Dancers of The 9th! - Photo by Alexander Antonijevic
(program)
ProArteDanza presented The 9th! on Wednesday November 6th, 2019 at The Fleck Dance Theatre.
Choreography: Roberto Campanella & Robert Glumbeck
Projections: David Dexter
Lighting Design: Arun Srinivasan
Dancers: Taylor Bojanowski, Ryan Lee, Sasha Ludavicius, Daniel McArthur, Victoria Mehaffey, Connor Mitton, Jake Poloz, and Kelly Shaw.
Recording: Ludwig Van Beethoven’s 9th Symphony — Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Claudio Abbado, Orchestre symphonique de Montréal conducted by Kent Nagano, and Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen conducted by Paavo Järvi.
*ProArteDanza’s The 9th! runs till November 9th at the Fleck Dance Theatre
“Even the worm was given desire” declares friedrich schiller’s soaring poem written for beethoven’s Ode to Joy, the iconic climax of his 9th symphony and score of Proartedanza’s The 9th!: a finely yet boldly crafted treatise on the defiant human spirit, by roberto campanella and robert glumbek. ten years in the making, celebrating the company’s fifteenth season, saluting both the pride and regret that continue to echo thirty years after the berlin wall was torn down, Proartedanza’s artistic leadership duo is uniquely qualified to take on the monolithic challenge that this piece of music presents and to articulate the euphoria of the fall of that wall 30 years ago through their elite company of dancers.
boasting a Dora Mavor Moore Award for outstanding choreography to honour their 2010 production “… in between …”, among many international accomplishments, both trained ballet dancers were once newcomers to canada with their own foundational experience of a wall that bisected natural human migration so symbolically for almost as many years as it’s been rubble. glumbek grew up east of it during the cold war in communist poland, able to defect when the company toured to toronto in 1987 in the tradition of many dancers of the era who had to leave family behind to be free. and campanella visited the memorial in 2011, witnessing footage of family members waving to each other as the wall was first built between them. he said that in creating this work, he and glumbek were “determined to go slowly because we wanted more than just a physical response to the music”, with the goal of expressing the social and political themes inherent in the symphony itself.
Dancers of The 9th! - Photo by Alexander Antonijevic
with personal experience of how people are fragmented and disconnected from each other by oppressive regimes, they chose beethoven’s highly physical symphony, generous in its dynamism, to nail down the difference between the artificial unity imposed by controlling political ideologies that pressure us to conform and fear each other, and the natural unity inspired between people when listening to a symphony like beethoven’s 9th. though few pieces of music are more famous for their euphoria—the Ode to Joy practically being the auditory icon of this sensation right next to tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture—the choreographic journey campanella and glumbek take us on to get there is filled with unexpected moments that continually subvert expectations.
with a forbidding row of craggy chairs upended along the edge of the stage like battlements, the first movement begins with ryan lee, a choreographer in his own right, in a spotlight quavering with softly defined twitches. he sways as a claymation figure would in an upward column of wind, gently undulating within set parameters. his movement is echoed in filmed versions of himself upstage receding in size projected into the back wall, iterated by a world-class digital graphic design team from the SIRT Centre and OccupiedVr. i had seen and raved about lee’s work on this same stage in may but was stilled by the seemingly effortless fluidity he began the show with, even glancing to his rippling reflections beyond to catch the details of gestures too liquid to fully appreciate the first time.
he and the three other male dancers are corralled by the arrival of kelly shaw, a 2018 dora nominee for her ensemble work in Human Body Expression’s Chasing the Path. if you couldn’t tell by how she’s featured on the program cover intensely clawing her way up a sheer wall with nothing but the worm’s desire to break the surface, then i’ll state it plainly: kelly shaw is a big deal. with many other roles and accomplishments in the canadian dance world, she emerges in the 9th! as pure urgency of vision with a frenetic, frustrated need to communicate and inspire these men around her. in total control of every movement, shaw carved angles with her body too sharp to occur in nature, too precise to register fully in the human optical nerves; it’s rare that i become aware of my brain’s lag, its limitations in interpreting what the light tells my eye.
the patterns in this first movement refuse to resolve like i expect them to; lifts turn back from their natural progression, twists invert in on themselves, exuents spill back onto the stage. the flow we expect in this familiar opening quarter of the symphony is confused, curtailed and proscribed by the shadow of a wall that only reflects back the movements of a previous moment. stark, jerking solos establish the individuality of each dancer, with their separateness further highlighted by the echoing forms flickering beyond even when the ensemble falls into a rigid conformity—until one man, daniel macarthur, falls out of sync. he staggers back to watch the rows of dancers on both stage and screen, breathing deep, watching their angled mathematical unity as if knowing this is not the kind of ‘unity’ they ought to strive for...not the harmony the human animal was meant to submit to.
