Echo Chamber Toronto launched last April with a choreographer/dancer, another dancer, and a single violinist in a programme lasting 45 minutes. It was a memorable evening, to put it mildly.
(You can read about it here if you missed it: Echo Chamber: A Stunning Synthesis of Music and Dance )
(You can read about it here if you missed it: Echo Chamber: A Stunning Synthesis of Music and Dance )
This week, artistic director Aaron Schwebel returned with his second outing, and upped the stakes considerably. This second programme, Transfigured Night, presented a full evening of music, with six players, a singer, two choreographers, six dancers, a painter, and a video artist. The result was every bit as memorable and striking as the previous show, albeit in different ways.
Bringing music and dance into a closer, more integrated relationship with each other is a challenging yet laudable objective -- especially in an age when far too much dance is performed to recorded music tracks. The integration of painting and video art into the mix adds fascinating new dimensions to the experience.
This programme opened with Beethoven's String Quartet Op. 18 No. 1. For this work, the four players of the Rosebud String Quartet sat in a square formation in one corner of the performing area, leaving an open space in the centre of the square as well as the remaining 3/4 of the space open for the dancers. Choreographer Alysa Pires confined herself to two contrasting dance sequences, one for the second (slow) movement and one for the finale.
In the slow movement, she created a passionate, energetic duet with a definite modern vibe for Miyoko Koyasu and Felix Paquet. Beginning inside the square, the two soon burst the limits and the dance erupted across the entire space. Modern though it was, the dance had a sense of line, a lyrical quality which not only suited the beauty of the music, but also called the traditional polish of classical ballet to mind.
In the fourth movement, Pires herself danced in a more modern style, using an intriguing chain of unique hand and arm positions to express the opening theme of the rondo movement -- a chain which she then re-enacted in slightly varying forms with subsequent recurrals of that opening theme. Here again, she made use of the space inside the quartet as opposed to the larger space outside in different portions of her dance. Overall, this number had a perky, amusing quality which again matched well with the light-hearted staccato of Beethoven's music.
Next up was the final movement, Entrückung ("Rapture"), from Schoenberg's String Quartet No. 2. Schoenberg broke new ground in this work by incorporating a singing voice (soprano), with a poem by Stefan George. Soprano Lauren Eberwein also broke new ground, turning the poem into a dramatic scene in which she hand-painted on a prepared template on the floor as she sang. The intensity of her performance was magnified by her involvement in this action.
The template was prepared by visual artist Paula Arciniega. Two paintings which Arciniega created for the show were displayed on the walls throughout the performance. After the intermission, they were joined by a third -- a continuing creation growing out of the template which Eberwein had used.
Eberwein returned after the intermission with two violas and two cellos for the solemnly luminous Gottes Tod by Hindemith. The darker sound of the lower instruments matched well with the mezzo-like tone colour of Eberwein's voice in this shorter number.
The finale was also the largest piece: the original string sextet version of Verklärte Nacht by Schoenberg. This lush post-romantic tone poem is more often heard in the later string orchestra arrangement; the original version brings both gains (clarity) and losses (weight of tone). Choreographer Christopher Stowell aptly took the poem which inspired the music as a point of departure for his dance work.
Briefly, that poem tells of a woman who confesses by night to a man she loves that she is bearing a child who is not his child; the man then promises to accept and raise the child as if it were his own.
Stowell's choreography made a simple but highly significant alteration by looking into the future, and incorporating the unborn child as a third character. The dance he created on his three performers lived in a clear classical framework, with an edgy, modern quality overlaid. This was the one work in which a female dancer performed en pointe.
Jenna Savella danced the role of the woman with great passion and emotion, clearly living both the anguish of the opening scene and the acceptance of the final part. Perhaps her finest moment came at the first great crisis of the music, the sudden forte tremolo at which both her lover and her son quickly exited, leaving her abandoned on the stage -- and abandonment was the sense which she projected with heartbreaking force at that moment.
Her partner, Ben Rudisin, maintained a more reserved air while still matching her in energy. The choreography of their duets included many high-speed turns, lifts, and throws, which were executed with great verve -- especially allowing for the fairly small space in which they had to work.
Spencer Hack presented a most convincing portrayal of the child-to-come, right from his first teetering steps through his playful and happy dances to his amusing insertion between his mother and stepfather as the three slowly left the stage at the end.
One element of Verklärte Nacht which unfortunately proved challenging was the incorporation of some beautiful video footage filmed by Alice Hong, and presented on large screens high on the backdrop walls. The video presented beautiful images of nature, of the dancers' faces (filmed previously), and more, and began and ended with the shining moon so evocatively described in the original poem. The problem here was the separation of height between the video screen and the stage floor. It was basically impossible to watch both film and dance simultaneously. Time and again I found the video yanking my focus away from the dancers, or (alternately) the dancers distracting me from the filmed images. A perfect example of what is known in theatre parlance as "upstaging," this is too often the result from attempts to integrate video with live performance.
