Courtesy of Wojciech Mochniej
Time has a way of creeping up on you; before you know it you’re already celebrating a 20th anniversary.
Such is the case anyway for Melissa Monteros and Wojciech Mochniej artistic directors of W&M Physical Theatre which began as Dance Theatre of Gdansk in Poland in 1995. Their latest production Waiting Rooms in Heaven offers the audience a chance to think back through their own lives and where they might transition to next.
The show was inspired by a few other things too. One was a large pile of discarded chairs across from W&M’s studio which informed the set and the idea of waiting. In developing the work Monteros says she came across a quotation from Sri Lankan author Thisuri Wanniarachchi that they felt captured the piece: “I wish life was written in pencil so we could erase it and write it all over again.”
“We’ve done so many works that we almost feel like we understand them better now when you look back at where were you in that period of time” says Monteros of the contemporary dance company’s 20-year history. “We started asking a lot of questions about that and the idea of waiting. I started to think about this idea of many deaths that are new beginnings — things ending and beginning why are we waiting and what is it that makes us transition?”
Speaking of things ending and beginning Waiting Rooms in Heaven is closer to its beginning than its end. Presented as a preview by the University of Calgary’s School of Creative and Performing Arts’ Dance Pro Series the production will tour to Poland this spring and then circle back to Calgary in 2016.
The set for the show presents a waiting room and dozens of chairs. Although there are a few heavenly gestures and moods Waiting Rooms in Heaven isn’t specifically evocative of heaven but rather the life changes and transitions that we all face. “One of the questions that we’re asking is do they know where they are and do they want to go on or do they want to go back?” says Monteros noting that the regret of a life not fully lived is one of the major emotions that comes through in the work.
As for the choreography itself “it’s one thread but there’s a lot of individual stories and they’re crossing and changing and mutating” says Mochniej. “For someone who doesn’t know much about dance it’ll be a nice open picture — somebody who would be more intrigued to track individuals they will clearly see changes of relationship and how they’re evolving.”
Added to the mix of dancers are a few actors and a live musician (bassist Kent Brockman). “We wanted people who were experienced in working with text and who could quickly understand theatrically how a very small amount of text can resonate fully” says Monteros. To help keep the work fresh when it goes on tour W&M will be recasting the non-dancers for each city they visit — and so the show is likely to continue to evolve.
The development starts here though and Monteros and Mochniej are eager for feedback on the piece. “The dialogue has a lot to do with the work maturing; it matures because people ask us questions about it and because they’re asking questions we identify things that maybe we hadn’t really brought into our consciousness yet” says Monteros. “It helps us clarify our own vision of the work and then hopefully create a stronger relationship with the audience.”
Waiting Rooms in Heaven runs January 22 to 24 at University Theatre.