Peggy Baker Dance Initiatives | The Ottawa Dance Weblog

who we’re at nighttime

Reviewed April 12, 2019

NAC Babs Asper Theatre, Ottawa

(Repeat efficiency April 13, 7:30 p.m.)

Peggy Baker’s latest dance challenge, who we’re at nighttime, is a formidable collaboration with musicians related to Montreal indie rock band Arcade Fireplace, the late artist John Heward, and Baker’s long-time lighting design accomplice Marc Dad or mum.

An icon of Canadian modern dance, Baker typically presents works which might be one thing to behold. She just isn’t afraid to experiment with the media of motion, music and different arts. When she groups up with others, she is at her greatest — the extra sources deliver to life her disciplined, audacious and provocative creativity. For this newest work, all her collaborators are Canadian.

Sarah Neufeld

Significantly spectacular in who we’re at nighttime is the gorgeous efficiency by summary violinist Sarah Neufeld. Neufeld and Ottawa-born drummer Jeremy Gara grace stage proper all through the 65-minute present in a novel accompaniment. The driving drums and the soothing strings create a vibrant push-pull power.

Additionally putting is the projection design by award-winning filmmaker Jeremy Mimnagh. Largely black-and-white stunning summary pictures challenge onto the again wall and the ground, making a futuristic world for the seven dancers onstage.

The performers largely work as a collective, seemingly reacting to unseen forces. Typically they’re linked in a protracted chain. Their synchronized motion binds the work, portending a way of neighborhood, the concept they’re all on this collectively.

Baker says who we’re at nighttime explores “the alluring darkness of evening, intimacy, sexuality, the unconscious, the creeping darkness of uncertainty and malice, the confounding darkness of bafflement, secrets and techniques, the unknown, the dreadful darkness of cruelty, struggling, grief, the comforting darkness of condolence and contemplation.”

This will effectively have been a place to begin for Baker’s work, however the dance doesn’t inform any sort of story per se. The dancers are wearing black and generally put on hooded sweaters and crawl animalistically throughout the stage, however there is no such thing as a sense of malice or dread. Moreso it’s a present that delights in sound, mild and motion.

Cleverly choreographed breaks maintain the viewers targeted and stimulated. For instance, after a phrase of thunderous drumming, sharp spot lighting and furiously flashing projections onto the ground and backdrop, with no dancers onstage, instantly a pair enter the stage and carry out a serene duet to a soulful string accompaniment, making a welcome tranquility amongst the chaotic sound. Neufeld regularly introduces pretty haunting vocals to her violin solo, taking us to a magical place.

Later Neufeld enters centre stage underneath a shiny highlight whereas the dancers are not more than shadowy presences. As her contribution is a major and dynamic a part of the work total, it is just becoming that her efficiency must be thus featured.

The accompaniment at instances is nothing greater than the dancers’ personal respiratory, whispers, squeaks and growls or just their exhalations of exertions.

A collection of duets between two males, two girls and a pair draw the work to its conclusion, which incorporates a lone dancer on a colored flooring.