M-Body’s evocative double-header
Imagine bringing the immensity of the prairies and the possibilities of dreams onto a dancer’s stage.
That’s what Dancer’s Studio West will be attempting in From One Country to Another a double-header performance by dance company M-Body. The first half is a solo work featuring Davida Monk artistic director of both companies in a minimalist exploration of landscape prairies and stillness. This piece which lends the entire show its name is choreographed with a particularly personal touch by Vancouver-based Lee Su-Feh a longtime colleague of Monk’s.
“I love the prairies but they are kind of exotic for me” says Lee who is more accustomed to West Coast rainforest. “On the one hand [ From One Country to Another ] is a prairie landscape but it’s also a landscape of the dancer’s body i.e. Davida’s body the dancer’s body as landscape.”
The title of the work is a line from a poem by Mary Oliver a poet whom Monk admires. Lee adds text to her choreography by having Monk speak lines of Oliver’s poetry as well as phrases from The Art of War author Sun Tzu.
Despite the linguistic dimension From One Country to Another doesn’t tell a story as such. “For me stories are always excuses for movement of time and space anyway so a good story whether you read it or see it when it works it works because time is arranged in a specific way” says Lee. “It’s not necessarily a representation of landscape because I’m not really interested in dance just as representation…. I’m interested in dance as a way of moving time and space from one point to another from one body to another one country to another.”
The second half takes us from an evocation of prairies to an exploration of expression inspired by Japanese miniatures called netsuke. Netsuke are highly expressive palm-of-your-hand-sized sculptures that are packed with detail. Monk choreographed this second work and takes its title Dream Pavilion from the name of one of these netsuke. “The Japanese understanding of that name is that it’s a mythological creature that consumed bad dreams” she explains.
Perhaps what we’re left with then are only good dreams; or at least a dreamscape in which two dancers Helen Husak and Walter Kubanek inhabit the postures expressions and implied movements of these tiny sculptures. Like Lee’s work Monk says that her piece is not focused on a narrative. “We’re thinking not of the dramatic through line but of allowing the forms to be the expressive flow of the dance and the dancers’ work to be in the form without caving to a kind of emotionality — a kind of Japanese detachment if you will.”
The netsuke themselves offer a rich spectrum of emotion and so Dream Pavilion has moments of both dynamic stillness and the fiery energy of Japanese mountain gods. You’ll find compassion playfulness and aggression all supported by musician Bill Horist who plays prepared guitar and a Vietnamese instrument called a dàn nguyêt as well as layering in recorded sound.
When I ask Monk what she hopes audiences will take away from the show she says that her answer has little to do with the specific pieces presented. “It’s more a sense of having an experience that is imaginatively powerful and recognizing the role that imagination plays in our lives and feeling a joy related to that” she says. “The range between the solo and Dream Pavilion is broad enough that one gets a real sense of potential range within the form itself or just within human expression.”
