With this week's powerful and moving premiere performance of A World Transformed, Echo Chamber Toronto has created an entirely new genre of dance drama.
A World Transformed, at one level, is a combination of two separate but intertwined vocal recitals. The first part uses a tenor voice with piano, the second part a mezzo-soprano. At that level, it would be nothing more than the many other vocal recitals which use a theme to tie the disparate songs together.
It's the inspired incorporation of evocative modern dance, from four dancers and two different choreographers, sparing narration, and a sophisticated lighting plot, which takes these two song recitals and melds them together into a dramatic experience of deep and subtle power.
The theme and story alike is the terrible, senseless homophobic murder of 21-year-old Matthew Shepard in 1998. The first part of the performance focuses on Shepard himself, ending with his death. The second part, in an extreme contrast, focuses on his mother, Judy Shepard, who became and remains a prominent advocate for LGBTQ+ rights.
The musical programme was curated by tenor Marcel d'Entremont and pianist Dakota Scott-Digout (who accompanied d'Entremont in the first part). They strung together a fascinating array of selections from such diverse composers as Vaughan Williams, Quilter, Britten, McCartney, Grieg, Tchaikovsky, Beach, Coulthard, and Purcell -- to name only a few.
An intriguing result of this use of song was the way that the lyrics of the songs mattered far less than the evocative, atmospheric quality of the music, in shaping the drama as it unfolded.
That was thanks to the choreography of William Yong and Laurence Lemieux and the dancing of Brayden Cairns, Zachary Cardwell, Evan Webb, and Johanna Bergfelt.
In the first part, the story of the murder, Yong's choreography masterfully evoked the personality of Matthew Shepard and then the chilling events of the night he died. His dance language ranged across a wide gamut from easy lyrical movement to jagged, abrupt motion, with extended moments of stillness a critical element.
Without becoming in the least a literal depiction, the dance showed Cairns, Cardwell, and Webb beconing in effect a trio of Matthews, the three of them all moving in response to the events of the story as it unfolded.
Interaction between dancers and musicians is an essential part of Echo Chamber's mandate, and their interactions with tenor soloist Marcel d'Entremont, although sparingly used, were carefully judged for maximum impact. This was most true at the horrific climax of the story when d'Entremont released the three, one by one, from the "fence" which held Matthew Shepard prisoner -- actually, in an inspired moment of staging, the steel railing of the upper level gantry across the back of the stage.
The emotional anguish of this scene was amplified by the serene violin playing of Echo Chamber Toronto's Artistic Director, Aaron Schwebel, in Purcell's When I Am Laid in Earth.
Even more intense was the slow tableau that ended the first part, as the three dancers joined hands with d'Entremont in a line, moving slowly in and out and around each other, even forming a circle. Then the three Matthews laid slowly down in an interlocked formation on the floor while d'Entremont scattered flower petals over the dead bodies.
These two scenes reduced me to tears in their dramatic truthfulness and depth of grief.
The second act saw Jeanie Chung take on piano duty while Andrea Ludwig appeared as the mezzo-soprano soloist. Dancer Johanna Bergfelt sat on a bench, plainly struggling with emotions. Ludwig, on her first appearance, simply walked forward and delivered the first narration of the second part -- a quote from Matthew Shepard's mother, Judy. She then turned and faced Bergfelt and it became clear that the two women were both Judy Shepard.
Laurence Lemieux's choreography for this second part relied more upon subtlety than overt drama. The interactions of the two women were simpler, too -- face-to-face and eye-to-eye moments of stillness, or the moment when Ludwig slid smoothly down into a seat on the bench as Bergfelt stood up.
One telling moment came when Ludwig was singing from a music stand by the piano. Bergfelt moved behind both her and Chung to the left side of the hall, and a strong horizontal light created a shadow play from Bergfelt's dancing on the brick wall of the space. This was only one of designer Chris Malkowski's many intriguing lighting effects.
The final section of the second half opened with a remarkable moment of catharsis. After a brief piano introduction, Ludwig launched into the Beatles' song, Blackbird, and I was moved to tears again at the unmistakable sense of relief I felt as her voice carolled freely in this well-loved tune.
The final number, For Good from "Wicked," brought the entire company together on the stage, formed in a line as the singers shared the phrases of the song back and forth.
Echo Chamber Toronto has staged a number of remarkable shows through the last half-dozen years, but with this event Schwebel has moved his project forward onto an entirely different level -- more thoughtful, more sophisticated, more dramatic than any of his previous efforts.
It was very clear from the opening moments of the performance that A World Transformed was indeed, as Schwebel said in his opening remarks, a collaborative effort, a communal project into which all of the artists poured their thoughts, their feelings, their ideas, their hearts. No wonder it became so impressive, so powerful.
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