As I followed a group of young women into the Heritage Playhouse last Friday night, I recognized most of them as dance students.
In this case, they were the students of instructor Alison Denham, who had worked with the group intensively over the preceding week as part of the KaliJo summer dance project. Though they were entering to watch in the first half of the show, featuring visiting performer Meagan O'Shea, they would be performing themselves in the second half. I thought how, in their street clothes, they looked so young, ordinary even, and much smaller than they appeared on stage. I thought about how dance can do that: transform these women into dynamic characters, full of life, who seem six feet tall and vibrate with energy.
Toronto guest artist O'Shea understands that ability to develop characters within her dance. The program opened with her critically acclaimed piece Night Stills, about a naïve flower vendor, who finds love only once with a man who is fatally allergic to pollen. The young woman's personality drives the show while she is, by turns, sad, busy with her work, full of longing, then playful. The piece includes O'Shea's ongoing quirky narrative, clowning and physical theatre. People really like this character, said O'Shea later, perhaps because she's innocent.
O'Shea's purpose in coming to the Coast is to develop a new solo dance and to work with students under the Sunshine Coast Dance Society's residency program.
The next piece about relationship break-ups will be developed with singer Aviva Chernick, who opened last Friday's show with a gospel song. The artistic director for Friday night's presentation was Katherine Denham. Other guest artists included Darcy McMurray, whose piece Exposure was sparked by a poem from Joseph Denham. The dance took place among some breathtaking photographs of dancers by Richard Yagutilov. Local dancer Madhuri Phillips, whose short piece, The Space in Between, presented a light, quiet style.
The pace changed by showing five short videos of dance - a number of them featuring the athleticism and physical beauty of dancer Alison Denham. Finally, Denham's pupils, the Gravity Works Ensemble, performed a piece they had choreographed with her and learned together in an intense seven hours. There they were again, that same group of young women, on stage this time and looking stunning.
