REVIEW: X (DIX) at Crow’s Theatre/Côté Danse
One of the things that I love most about dance performance is its ability to tell more than just a story. Dance audiences instead watch for the skill and ingenuity of dancers, how they play with the music and space that surrounds them, and how a choreographer maintains the performance’s “big picture.” When this all comes together, a great dance performance can amount to a profound experience unlike anything else.
One such performance is concluding Crow’s Theatre’s 2022-23 season. Côté Danse’s X (DIX) continues the Québécois choreographer and National Ballet of Canada principal Guillaume Côté’s foray into interdisciplinary work and spaces. Connecting to themes from Homer’s Odyssey, this 60-minute piece premiered in 2021 at the Festival des Arts de Saint-Sauveur, responding to the renewed significance of journeys home during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Anchored by a gifted ensemble of Toronto dance artists, Côté’s choreography creates an exciting, high-stakes world out of a sum of many well-curated parts. A remarkable musical score, alongside stark yet striking production elements, makes for a live performance that somehow feels cinematic. A beguiling night of dance, X (DIX) is what happens when a group of talented artists come together and let each other shine.
When I interviewed Côté about a previous production, it was clear to me clear that collaboration across a variety of artforms is central to his process. X (DIX) shows the value of this practice with choreography that gives dancers agency to play to their strengths in their solo work.
A five-dancer ensemble, clad in black costumes of nettings and shiny fabrics by designer Yso South, shines with unique artistry and unified technical excellence. Natasha Poon Woo demonstrates a quickfire succession of intricate steps that belies an intense level of technical rigour. Willem Sadler luxuriates in movement that trails past his many turns, while Martha Hart and Kelly Shaw both show a knack for intricate gesture work and dynamic partnering. Evan Webb wows with a solo that employs the character of a rock star, seemingly unstable, only to leap back with limber strength.
Côté’s partnering and group work also excels. Ballet is clearly the base technique of X (DIX), but it’s in the more daring contemporary moments that the choreography stands out and excites. X (DIX) is peppered with lightning-quick phrases where dancers hit gestures outside of ballet arm placement, while the partnering is dependent on weight-sharing. I’m particularly struck by Côté’s expertise in choreographing group partnering phrases; they flow with an ease that accommodates their many dancers.
But what is most appealing about Côté’s choreography is its musicality. He uses movement to animate the lush soundtrack, responding to experimental band Son Lux’s recordings. Perhaps best known for scoring Oscar-winning film Everything Everywhere All at Once, their work here stands as my favorite in a Toronto dance season already filled with innovative music. A lilting tenor states simple, enigmatic phrases, haunting this piece alongside strings and beats that sound as though the ground is falling out from beneath you.
Choreographically, X (DIX) showcases how narratives can serve as source material to produce a language built through movement, even if the source material may not end up being recognizable as such. The connections to the Odyssey feel ambiguous, but if anything, that ambiguity works in the piece’s favour. With clear intentionality in Simon Rossiter’s exemplary lighting design (employing bold spotlights that close and open with what goes on around them), I was given impressions of solitude and fleeing. The absence of specific texts and other storytelling devices meant I could place my own meaning onto the production.
X (DIX)’s greatness emerges from having done so many things well. Perhaps what I find so exciting about it is that in having done so, there was no need for a gimmick. Of course, innovating with interdisciplinarity advances the form. But so often in dance there seems to be a need to present something totally outside the box when something more simple would land better. Here, I got a lot out of watching great dancing to great music. Go and see it if that’s what you want, too.
X (DIX) closed on June 18. You can learn more about the production here.
Intermission reviews are independent and unrelated to Intermission’s partnered content. Learn more about Intermission’s partnership model here.
Martin Austin
Martin Austin is a PhD student at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies. Martin’s research explores the past and current state of ethics in Euro-American dance practice. He is research assistant for Category Is, a study of house ballroom communities in Toronto and Montréal, and lead administrative coordinator of the Institute for Dance Studies.
