Tag: Robert LePage

Dancing Norman McLaren, One Frame At A Time

On May 29, 2018

In ballet, Canada, film, interviews, movies, video

Artists of the Ballet in rehearsal for Frame By Frame. (Photo: David Leclerc)

If you don’t know the name Norman McLaren, you will, and soon, thanks to a new production happening at the National Ballet of Canada. The UK-born, Canada-based animation innovator, who won an Oscar for his 1952 anti-war film Neighbours, was one of the most important and influential figures in the history of film. It has been rightly been noted that McLaren (who passed away in 1987) “extend(ed) the boundaries of creative animation” through his unique and highly experimental approach. His 82 works (along with 52 test films) were added to the UNESCO heritage collection in 2009, and his name is slowly coming to be recognized more widely outside of experimental cinema circles. It’s been keenly observed that “without him, (Canada) would be lighter an Academy Award or two, and likely much more.”

The title of the National Ballet of Canada’s new work, Frame By Frame, set to premiere at Toronto’s Four Seasons Centre this coming Friday (June 1st), references McLaren’s painstaking method of drawing on film stock, frame by meticulous frame, and of his work with stop-motion animation sequencing. Each animated frame had a slight differentiation (being done by human hands, after all), which resulted in a charmingly wobbly end effect when viewing.

Canadians of a certain generation will remember, with glee, McLaren’s exuberant creations, having been exposed to them regularly in school and on television. They were an inescapable part of growing up in Canada, like so many animated works that came from the beloved National Film Board (NFB). I loved the wiggly lines (the so-called “boiling” effect in action) and the zealous embrace of surreal imagery that characterized so much of McLaren’s work; it forced you to think and feel at once, a new experience for small children more used to fantastical diversion and reaction-inducing entertainment. The jolly headless hen from “Hen Hop” forever makes me smile, even as it makes me think carefully about what’s on my dinner plate (to say nothing of reminders of the horror-meets-macabre-humor of my mother’s childhood farm stories, which I will leave to reader imagination). McLaren’s works were so unlike the Disney ones I’d see in cinemas as a child, more free and fun and loopy. Many also had strong social messages, like 1952’s “Neighbours“, a nine-minute film that uses pixilation to tell the story of two people who fight over a single flower; it garnered much praise and admiration, from artists like Pablo Picasso as well as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences. He also worked with a host of famous music figures, including Glenn Gould, Ravi Shankar, Pete Seeger, and Oscar Peterson (the latter being featured in Frame By Frame), and his “Pas de Deux“, “Adagio“, and “Narcissus” are among the most beautiful dance films ever made. The animator met his life partner, Guy Glover, at a ballet performance in London, and his fascination with both music and art permeates his creations, whether they are music/dance specific or not. McLaren firmly believed that when it came to film, “how it moved was more important than what moved.”

\Norman McLaren working on “Hen Hop” in 1942. (Photo: BFI)It is understandable, then, that one sees within McLaren the unmistakable qualities which are so suited to a stage transfer of his life and works. Choreographer Guillaume Côté (who is Associate Choreographer at the National Ballet of Canada and a longtime beloved artist there) and celebrated director Robert Lepage drew inspiration from McLaren’s works — their rhythms, their energies, their winking, sometimes-whimsical, sometimes-pensive spirits — in creating Frame By Frame. Along with a host of celebrated theatre productions and work for Cirque du Soleil, Lepage has also leant his talents to classical music arts; his opera productions have been staged at the Canadian Opera Company, Opéra National de Paris, and the Metropolitan Opera in New York. In creating Frame By Frame, his first work with the National Ballet of Canada, Lepage recently said that “(c)lassical ballet is a wonderful craft, and I respect it a lot. It’s just that it also needs to be reinvented in a certain way if we want the craft to survive.”

Robert Lepage and Guillaume Cote in rehearsal for Frame By Frame. (Photo: Elias Djemil-Matassov)

The production is a collaboration between the National Ballet of Canada, the National Film Board of Canada, and Ex Machina, Lepage’s production company in Québec City. It is a project several years in the making, and will reportedly make full use of a range of multidisciplinary technologies, including live projections and camera work. The Québecois director has said he wanted to create a “digital homage” to McLaren’s analogue world, and Friday night, audiences will see for themselves the fruits of these labours, with the animator’s work being brought to life in a whole new way.

\Jack Bertinshaw in rehearsal for Frame By Frame. (Photo: Elias Djemil-Matassov)National Ballet Second Soloist Jack Bertinshaw will be performing the role of Norman McLaren in Frame By Frame. The Australian-born dancer has been in a range of works for the company since joining in 2011, including a sprightly performance as Uncle Nikolai in seasonal presentations of The Nutcracker, Mitch in A Streetcar Named Desire, Benno in Swan Lake, and the title role in Pinocchio. I was curious to ask him what it was like to work around the level of technology LePage is utilizing, his experience as an Australian in discovering the works of a Canadian icon, and the various joys and challenges of capturing life, art, and animation through movement.

