes a fascinating, overarching trajectory of life force seemingly being stripped away.

Kudos to all performers for their clear commitment to Bailie’s no-holds-barred lexicon of movement vocabulary, ranging from suspended lifts to body isolations and percussive attacks with their limbs; their trust in each other is palpable. For far too long, we’ve watched physically distanced, often masked ballet and contemporary dancers, and it’s a joy to see artists up close and personal (and in-person again), such as during the men’s trio, which enthrals with its pure athleticism and raw physicality.

The choreographer also creates effective visual counterpoint, as dancers take the limelight for individual solos while others watch as witnesses from the sidelines, as well as varying tempos of movement that provide further texture and contrast.

We see Gambalan — who delivers a knockout solo, in which he appears to have jolts of energy rippling through his body like electric shockwaves — racing to the edge of the circle as Capacete and Rudd embrace, underscoring the yawning need for another.

As its counterpart, Bohrn repeatedly snaps her fingers at Gambalan, who responds to her demands with increasing force, indicating shifts in power hierarchies.

Even in contemporary dance, it’s always startling to see male dancers lifting other males, or women lifting men, and this happens to great effect. In one of the show’s greatest “wow” moments, McClelland flips Gambalan upside down several times, with the latter’s arms and legs splayed like a starfish.

Several sections feel overly long, with choreographic noodling that adds little, as when dancers whip their hair sideways repetitively as the show ebbs.

The production ends not with a bang, but with a softening whimper under Conacher’s fading lights. Movement phrases are reprised, including Bohrn being swung in a circle by McClelland to evoke the freedom of being “retuned” and whole again.

Despite that final, lingering image, the show’s ending could have been stronger and more dynamic, providing a punctuation mark to its dramatic intensity and bringing this playground of discovery to a more effective, compelling close.

holly.harris@shaw.ca