This site has limited support for your browser. We recommend switching to Edge, Chrome, Safari, or Firefox.

Fleet Figures

Sylvain Émard Danse of Quebec celebrates their 25th anniversary this year, with a Canadian tour of Sylvain Émard’s most recent work, “Ce n’est pas la fin du monde” (“It’s not the end of the world”). The work premiered a year ago at the Plateau d’Eysines in Bordeaux during the Danse Toujours biennial, and the company have twice since visited France to perform the piece.

Performance

Sylvain Émard Danse: “Ce n’est pas la fin du monde” (“It's not the end of the world”)

Place

Fleck Dance Theatre, Toronto, Ontario, February 28, 2015

Words

Penelope Ford

subscribe to the latest in dance


“Uncommonly intelligent, substantial coverage.”

Your weekly source for world-class dance reviews, interviews, articles, and more.

Already a paid subscriber? Login

The dance, performed by seven men, engages the theme of masculinity in a contemporary world, and yet it is also an abstract and ‘pure’ dance piece, and you can easily get lost in admiring the seasoned dancers twisting and plunging in the Émardsian way with finesse. The woman behind me audibly gasped as each figure and feat caught her eye. It’s a bit like watching the ocean, trying to anticipate where the next white crest will form; it has this mesmeric seduction, and depth you take for granted.

The ‘hits’ rose organically and equally amongst group figures, solos and partnered elements; strongest on the gasp-o-meter were probably those in paired segments, being the most tender, perhaps the most human. The point when platitudes like “It’s not the end of the world” might realistically be offered. I enjoyed the to-ing and fro-ing group dances, striding through triangular blue light, buckling into a roll, taking nothing off the pace.

The choreography is restless, rapid and directional, calling for lightening-quick pivots, tensionless spines and torsos. The dancers in the group are physically diverse, and the style plays up the modality of each. Neil Sochasky was a wonderful presence, marauding the space, hair flowing gloriously, a counterpoint to the mercurial Adam Barruch, and the crisp lightness of Dylan Crossman. The sense of individuality, they are dressed in casual, bright clothes, lends truth and complexity to the overarching themes of commonality and shared experience.

A raft of cardboard boxes dominates the space overhead, filtering the light into squares on the stage. The warehousey feel extends through the black, curtainless space, with rigging and lighting exposed. The dancers sit at the back of the stage when not dancing. An experimental score of interference occasionally feels a bit thin, and the choreography might have been condensed into a solid half hour, but as the work suggests, endurance is its own reward.

Penelope Ford


Penelope is the founding editor of Fjord Review, international magazine of dance and ballet. Penelope graduated from Law and Arts with majors in philosophy and languages from the University of Melbourne, Australia, before turning to the world of dance. She lives in Italy.

comments

Featured

Juliet Doherty, Following the Light
TALKING POINTES | Claudia Lawson

Juliet Doherty, Following the Light

Today I have the privilege of speaking with the divine Juliet Doherty. Juliet was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which is slightly more Breaking Bad than “Swan Lake,” but Juliet's grandparents owned a ballet studio which passed to Juliet's mother, and so the artistic genes ran deep.

FREE ARTICLE
Into the Heart of the Cave
FEATURES | Karen Greenspan

Into the Heart of the Cave

One of the gems of New York City’s dance landscape is the Graham Studio Series, a programming cycle that offers behind-the-scenes interaction with the work of the Graham Company in their studio space. In early January, the series presented a Graham Deconstructed event exploring Martha Graham’s modernist masterwork “Cave of the Heart.”

Continue Reading
A Century of Moderns
BOOKSHELF | INTERVIEWS | Rachel Howard

A Century of Moderns

Sara Veale’s new book Wild Grace: The Untamed Women of Modern Dance (Faber & Faber) examines the lives of nine boldly subversive dancemakers over nearly a century, starting with Isadora Duncan and ending with Pearl Lang. Along the way, it provides a pared but potent mini-history on the emergence of women’s rights.

Continue Reading
Ideation
REVIEWS | Sophie Bress

Ideation

Repertory Dance Theatre’s “Emerge” had the feel of a dance studio recital, for better and for worse. The annual showcase, designed to emphasize the robust dance community in Utah—which does, by the way, exist—had a warm, familiar feel, but lacked sufficient pedigree for a company of RDT’s caliber.

Continue Reading
Good Subscription Agency