Toronto’s Loose Tea Music Theatre Dissociative Me is an updated take on Gounod’s opera Faust
Dissociative Me by Loose Tea Music Theatre opened at the luxurious RED nightclub. My guest and I opted for a leather couch bathed in red light. Everything around us was dark and dripping with drama. It may not have been a grand theatre, but this location was striking enough for an opera. Especially for a show that describes itself as “not your grandfather’s opera”.
The show is based off of Gounod’s Faust, in which a scholar makes a deal with the devil for success and pays a heavy price for it. A more modern understanding of this tale would be in The Little Mermaid, when Ariel signs a contract with the seawitch Ursula. Whether you prefer Gounod or Disney, the cautionary tale is universally understood: don’t make a deal that you can’t pay for.
Site-specific dance show brings performance to Toronto’s front porches
Site-specific shows don’t get more specific than the front porches of your friends and neighbours. That’s the idea behind Porch View Dances, a series of short contemporary dance works developed by Karen and Allen Kaeja of Kaeja d’Dance: it enlists community members and their porches and front lawns, the public-facing aspect of their living spaces.
These brave neighbourhood volunteers perform choreography by professional dance artists. Now in its fourth year, the award-winning show has branched out to Ottawa, Kitchener, and Moncton. It’s very approachable, being run by donation, and takes the audience on a charming walking tour through Seaton Village, a cosy neighbourhood just steps from busy Bathurst and Bloor.
Choreographer Erin Hill does a fine job turning complex scientific inspiration into art in Radio Project, playing with Until Tender Crisp II as a part of the SummerWorks Dance series. Narrated and deejayed in the form of a radio show by Hill, the piece for two dancers merged scenes evoking the nostalgia of listening to the radio with choreography that mirrored the movement of the invisible but ubiquitous sound waves that surrounds us.
Using two different styles of dance can open up a whole new understanding of movement for an audience. In Street vs. Stage playing at the Factory Theatre Mainspace as part of the 2015 Toronto SummerWorks Festival, producers Tina Fushell, Molly Johnson, Emily Law, and Sabina Perry deliver the joy of dance with a collection of incredible dancers.
Toronto’s Loose Tea Music Theatre Dissociative Me is an updated take on Gounod’s opera Faust
Choreographer 