By Monique Salez
Monday Magazine contributor
Dance Victoria’s final offering for the season at the Royal Theatre is a compelling mixed program by the virtuosic dancers of Chicago’s Hubbard Dance, featuring works by Crystal Pite, Alejandro Cerrudo and Robyn Mineko Williams.
During two performances April 12 and 13, Pite, our favorite local dancer-come-world-class-choreographer, presents “A Picture of You Falling” and “The Other You,” two parts of her four-part work entitled The You Show.
She offers that the work derives from a “fascination with familiar storylines of love, conflict and loss, and the body’s role in providing the illustrative shape of those stories.” Always evocative and innovative, the choreographer expresses a desire that these works be an invitation “to locate (oneself) in the dancer, to recognize (our) own dramas translated into fierce physical language, and to see (oneself) falling and flying as the hero of your own existence.”
Hubbard’s former resident choreographer, Cerrudo, whose work Silent Ghost was presented by Aspen Santa Fe Ballet last year at the Royal Theatre to extended and exuberant applause mid-program, is back with two works.
The first, PACOPEPEPLUTO, is a playful romp set to three popular Dean Martin songs where three male dancers, in flesh-toned undergarments, express a potent physicality peppered with humor and charm. In contrast, award-winning choreographer Cerrudo’s second work, Lickety Split, utilizes the emotive music of Devendra Banhart in a series of vignettes where the audience experiences a conversation between dancer’s bodies, where the speaking and listening provides impulses that result in a sensuous, intimate and dynamic expression of relationship.
Finally, former Hubbard dancer Mineko Williams presents Cloudline, a visually stunning piece described by Dance Victoria as using “a full-stage expanse of grey parachute silk to create a cloud, an ocean of waves, ripples and swells through which dancers move, swim, disappear and reappear.”
“The intimacy of the pieces will fit perfectly on stage of the Royal Theatre,” says company general manager Bernard Sauve.
Invitational, playful, intimate and dreamy, this mixed program strums many strings for dance theatregoers and provides a lovely finale to a strong season from Dance Victoria. As for next year, Sauve is particularly excited to celebrate our “unique West Coast dance” creators: Ballet BC with a distinct storytelling of Romeo and Juliet, and Pite’s Kidd Pivot company presenting the acclaimed Revisor.
Attendees for next weekend’s performances are invited to a free, pre-show chat at 6:45 p.m. both nights in the West Lobby (Blanshard Street) of the theatre. Showtime is 7:30 p.m.
Tickets, $29 to $99, are selling fast for both nights. Ask about the pay your age option for those ages 12 to 29, or the Night Moves prices for those aged 30 to 45) tickets. Proof of ID required at the box office. Visit rmts.bc.ca or call 250-386-6121 • For more information, head over to DanceVictoria.com.
editor@mondaymag.com
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