Venue: Performance Works, Granville Island
Dates: 15-18 November, 2001
Reviewer: Brian Robinson
The vast sparse stage is dim and full of foreboding.
The static silence is then engulfed by the haunting piano of Veda
Hille's Entrance, while massive sepia toned projections from
the life of Emily Carr bring light.
Whoosh! In a torrent of twists, swirls, jerks and funky little wiggles
Ziyian Kwan injects the powerful desperation of life. This harsh
contrast of somber reflective melancholy and frustrated struggling
energy, mirrors the cycles of Carr's life as a female artist in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Mascall Dance commissioned the score from Veda Hille in 1996, after
which she said "all the words were appropriated directly from the
writings of Emily Carr".
The choreography is tense and intense. The
three dancers, who alternate in the role as Carr, perform a rampant
ballet of tugs and pulls at each other, contorting their lithe bodies
into the restricted areas of a luggage trolley or beneath an easel,
which manifests the boundaries imposed by society and emphasizes the
insecurities which so often accompany artistic talent.
Jennifer Mascall, Veda Hille, Marthe Leonard, Olivia Thorvaldson and
Ziyian Kwan have created a work of such brilliance that it is wholly
appropriate the subject is Emily Carr.
© 2001, Brian Robinson