Dancers of The 9th! - Photo by Alexander Antonijevic
as the 2nd movement begins, reflections on the back wall give way to strange pinpricks of light. shaw is drawn to them as they grow larger, becoming geometrical and suggesting architectural shapes that the light is filtering through. beginning in confused, fragmented individuality, the ensemble now moves with purposeful will and intention. there’s an awareness of the machinery in this quarter of the symphony in the mechanized precision affected in solos and partnerships such as one stirring stand-out between shaw and taylor bojanowski. their intricate, concentrated pas-de-deux sees them continue to fall backwards, catching each other by the back of their necks. the suggestion of intimacy is only hinted at here, carrying the double meaning that they could also harm each other. all arrange their chairs in a circle to sit and converse—all but one, leaving dancer connor mitten (recently featured in hanna kiel’s Resonance) outcast from the group. his chair lies abandoned on the edge of the stage while he struggles under a great weight, twisting and straining, watched with disdain by the group as a discordant or diseased exception to their unity.
the graphic on screen reveals itself finally to be an intricate mass of backlit chairs through which light can barely glint: as dense, impenetrable, and unscalable as the berlin wall itself was once propagated to be. it’s a striking visual that recalls how in oppressive regimes, piles of non-threatening domestic items always seem to end up in menacing, unnatural mountains together: chairs, glasses, suitcases, books—as distinct a marker of oppressed peoples as animal tracks in the snow. the physical chairs used by the dancers divide and impede their connections, drawing all the focus the ensemble might otherwise bestow on each other as they form an oblique symmetry across the stage. cutting a bleak division between themselves, it’s unclear if they are building a wall with these chairs or creating their own structure to see beyond the one that divides them.
Dancers of The 9th! - Photo by Alexander Antonijevic
shaw mounts this pathway of chairs, looking into the distance to see what no one else on the ground can glimpse. she vibrates with the fully-present energy of a conductor living and breathing their orchestra; she was beethoven’s 9th symphony as she walked to the top of this chair-wall to look for something brighter beyond. the second movement ends abruptly before beginning the third, taking a quiet moment to frame shaw grappling with her chair alone on stage, pushing and imploring it in despairing silence as if the earth’s gravity had tripled, negotiating the wooden seat strenuously towards the wings. this was the clearest physical articulation of the oppressed human soul, also showcasing that it requires just as much skill to feign inhibited movement as to leap about freely. but before shaw can heave her chair out of sight, she connects with lee leaning out of the proscenium, gently encouraging them to keep trying before giving up. this quiet moment made me wonder how many people during the last years of the soviet union managed to keep each other going on nothing but the fumes of friendship.
leaving the disciplined sequences on artificial unity behind them, this silence precipitates the languor and longing of the third movement where the divisive chairs are now used to facilitate comfort, connection, and affection. couples emerge holding each other, sharing their seats, reclaiming and repurposing what once kept them apart to find a natural unity between individuals. these languid caresses are not necessarily romantic; continuing to subvert expectations, the pairings aren’t defined by gender but by needful human contact. campenella and glumbek achieve an emotional clarity here, guiding their dancers to come together like family members who haven’t seen each other in a long time or defectors trying to connect within the loneliness of being separated from loved ones. two men melt and flow through an exchange of one chair, using it now to communicate their needs. when we think a lone man is about to exit in despair, he is instead offered another chair from the wings clung onto by another dancer, prompted to pull another up as he prepares to let go, until the entire ensemble spawls in a chain across the stage. broken by shaw, she disrupts this despondent connection to again follow a significant shard of light on the back wall—a chink in its defences. and now fully liquid, lee is lifted in a wave that leaves him finally exhausted but supported; no longer segmented from each other, the ensemble is drawn into an embodied awareness of each other in stark departure from their initial mechanization.
