York’s dance department tapped into the power of improvisation at the Eleanor Winters Art Gallery last week
AmeliaRuthven-Nelson
Recruitment manager
@AmeliaR_N
From January 10-12, the York dance department earned some well-deserved attention. Invited to perform at the gallery by Sky Fairchild-Waller, acting events coordinator for Winters College, the York Dance Ensemble (YDE) performed a free show at the Eleanor Winters Art Gallery as part of a three-day residency. The YDE was invited in an attempt to better expose the dance department to the York community.
“I want to show people the potential of movement,” commented Fairchild-Waller, a 2009 dance BFA. He is one step closer to achieving his personal mission of shedding more light on the dance community.
Attending a dance performance is not always for everyone. I often attend visually-stunning shows but leave overwhelmed, thinking “I don’t get it,” or “where’s the music?” As an intruder in the dance community, I don’t always understand the artistic direction, but this recent performance by YDE was different. Their show made modern dance accessible to all audiences.
YDE combines the efforts of not only dancers, but musicians as well. The dancers performed to live music; double bass, guitar, saxophone, and percussion. The musicians helped to make the experience spectacular and were even involved in a bit of the dancing, participating in the exposition when all the performers initially struck poses against the wall. Both musicians and dancers alike perform some structured improvisation within the first piece, making no two performances alike.
“It’s about finding a way to support the dancers, finding the relationship between dance and music,” said double bassist Chris Adriaanse.
The ensemble preformed two pieces, with the show running just under two hours, but the transition between the two pieces was flawless, making it seem as if it was almost all one piece—or as director Holly Small puts it, “a dance within a dance.”
The first half of the show was
a debut piece called Suddenly
Everyone directed by York professor and choreographer Holly Small. The costumes camouflaged with the gallery’s walls and floor, giving the impression of moving walls. The way the dancers were moving with and against one another across the floor reminded me of the busy streets of Toronto, and
I felt they captured human inter-
action through the movements of dance.
The second piece, It’s Just
What You Do, was an emotional duet, choreographed by student Anne Goad. I admit I initially
misinterpreted the dance and thought it was about a couple
dealing with multiple sclerosis, when in actuality it was about
a couple dealing with Alzheimer’s; either way, the emotions behind the piece were clear. The emotions behind the dance are what make the show accessible to multiple audiences.
“I’ve had people come up to me saying they went through cancer, too,” says Goad. “As long as it connects to people in some way.” No dance piece has ever moved me as much as It’s Just What You Do—the struggling couple were elegantly shown through their movements that at times were synchronized, and at other times, seemed to work against one another. Each night, the duet is performed by different pairs of dancers, and although I only saw it the first night, I imagine it is just as touching every time.
