September 29 - October 2, 2010
Tickets: $20 - 38 | Box Office 416.973.4000
or online through Harbourfront Centre here

When meeting another person, a work of art or a prime-time TV dance competition – what do you love? What do you hate? What do you show? What do you hide? Can you calibrate your reactions, moving between judgment and pleasure? Between hiding and showing? How many steps are there in between?

PERFORMANCE INFORMATION

Double Bill # 2 – Show and So You Think the Spectacle Does Not Love You
Length of performance - 60 minutes (approximately)

Performed by: Rob Abubo, Alanna Kraaijeveld, Kate Hilliard, Kate Holden, Steeve Paquet
Musician: Nicholas Murray

Created with: Rob Abubo, Lori Duncan, Kate Hilliard, Kate Holden, Steeve Paquet and Reena Katz
Composer: Reena Katz
Costume Designer: Tanya White
Lighting and Set Designer: Trevor Schwellnus
Associate Director: Bonnie Kim
Dramaturge: Jacob Zimmer
Stage Manager: Sharon DiGenova

Double Bill #2 is co-produced by Dancemakers and the Canada Dance Festival

 

ABOUT THE WORK

Artistic Director Michael Trent asked Montreal choreographer k.g. Guttman to join him and the remarkable Dancemakers company for Double Bill #2. They decided to revel in and get in the face of the pleasures and exposures of dance – the doing and the watching. Drawing material from YouTube, prime-time TV dance competitions, social dancing and their personal and idiosyncratic styles, their choreographies push and pull at our sensibilities of exposure, spectacle, pleasure and intellectual history, contrasting diverse elements on the contemporary stage. The evening is composed of two works – Michael Trent’s Show and k.g. Guttman’s So You Think the Spectacle Does Not Love You.

ABOUT DOUBLE BILL

Dancemakers’ Double Bill series shakes up the tradition of the mixed repertoire program to provide a platform for a collaborative conversation between Michael Trent and the invited artist. Together they propose directions, questions and obsessions to work on, providing audiences with specific, personal and yet related responses. Sharing approaches, methodologies, inspiration and even rehearsal time, the Double Bill choreographers alter and deepen the questions of influence and comparison inherent in any shared evening. The Double Bill Trilogy results from Dancemakers Artistic Director Michael Trent’s curiosity to meet new people and create performances that are contemporary, cross-disciplinary and collaborative.

FROM JACOB ZIMMER - DRAMATURGE & ANIMATEUR

Sometimes we think, we imagine, that we control what gets seen; that we get some say in which parts of ourselves participate in the spectacle. We hide some things, reveal others – reveal less, hide less. Of course with each thing we hide, we reveal so much and each revelation buries other truths.

Both of the works address the ability to calibrate. In Trent’s work, I understand exposure as the key – how do different degrees of exposure change movement and how do we, the audience, understand it? What contortions do we go through to expose or hide ourselves from the world?

For Guttman, the spectacle of dancing is at the forefront for me. What happens when a choreographer, a dancer or an audience calibrates how in, how out they are of the spectacle? How can the participation in all the fullness and pleasure of spectacle not diminish the critical capacity of those choosing to participate?

Both these works, for me, are about dancing and both are about the everyday. The choices I see the artists making are choices I have to make (albeit differently) every day: What do I reveal to people? What do I hide? How much do I want to take part? How much of any of this do I actually control? These questions are vital and pressing – and these two dances offer important and exciting ways to re-imagine them.

Short subjective definitions of three related words:

Exposure – Showing or being seen. Often of something that is not looked at so closely. There are implications of exhibition, fame and dying from the cold. It is an element we have attempted to calibrate. (see especially: Trent)

Spectacle – from “specially prepared or arranged display.” The spectacle (after French thinker and activist Guy Debord et al) is often taken as a world in which all experiences and expressions are turned into commodities through the mass media, performance and being made to be seen. It is often pitted against “authenticity.” Our participation and pleasure in the spectacle is also an element we have attempted to calibrate. (see especially: Guttman)

Calibration – Like sliding up a musical scale or adjusting the amount of light in a photograph, calibrating is the ability to adjust an element according to a scale – we often use 1 to 10 or 1 to 100. Thinking about calibration allows us to work on choices and variation within a single idea. We calibrate movement, music, looks, intentions. That we are able to calibrate on stage supposes we might be able to in life also.