Danse - Toronto

Pro Arte Danza - Passion in Performance (Roberto Campanella)
Fleck Dance Theatre - Harbourfront Centre
9 octobre 2010

Severe Clear (Christopher House)
Fleck Dance Theatre - Harbourfront Centre
19 novembre 2010

Selon National Post : Severe Clear dance reincarnation: ‘lyrical, innocence’ of North

Ten years after the original Toronto Dance Theatre’s production of Christopher House’s Severe Clear, the artistic director still sounds in awe of the journey to the Yukon on which he based the acclaimed dance work. Now he’s brought a fresh eye and new ensemble to an incarnation of the piece at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto.
“It was amazing, the quality of space, the quality of light,” he says of the North. “We flew to Whitehorse, then took a small plane to Herschel Island where the sun was shining at 2 a.m. It was like a James Bond movie. We swam in the Beaufort Sea and went by helicopter to the Tombstone Mountains, where they dropped us two by two. We spent three days camping.”
House travelled with 11 other performing artists, none of whom he knew personally, as part of a millennium initiative of the Yukon Arts Centre which commissioned the piece. “It was like summer camp for me, the first real break I’d had from all the choreography,” he says of the trip.
The finished work, the Dora-nominated Severe Clear, was a travelogue of his experience, following a group of nomads through a haunting wilderness where dancers morph into animals to the sounds of fierce wind and breaking ice from the glaciers. He’s been back to the Yukon several times since then.
“What I see when I look at the piece is the sense of community that unfolded,” House says. “Very collaborative.” One of his fellow travellers, musician Cate Friesen, now with CBC Radio, recorded nature sounds during the trip for a documentary. Those sounds became part of composer Phil Strong’s soundtrack for the production, blended with techno, a cappella harmonies from the dancers and a spoken text by House.
Back in 2000, the Post reviewed it with enthusiasm: “The choreography has a spontaneous, loose-limbed, almost improvisational look and is varied in style and dynamics. Sometime it is fast, darting and avian. Other times it is tranquil, almost static.”
House is keen on the physicality of the remount. “I have this outside eye. I’m seeing people being themselves in this work that is saturated with traces of the original and traces of the trip,” he says.
“It’s chance to reinvent, it’s like a new incarnation, where the original cast left off and taking advantage of all the research that was done for the first production.”
His artistic approach, too, has changed, opened up and become more relaxed than it used to be, so less formal in its presentation. It’s also a reflection of how dance performance has changed over the past 10 years.
“The density of editing has changed, like a film from today if people watched it 20 years ago, it would give them a headache. There’s this same history with performance — it’s that much more complex.”
How would he describe Severe Clear in its new form? “It’s really lyrical and innocent, lyrical and playful. It’s about the purity of the experience in some way, the amount of space that there is and the flurry of activity reflected in nature.
“I wouldn’t make a piece like this today, it’s not my style, but lovely to look at,” he laughs. “Or maybe I’m lying. Maybe I would.”