Suddenly Dance Theatre is in its sixth year as Victoria’s only modern dance company, a non-profit society with a mandate to collaborate with other art forms. This time around, rather than present a stage show, A Dance in 500 brings dance to a gallery setting in a stirring multi-media art show.
Simply, A Dance in 500 is a show of 500 photos of two dancers, Treena Stubel and David Ferguson. They created choreography for the camera– an audience of one. The photos are mounted directly on the gallery wall in various patterns and viewers may read them forward and backward, up and down, pausing to enjoy plenty of repeats.
In my experience, dance photography tends toward posterization. One split second image has to say it all, and what it usually says is that dancers defy gravity and assume poses not immediately recognizable as the human form. The 500 photographs that make up this show, the excellent work of Vince Klassen, utilize the usual clichés of almost nude figures, dramatically side-lit, flinging themselves about in a void space.
But seeing so many images helps us to break through the cliché. Rather than the extreme editing that usually goes on before the poster is printed, we are allowed to see almost all the frames Klassen shot. What an incredible photo shoot this was!
Our continual looking reanimates the figures. We start to see, or invent, sequences, like the timelapsed photos of Edward Muybridge, or the pages of a “flip book.” And because we see so many images, we marvel at the enormous range that the dancers are capable of expressing.
By viewing such a large number of photos of the same subjects we begin to see the parameters of the medium.
The photographer creates a certain distance between himself and the dancers, creating the illusion of reality; an impression that life is a series of crisp, isolated forms.
Art director Miles Lowry accompanied Klassen and the dancers for every moment of the four-day shoot and create a video document that takes the concept of A Dance in 500 to new levels.
Lowry called it “looking within the dance.” Enter the darkened gallery next door and sit before a huge video, projection screen. There you can see the same dancers, and watch the time before and after the “pose,” the reality of the studio and the moment of illusion. Judicious repeats means that often, when a particularly striking movement occurs, we are treated to it again. And again. There is a delicious sense of anticipation and gratification. And then sadness when it’s gone.
There is something inherently different in the images made of projected light (video) and those of reflected light (photos flat on the wall’. The video projection, seen through a net-like scrim; results in a halo of spectral colour around the dancers, which emphasizes the line of arm, back, leg. Video close-ups bring us the touching humanity of a twitching toe or the flaccid flesh of a breast. While in a photo the dancers are weightless, in the video we realize their breathing, the physical effort, and the danger involved.
The installation has a modern and rather eerie sound track, a “melody… if you call it that, ” says Lowry of his work on an electronic keyboard. Adding to the atmosphere is talk overheard from the dancers.
This musical ambiance was massaged into shape “for a more mysterious feel” by Daniel Lapp. Other elements of the show are a back-lit collage reminiscent of Robert Rauschenberg and some huge paintings made by coating the dancers in white paint and pressing them onto black tarpaulins. Amid the photos is a cast paper relief of Stubel and Ferguson, motionless yet mobile as they are suspended in the center of the room.
What is dance? It need not be narrative, though this performance was choreographed. In fact, the dancer’s own notes “stick figure drawing, ” are pinned on one wall. And it need not happen on stage. The relationships that we negotiate with the world and each other have meanings that are open to interpretation. Perhaps dance is about using our bodies to create a new awareness of the space around us, and the spaces between people.
If that is so, this experiment was highly successful, for it sensitized me to the human form in motion. Again and again I was drawn back to examine the photos, to experience the video. And when I emerged, as if waking, from the charged atmosphere of the galleries, I was jolted by the bustle of the Victoria Eaton Centre. I was experiencing new seeing.
The Suddenly Dance Theatre has a mandate “to collaborate with other art forms” and with this show, it amply justifies the grants given to it by the Intermunicipal Council and the B.C. Arts Council. It is truly an experiment, one that can continue to evolve and could easily go on tour. As they say, it’s got legs.