LEARN MORE
iPhoto caption: Photo by Ian Jackson
REVIEW: In Ronnie Burkett’s darkly intelligent Wonderful Joe, gentrification hits like a meteor
When Siminovitch-winning puppet virtuoso Ronnie Burkett chose the focus of his latest play, was he thinking of TO Live’s $421-million plan to redevelop its St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts?
iPhoto caption: 13 Plays About ADHD All At The Same Time graphic courtesy of Circlesnake Productions.
REVIEW: 13 Plays About ADHD All At The Same Time is true to its title
While the play’s structure may occasionally leave you feeling as scattered as its protagonists, its heart, humour, and raw honesty will keep your thoughts churning well into the night.
iPhoto caption: Goblin:Macbeth production still by Jae Yang.
REVIEW: Goblin:Macbeth might just leave you gobsmacked
While most of the entertainment comes from the goblins’ antics whenever the Shakespearean text is paused or subverted for comic effect, the secret sauce to this whole endeavour is that it really is an honest-to-goodness staging of that text, designed to showcase the performers’ near-virtuosic mastery of the material.
iPhoto caption: Photo by Dahlia Katz.
REVIEW: The Thanksgiving Play wriggles in performative wokeness
In 2024, is there a way to produce an engaging, culturally sensitive play about the first American Thanksgiving for elementary schoolers? The Thanksgiving Play, penned by Native American playwright Larissa FastHorse and now playing at Mirvish’s CAA Theatre, poses that question in its first five minutes, then throws the query out with the cranberry sauce in its madcap exploration of a devised theatre piece at an unnamed primary school.
iPhoto caption: The Anger in Ernest and Ernestine production still by Curtis Perry.
REVIEW: The Anger in Ernest and Ernestine simmers just below the surface
While the show certainly induces laughter, some of its strong design elements paint the actors into a corner, at times making the comedy feel a touch manufactured.
iPhoto caption: Samca production still by Barry McCluskey.
REVIEW: Samca is a disturbing, unique production that explores folklore and womanhood
The feminist folklore play, written by and starring Natalia Bushnik and Kathleen Welch, is an engrossing and sometimes frightening experience, perfect to kick off the scary season.
iPhoto caption: ROSA promotional image courtesy of RUTAS.
RUTAS redefines ‘American’ theatre and performance
“I think [Latinx artists] have always been a strong voice, but now we need to be even louder to the rest of Canada,” says multidisciplinary performance artist Carlos Rivera. “The things that we can bring to the table and bring to the stages can show the beauty, and the strain, and the capacities that Latino Americans carry with us in our bodies, in our minds, in our souls.”
iPhoto caption: Original photos by Kendra Epik.
With its Spring Double Bill, Toronto Dance Theatre centres community and new voices
For the Spring Double Bill, artistic director Andrew Tay is considering how programming can be a means of supporting emerging artists.
iPhoto caption: Photos by Roya DelSol
REVIEW: Boundary-pushing TDT double bill features face-riding and odd sensuality
Both pieces in the winter double bill are par for the course with TDT’s recent artistic output: unabashedly queer and consistently experimental.
iPhoto caption: Photo by Ambra Vernuccio.
REVIEW: Jungle Book reimagined needs a little reimagining
Indeed, Akram Khan “reimagines” a historically complex story into a two-hour exposé on the environmental catastrophe. Jungle Book’s captivating visual effects and dynamic physicality brought the opening night audience to their feet. But as the choreographer’s first billing as director, Jungle Book’s storytelling doesn’t always live up to Khan’s skill as a dancemaker.
When it comes to dance made in Canada, there’s an overabundance of great work happening.
iPhoto caption: Photo by David Hou.
REVIEW: Richard II at the Stratford Festival
There’s an electricity in every step Stephen Jackman-Torkoff takes as Richard, with his propensity for vanity, pleasure, and rash decisions.
Comments