The musical performances throughout the evening were excellent, but reached an undoubted peak in the long and musically wide-ranging journey of this sextet. Schoenberg's complex, densely written score was treated to a performance of utmost clarity and beauty of tone by the six players: violins Aaron Schwebel and Sheila Jaffé, violas Keith Hamm and Theresa Rudolph, and cellos Leana Rutt and Carmen Bruno. Especially commendable was the quietness of the ending, the gentle sparkling figures of the final bars fading poetically towards silence.
Beyond any doubt, Echo Chamber Toronto has done it again.
Bringing music and dance into a closer, more integrated relationship with each other is a challenging yet laudable objective -- especially in an age when far too much dance is performed to recorded music tracks. The integration of painting and video art into the mix adds fascinating new dimensions to the experience.
This programme opened with Beethoven's String Quartet Op. 18 No. 1. For this work, the four players of the Rosebud String Quartet sat in a square formation in one corner of the performing area, leaving an open space in the centre of the square as well as the remaining 3/4 of the space open for the dancers. Choreographer Alysa Pires confined herself to two contrasting dance sequences, one for the second (slow) movement and one for the finale.
In the slow movement, she created a passionate, energetic duet with a definite modern vibe for Miyoko Koyasu and Felix Paquet. Beginning inside the square, the two soon burst the limits and the dance erupted across the entire space. Modern though it was, the dance had a sense of line, a lyrical quality which not only suited the beauty of the music, but also called the traditional polish of classical ballet to mind.
In the fourth movement, Pires herself danced in a more modern style, using an intriguing chain of unique hand and arm positions to express the opening theme of the rondo movement -- a chain which she then re-enacted in slightly varying forms with subsequent recurrals of that opening theme. Here again, she made use of the space inside the quartet as opposed to the larger space outside in different portions of her dance. Overall, this number had a perky, amusing quality which again matched well with the light-hearted staccato of Beethoven's music.
Next up was the final movement, Entrückung ("Rapture"), from Schoenberg's String Quartet No. 2. Schoenberg broke new ground in this work by incorporating a singing voice (soprano), with a poem by Stefan George. Soprano Lauren Eberwein also broke new ground, turning the poem into a dramatic scene in which she hand-painted on a prepared template on the floor as she sang. The intensity of her performance was magnified by her involvement in this action.
The template was prepared by visual artist Paula Arciniega. Two paintings which Arciniega created for the show were displayed on the walls throughout the performance. After the intermission, they were joined by a third -- a continuing creation growing out of the template which Eberwein had used.
Eberwein returned after the intermission with two violas and two cellos for the solemnly luminous Gottes Tod by Hindemith. The darker sound of the lower instruments matched well with the mezzo-like tone colour of Eberwein's voice in this shorter number.
The finale was also the largest piece: the original string sextet version of Verklärte Nacht by Schoenberg. This lush post-romantic tone poem is more often heard in the later string orchestra arrangement; the original version brings both gains (clarity) and losses (weight of tone). Choreographer Christopher Stowell aptly took the poem which inspired the music as a point of departure for his dance work.
Briefly, that poem tells of a woman who confesses by night to a man she loves that she is bearing a child who is not his child; the man then promises to accept and raise the child as if it were his own.
Stowell's choreography made a simple but highly significant alteration by looking into the future, and incorporating the unborn child as a third character. The dance he created on his three performers lived in a clear classical framework, with an edgy, modern quality overlaid. This was the one work in which a female dancer performed en pointe.
Jenna Savella danced the role of the woman with great passion and emotion, clearly living both the anguish of the opening scene and the acceptance of the final part. Perhaps her finest moment came at the first great crisis of the music, the sudden forte tremolo at which both her lover and her son quickly exited, leaving her abandoned on the stage -- and abandonment was the sense which she projected with heartbreaking force at that moment.
Her partner, Ben Rudisin, maintained a more reserved air while still matching her in energy. The choreography of their duets included many high-speed turns, lifts, and throws, which were executed with great verve -- especially allowing for the fairly small space in which they had to work.
Spencer Hack presented a most convincing portrayal of the child-to-come, right from his first teetering steps through his playful and happy dances to his amusing insertion between his mother and stepfather as the three slowly left the stage at the end.
One element of Verklärte Nacht which unfortunately proved challenging was the incorporation of some beautiful video footage filmed by Alice Hong, and presented on large screens high on the backdrop walls. The video presented beautiful images of nature, of the dancers' faces (filmed previously), and more, and began and ended with the shining moon so evocatively described in the original poem. The problem here was the separation of height between the video screen and the stage floor. It was basically impossible to watch both film and dance simultaneously. Time and again I found the video yanking my focus away from the dancers, or (alternately) the dancers distracting me from the filmed images. A perfect example of what is known in theatre parlance as "upstaging," this is too often the result from attempts to integrate video with live performance.
The musical performances throughout the evening were excellent, but reached an undoubted peak in the long and musically wide-ranging journey of this sextet. Schoenberg's complex, densely written score was treated to a performance of utmost clarity and beauty of tone by the six players: violins Aaron Schwebel and Sheila Jaffé, violas Keith Hamm and Theresa Rudolph, and cellos Leana Rutt and Carmen Bruno. Especially commendable was the quietness of the ending, the gentle sparkling figures of the final bars fading poetically towards silence.
Beyond any doubt, Echo Chamber Toronto has done it again.
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