the fourth movement begins with the projected wall of chairs lit harshly from above, showing its brittleness. instead of light barely coming through, obscuring the weaknesses, now we can see this wall for what it is: just another fallible structure that can be torn down. it’s on this rising note that the familiar Ode to Joy melody thrums for the first time on a lone foreshadowing cello, causing stirrings in the staggered ensemble who react as if the air itself as taken on a new tactility. their shifting tableaus recall religious paintings and war memorial statues depicting the body of a comrade draped poetically over the shoulders of others, melting as the first recorded singer breaks through the orchestration.
Dancers of The 9th! - Photo by Alexander Antonijevic
a transfixed ensemble mouths the words, vocal chords roused to respond by the epic schiller poem, finally achieving full voice to roar along with the disembodied baritone. i recalled author wayne koestenbaum describing how the operatic voice can open the throat of an active listener, provoke the larynx, and be received mouth-first before an eardrum can even shiver. dancer sasha ludavicius sings so passionately centre-stage that she expires from ecstatic resonance and is lifted and borne like a christ-figure. shaw’s body spasms, wracked like one speaking in tongues, stopping a handful of dancers from leaving the stage and drawing them back to watch the chairs begin to crumble on the back wall. the ensemble has found a natural unity in this fourth movement, fulfilling campanella’s promise in the program that “joy is the agent that will bring us together”.
the longing to connect, stifled and impeded by metaphorical chairs, is carefully crafted in all its stages by campanella and glumbek until we witness their eight dancers charge the audience, backlit as the wall once was but more powerful for their hard-earned unity. i was impressed by the simple use of the chairs to represent a stationary stillness imposed on a creature that must move, and strongly reminded of the menacing wooden chair used to similar but more singular effect in john neumeier’s Nijinsky. it took all my threadbare sense of propriety not to harass fellow audience member guillaume côté—one of the few dancers to acquit this coveted everest of male balletic roles—for his impressions on Proartedanza’s use of wooden chairs after the show. instead, i wheedled for and was granted a brief, gushing interview with ryan lee, who confirmed that yes: the rehearsal process was as disciplined and demanding at it appeared. though this could be seen clearly in each dancer’s commitment to their solos and pairings, it was most evident in the synchronous ensemble work: there most of all we could see how the concept of unity in all its forms were highly valued by the creative minds behind The 9th!
while letting his work sink in, i recalled meeting roberto campanella a couple years ago, when towards the end of a thrilling conversation he asked me something he said he liked to ask certain people: what really bothers you? what really makes you angry, gets under your skin?
ravenous to rant, i described how i revile when people (especially critics) talk about the performance arts as if they were sports, to be quantified and categorized as if anyone were capable of objectively assigning the value of a work of art or measuring it against another.
this work by Proartedanza is a magnificent case against the quantification of the arts; uncompromisingly conceived, rigorously rehearsed, and dedicated to the end of a long era of secretive soviet silence. the 9th!’s ambition is as dizzying as it is soundly executed. though i have no living memory of this wall (i was born the year it fell), i’ve always felt unaccountably euphoric whenever i think of the first person who showed up with a hammer and chisel, deciding unilaterally that it was time to bring the damn thing down. Proartedanza’s dancers and choreographers captured everything leading up to that courage: despair, isolation, frustration, and the euphoria of finding you share all these feelings with others who can wield a chisel too. it’s not any easier to “bang your heart against some mad bugger’s wall” than it is to stage that complex emotional journey, so thank you to all involved for your heart-banging hard work.
Emily Trace is a Toronto-based writer of plays, articles, fiction, personal essays and reviews of the performing arts, currently developing a screenplay that will explore queer resiliency and trauma recovery through classic horror tropes. An alumnus of the National Ballet of Canada’s Emerging Arts Critics Programme, Emily works in media with Inside Out LGBT Film Festival and Against the Grain Theatre. She is also an actress and creative associate with White Mills Theatre Company, presently in rehearsals for an immersive production of Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol' to be staged this holiday season at Spadina House.