"Loin", a dance performance by Rachid Ouramdane in Toronto

Program of "Loin", a dance performance by Rachid Ouramdane in Toronto
Originally uploaded by Gustavo Thomas

I witnessed a strange travel as a spectacle.

A spectacle with an installation as a scenography but also as a structure, almost a dramatic structure.

Imagine an audiovisual installation, where you can listen to music and poems, where you can watch images through video, and see and listen to people who are interviewed about their past, a terrible one.

Imagine a dancer as a poet who sometimes dances, but most of the time he moves his body in slow motion, pushing buttons which turn on music, video or a microphone. The poet recites his poems in a quickly and monotonous way, poems with hard images of his past and images from his last travel to Indochina.

Imagine this poet as a dancer who dance beautifully, in some moments doing it only with his hands with a dark background, then you can only see his hands in movement, like in a photographs with lines of light of a city by night.

Rachid Ouramdane dances very little his poetry, exposes his past through words, through images, in a travel to his father's destiny in Indochina; he exposes all about this travel and its origins as in an art gallery, exhibiting it.

Imagine that we can not feel any identification with him because he never opens the door to it. Even without identification there is no place for a Brechtian theory, this spectacle is only an exhibition, far from theatre and drama, but it is an installation in movement, an installation on stage which speaks and dances.

This is the first time I got this experience from a dance spectacle and I'm interested in what will happen with this strange structure.

Should I say I liked it?

No video allowed inside Enwave Theatre but you can see a video from Youtube with some images of this dance (Loin) and other works:

Marlon Barrios from Dancetech.net gave me the address of other video with Rachid and images of Loin:

Watch live streaming video from dancetechtv at livestream.com

"Roadkill", a Dance Theatre Performance by Australian Splintergroup at Enwave Theatre in Toronto

Last evening went to see "Roadkill" by Australian Dance Theatre Company Splintergroup at Enwave Theatre, in Toronto. And I'm happy, it was a performance full of suspense, darkness and energy, where fears of the unknown become movement around a car on the road.

Cameras are not allowed inside the theatre, so no photos of the performance itself, but you can see the trailer Splintergroup uploaded in Youtube:

"Roadkill" trailer

Being on the road, in the middle of nowhere, with a broken car... It seems a perfect extreme situation for a drama, in theatre or in dance, and it was indeed for Roadkill. Splintergroup choreographed (1) simply life and simply bodies going to and coming from the magical universe of fears and unknown realities in Australian outback. I loved those so many ways to narrate with images and sounds; with darkness as a frame. Bodies moved in different realities and everyone of those realities was concrete, touchable for us, spectators. I didn't was scared, I was amazed by entering to them in those worlds of nothing and fading. Two young men (Gavin Weber and Gryson Millwood), one young woman (Gabrielle Nankivell), without names, living interminable terrible moments that maybe never happened.

Of course "Roadkill" is more than a choreography, it is a full representational act of our time.

One thing I love of Australian Performing Arts is that they seem not to have any tradition to follow, as if Australians were born in Performing Arts at the end of 20th century; they don't follow any narrative or style older than those appeared around 70s, when Postmodernism brought a new blow of light to a tired Western theatre.

Poster of Roadkill at Enwave Theatre

Entrance to the theatre (February 3rd, 2010)

Waiting for Roadkill performance at Enwave Theatre.

Opening night reception at Enwave Theatre (Feb 3rd, 2010)

If you want to listen what they think about their show:

(1) The choreographers are Gavin Webber, Grayson Millwood and Sarah-Jayne Howard.