~ ONE JOURNEY ~

~ There is only one journey: going inside yourself. ~
- Rainer Maria Rilke

pushPULL ~ Monday, June 19, 2006

Or PUSHpull--I’m not sure which.

After the Storytelling Festival, Tom came to pick me up and we drove into Toronto to see Tom’s friend Robert perform in a dance show. It was pretty neat stuff--the dancing was good (I was a bit concerned with the first number, but I think maybe they just had to get warmed up).

Most impressive was the juggernaut that was the company itself. They marketed themselves as dancers who all have day jobs--mostly as professionals. So, they’re engineers, lawyers, editors etc. by day. And at night, they dance, and rehearse and put together a full-length show (I think it was probably 1.5 to 2 hours, with intermission), including costumes, an overarching, loose but unifying theme (“Unspoken Conversations”) and a number of diverse choreographies with different styles (tap, latin, swing, hip hop, country etc.), concepts (love triangles, abstract, dreams come true, etc.) and dancers--of which there were over thirty. They even had a couple of full-company numbers, which must have been nutso to coordinate.

They even got coverage in the Globe--which is amazing for an amateur company. The dancing itself ranged from good but not professional level to truly amazing. They also had more diverse body types up on stage, which was refreshing to see--real people, doing the moves and doing them well!

In the Globe article, they talked about how most of the company love dancing, but also really enjoy their day jobs (ergo: the “pushPULL” of their two [a]vocations or whatever)--in addition to enjoying getting their regular, usually quite generous, paychecks. They’re all highly motivated and one imagines, well-connected (ergo: coverage in the Globe, though I think another facet to that is that the idea of living out one’s fantasy of being, say, a dancer, or a lounge singer etc. at night while having a regular job by day is a compelling one that resonates with many, and so seeing that in action is exciting in itself, particularly given that the performances were also good). The show we went to was pretty much sold out--nor was the theatre a small one.

Impressive.
::Posted by Anduril Elessar @ 8:07 PM::::
0 comments