Toronto Dance Theatre presents a Triple Bill of work as part of Harbourfront Centre’s NextSteps
The Triple Bill show at the Harbourfront Centre right now isn’t pretending. Featuring a new and an old work by Toronto Dance Theatre artistic director Christopher House, and an unsettling piece by Swiss choreographer Thomas Hauert, the program doesn’t offer any happy fictions. And it’s precisely that connection to the real world that makes this show so interesting and so worthwhile.
L’Implorante and L’éternel are a contrasting dance double-header playing at Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre
We’ve all experienced that feeling of uncertainty around art. You stand in front of a work, and even though you know it’s good, you don’t know what to do. How to respond? Every now and then, however, you’ll find something that erases the question: You connect — deeply, almost painfully — and suddenly find that you can’t let go.
L’implorante, a collaboration between the well-known Toronto-based choreographer Sylvie Bouchard (co-founder of Dusk Dances) and Claude Guilmain (Le Théâtre la Tangente) currently showing at the Harbourfront Centre Theatre, reaches out of the space where great art makes an unanticipated impact. Bouchard plays an unnamed choreographer who responds with unexpected force to a sculpture she finds in Paris, culminating in a moment of total identification and ecstasy.
Brotherhood Blends Performance, Mythology and Street Culture
Sebastien Heins‘s award-winning rap parable Brotherhood: The Hip Hopera has an undeniably eye-catching title, but what gets me is the article — the “the.” It’s a small detail, but it makes a strong point: if any play were to capture and define such a genre as “hip hopera,” this is the one.
Currently playing at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre as part of b current theatre company’s afteRock Plays series (the other offering is Catherine Hernandez‘s The Femme Playlist), Brotherhood prepares the audience before the house lights go down with a montage of lo-fi videos from hip hop shows in the nineties. In this way, Heins lets Tupac and Jay-Z invoke the spirit of classic stadium rap that will animate this entire performance, where big dreams and gritty realities collide.
Toronto’s Alumnae Theatre performs George F Walker’s ’90s-era play Escape from Happiness
Escape from Happiness, currently playing on the Alumnae Theatre mainstage, is a “celebration of the underclass,” according to the director’s note. As far as raisons d’etre go, this one doesn’t feel too auspicious.
Perhaps it’s the inescapable sense that the actors are, in fact, performing the underclass that makes this play so uncomfortable to watch. More likely it’s the fact that they all yell at each other relentlessly.
![implorante_3[1]](http://www.mooneyontheatre.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/implorante_31.jpg)
