TANGENTE DANCE

reviewed by

NANCY SNIPPER

Since its first performance in 1981, Tangente has consistently explored and developed new approaches to dance by featuring trend-setting contemporary choreographers such as Ginette Laurin, Marie Chouinard, Daniel Soulières, Louise Bédard and Andrew Harwood – to name a few of the 40 choreographers and partnerships the company has featured. Tangente’s unique footprint in integrating music and theatre into dance programs has not only raised the dance bar but eyebrows beyond the island of Montreal, and as such has become a hub for artists working in multi-disciplinary areas. Always seeking the spirit of adventure in dance, Tangente attracts dancers and choreographers in pursuit of excellence and innovation. With a seating capacity of 91 housed in Agora de la dance (of which it is a founding member), Tangente is able to present conceptually bold performances within a unique, intimate environment. In 2007, the Grand Prix des Arts de Montréal was awarded to Tangente. Deena Davida is the driving artistic force behind Tangente’s remarkable reputation.

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Jan. 2010

ROCK STEADY, Katie Ward
"What's the energy in the room between people?" That's the question colourfully answered by Katie Ward in her bizarre piece. Huge elastic bands snap back and forth around four dancers' bodies to create the tensions that occur between people both on an emotional and physical level. Nothing is static when humans are involved. Sculptural forms of interlocking bodies seperate and then tightly adhere to visually tell the story of energies united, clashing, and harmonizing, but always transforming and affecting one another. The bonds that bind us and undo us allow for joy, self-pity, solitude, self-control, repression, and sexual playfulness. Vocality, monolgue and conversation weave in and out of this theatrical work. Those elastic bands caught around Ward's flexible dancers show us that no man is an island: Ward claims to have worked at NASA as a physicist. Her exploration into molecules, protons and particles seem to have found their own new space to dance around in . . . "Rock Steady."

MÉTA, Frédéric Marier
A brilliant piece of choreography with dancers - Sophie Breton, Dominic Caron and Patrick Lamonthe - performing each liquid movement in slow motion. Most of the action is choreographed with full floor body contact.

The piece begins with the dancers tightly entwined in a huddled human knot. The interior of Gaudí’s la Sagrada Familia, whose cathedral beams embody huge interconnecting bones, seems to be referenced here. The dancers’ elbows, arms and hands poke up and out, visually creating our inner anatomy. This corporal ossification motif is enhanced all the more by the crescendo taped sounds of bones crushing. After a good ten minutes, the dancers disentangle themselves to explore the strange sterile environment on stage: a polymer body suit, a table, an enormous plastic bag, and a female garment. Each of these items seems to become part of the innards of their bodies as they interact with them. Taped sounds of ice crushing, trains rolling on tracks, and stomachs gurgling dehumanize the entire piece; these dancers seem to become mysterious organisms themselves. There is no recognizable emoting or human interacting other than the occasional draping of torsos over one another. Strangely hypnotic and serene, Méta is like no other piece in the contemporary dance world. What a feat to turn the human body into an object of fascination. Dancing 50 minutes in slow motion without a hint of tremor reveals each dancer’s remarkable technique.

1976, Dana Michel
A clever spoof on Olympic sports mutated into dance performed by Michel’s company, Band of Bless. The weight lifter, skater, swimmer are there, but other segments are left to the viewer’s imagination. The two dancers -- Dana Michel herself and Ashlea Watkin -- perform solo pieces rich in elastic and staccato movements. However, given their physical prowess and the Olympian theme, one wishes Michel, as choreographer, had created a segment where both she and Watkin possessed the stage duking it out with a winner or loser stepping up onto the lit risers standing stagnant at the back of the stage. Technically flawless, but sparse in presentation.