Complicity

Complicity, in its best form in the arts, works to our favour, where an audience, complicit with us as performers, is in on the action. They follow you as you play your edges, get excited as you near them and sense when you go beyond.

But I think there's a dark side to complicity. When an audience is seduced into believing they have been given the keys to the VIP -- that they are in on the cruel joke or the cool move.

Complicity, at its worst in humanity -- and perhaps this is where my graduate studies in history firmly overlap with my life as a dance artist -- has been used to coerce, cajole, urge people into following along with a regime that is a house of cards or a house of evil.

We all seek a sense of belonging. Complicity--which can, I believe, be fostered by leaders political or artistic -- can be a dangerous track to a sense belonging but with the stakes of excluding others, overlooking flaws in the fabric, or abandoning creativity for the sake of holding onto that identity.

I think it's time we gently call out our artistic leaders when their cultivation of complicity rests on cruel jokes and cool moves, when we are made complicit by understanding the catch-phrases, so to speak.

Innovation is not the be all and end all, but I do believe that as artists, and more generally as human beings, we strive for growth and deeper understanding of our existence. As artists, let's take our audiences along with us as we try to grow, so that they can relate with their own stretching and shifting.

It's important not to be too comfortable. Change is inevitable. It's important not to rest on the identity you think you've carved out for yourself. You are changing too. That identity might actually not fit anymore, and if you look closely, you may find that something is bulging out that you might not like everyone to see.

Good Jazz -- Helix Dance Project

http://www.helixdanceproject.com/
I'm no officianado of jazz dance, I have taken one or two classes in my life and the last one was at least 20 years ago in a time of my life when I did not need to wear a bra or shave my legs. But on Friday I went to Helix Dance Project, not knowing at all what I was going to see -- which is so liberating -- I had only a vague idea that maybe they were connected to hiphop somehow.

Although not everything about the project was slick or integrated, I have to say it was some of the best jazz dancing and jazz choreography I have seen in a long time. And in moments I thought the only difference between what this company was doing and what I do, or what TDT does, or what any contemporary/modern choreographer does, is just categorization. And maybe a little bit more front-facing dancing in for Helix.

But even the front facing made me think -- they are doing this for the audience, for the entertainment, even when expressing rather moving moments and relationships, which they did. Sometimes I think those of us less commercially-minded in our art-making ought to see a show or 4 like this and remember that audiences like seeing happy, healthy bodies moving through space with a certain amount of joy, and the work does not need to be profound or complex in order to be worthy.

I'm not trying to say that Helix Dance Projects are shallow and simple, not at all. But the form lends itself to a transparency that is really refreshing after seeing dance after dance that is obscured by its own concept.

In recent years it seems like there is a heavy emphasis on versatility of individual dancers, of being able to perform in myriad techniques, but without necessarily mastering or deeply exploring any one of those techniques. To my mind, there are as many potential dance forms or techniques as there are individual dancers working out there and if we all developed our appreciation of other forms, and our understanding of ourselves, we might feel less competitive, more supportive, and ultimately more stable regarding our discipline within the greater spectrum of culture.

There is room for every kind of dancer in the professional sphere, so long as they are pushing and opening themselves to the audiences that come. I want to be in all those audiences, inspired by what I am seeing, defining myself in relief to what others are doing, and determining the overlap.

But that's sappy old me....compassion and empathy, compassion and empathy....plies and tendus, plies and tendus....rice and beans, baby, rice and beans. Basic blocks of energy.

Thanks to Linda Garneau for inspiring all these thoughts with the Helix Dance Project show, and especially for her very witty old couple dance, the surprise golf-stroke move was a true Fred-and-Ginger moment.

Jorma Elo

I have almost no words for this man's choreography. I want to dance it, I want to see it live. With all due respect to Balanchine and Cranko, Crystal Pite, John Neumeier, Christopher Wheeldon and my friend Peter Quanz -- this man is a new wave of ballet....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWTGuqpuZp4