Contemporary dance and contemporary art have a surprising amount in common; both forms can be highly conceptual and both share a deeply intellectual argot that often goes straight over the heads of neophytes. Like yours truly, for instance.
I admit I was scratching my head a fair amount last week during my chat with choreographer Michael Trent, above. The Dancemakers Artistic Director was friendly and open, not at all difficult to converse with and yet some of his descriptions of Doublebill No. 2, opening Wednesday (September 29) left me feeling like an orienteer without a compass.
Trent is aware of the gulf that exists between the dance cognoscenti and the casual enthusiast. “The challenge of how to convey these kinds of complex ideas is exactly the challenge we deal with every single day as choreographers and dancers,” he says. “I really recognize that you can’t get mad at somebody if you haven’t given them clear expectations and if you haven’t given them the tools with which to meet those expectations.”
Michael Trent's half of Doublebill No. 2 is called Show, featuring dancers (from left) Lori Duncan, Steeve Paquet, Kate Holden, Kate Hilliard and Robert Abubo: Photo by David Hou
Doublebill No. 2 is the second in what Trent imagines will be a triptych of dance programs (Doublebill No. 1 was featured in the 2008 Dancemakers season). In this case, Trent has paired off with Montreal’s k.g. Guttman; both choreographers have crafted dances that examine and grow out of the idea of spectacle.
“In modern dance there’s this accepted notion that the body is the site for emotional investigation,” says Trent. “K.g. and I discovered that we’re both starting to question that and are looking for other ways that dance can communicate to an audience. Some of our source material came directly from TV dance spectacles like So You Think You Can Dance and Dancing with the Stars. We took some reference points from that and then it was about deconstructing how we felt about that work and exposing the form in terms of our expectations of what it is, what it can do and what it’s talking about.”
So You Think the Spectacle Does Not Love You is the title of k.g. guttman's piece, which features dancers Kate Hilliard and Steeve Paquet: Photo by David Hou
“At the end of the day it became clear that I was really looking at notions of exposure,” continues Trent. “How much do we hide? How much do we show? What is our point of view in terms of how we deal with other people? And then using the body as a place for that investigation. So my work deals with exposure but also the question of how to calibrate that exposure.”
Spectacle, exposure, calibration . . . you can see why I was feeling a tad stumped. Fortunately, Trent took pity on me: “It’s true that conversations about contemporary dance can become very heady and intellectual,” he concedes. “Part of our job as choreographers is to be conscious and critical of ourselves, to make sure that we’re not closing doors more often than we’re opening them. We do realize that there’s a limited audience for our kind of work so we’re constantly dealing with notions of depth and breadth.”
Basing a pair of dances on something as populist as prime time TV entertainments is probably a great strategy for drawing in newcomers who might not otherwise give contemporary dance a chance. And while Trent may or may not have high regard for TV dance contests, he believes that “any kind of work, whether it’s contemporary, experimental work or populist work can have a range of excellence. You can have really good, well-thought-out populist work and you have crappy popular work; same goes for the experimental and the avant-garde.”
Trent is confident that Doublebill No. 2 falls into the “really good” category. Decide for yourself beginning Wednesday at Harbourfront’s Enwave Theatre; run ends October 2, tickets are $20 – $38 (416.973.4000).
Photo of Michael Trent by Christopher Jones
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