What’s it like to embody a real person? It seems like a rather unique opportunity within the ballet world.

I’ve done quite a bit of reading and obviously Robert and his team have done a lot of extensive research. With each scene we talk through each concept and what their aim is and what it should be acted as, and portrayed as. They wanted to make sure I had enough of myself in it too. While I’m being Norman and staying as true to that as the kind of fun-loving guy he was, he was also around this this close-knit group of friends —we touch on that. I wouldn’t say it’s difficult, but you’re right, most of time it’s a character like the Mad Hatter, you don’t get to go through a life from beginning to end very often. We do things like Nijinsky and it’s a portrayal, but it’s rare. Certainly this sort of a part is new for me.

Artists of the Ballet in rehearsal for Frame By Frame. (Photo: David Leclerc)

Have you ever worked on show with this level of technology?

Not this much. My background is in jazz and tap, I came from one of those schools who’d do their yearly shows that were as high-tech as possible, with cool lighting and such — but not anywhere near this level of high-tech projection. (In Frame by Frame) it comes from everywhere — above, front… I’m holding a camera at one point that works. It’s really amazing.

Does the technology make it easier or harder to perform in?

It depends — if anything, it’s easier and harder. Something Guillaume and I have had to figure out, mostly, is how we can best enhance this technology; we can’t fight against it. We have to be clear on the certain themes we’re dancing as there’s a camera from above on us, and that’s being projected onto the back screen so the audience in general will be looking at the above aspect — we can’t fight against that. It’s been a learning process over three years now, and it’s been really unique. This is the first time for dancers that we’ve been in the process from the get-go, from the round-table of, ‘let’s create a ballet.’ We normally get to the process where the choreography arrives, and they’ve got things in order, with storyline and sets and costumes/designs somewhat figured out. This is the first time where we’d go to Quebec for a week or two in the summer and we would be with Ex Machina, at their building with all their equipment, and we’d workshop. We played with so many different types of technology there — what works, what doesn’t work.

And LePage was open to all of it?

It was his idea! He has the studio and the technology to do all of this on the regular, for his works with his team.

Greta Hodgkinson and Jack Bertinshaw in rehearsal for Frame By Frame. (Photo: Elias Djemil-Matassov)

What’s this kind of collaborative creation been like?

Inspiring! Working with Robert LePage and his team has been incredible. It’s like nothing we’ve ever done. It’s going to be so different — that’s one thing we’re interested to see: how Toronto audiences perceive it, how they take these ideas. It’s a lot of fun in a lot of scenes — a lot of Norman’s works were fun and funky, with odd humor and quirkiness, so we’ve made sure that’s a good part of it while also maintaining enough of Norman’s life throughout.

There will be audiences who either know McLaren’s work very well, or don’t know his stuff at all but love the ballet. What do you think they’ll come away with?

The show is so versatile, I think audiences who don’t know anything about him will still certainly come away with quite a lot. We sometimes portray exactly the work and sometimes we recreate it, like with “A Chairy Tale” — we’ve studied that video, and we do every single chair move and have black light going. We’ve tried to do the exact replications and bring (his works) to life so people who know it will appreciate it, and people who don’t, it’ll be like the first time watching his work.

So capturing the spirit of his work.

Yes, a lot.

Jack Bertinshaw (Photo: Sian Richards)

Guillaume has said that “everything that’s put on stage nowadays should be multidisciplinary, in a way.” Do you think there should there be a multidisciplinary Sleeping Beauty or Swan Lake? Using contemporary technology in producing traditional works is a big issue in the opera world also.

I certainly believe we should respect and honor the old original works. Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake today, I believe, are the most beautiful how they were originally created, but when you’re creating something new that’s never been done before… it’s why multidisciplinary is a bigger thing. Today we’re so exposed to new technology anyway, but there’s still a crowd that loves that original stuff.

Introducing anything new means risking people getting angry…

Nijinsky was one of the first originators of conceptual dancing and they threw tomatoes at him!

Once the shock of the new fades, it’s been suggested it then becomes the new norm. Some productions have to fight against history, but with this it seems like you’re less fighting it than celebrating it. What’s it been like to learn about these works?

Being Australian, I’m wasn’t aware of McLaren or his movies, but my mother is, oddly enough — she’s in film and television PR, so she’s a lot more in that world. She’d heard of him, and my uncle in London, he’s a cameraman for film, he knew his work also. My mum’s company and circle of friends heard about Frame by Frame and were like, “Wow, Norman McLaren!” Meanwhile I’d never heard of him before three years ago. I’ve done a lot of research and found out a lot more. We’re not making our own version of things; we’re honoring his works as truly as we can.

(S)He’s a S/He

By Catherine Kustanczy

On November 17, 2010

In art, Europe, fashion, history, theatre

“Onnagata” is a Japanese term used in kabuki theatre that refers to a male performer who would play the female role in a work. In the upcoming Eonnagata, a production created by theatre master Robert Lepage along with dancer Sylvie Guillem and choreographer Russell Maliphant, it becomes a metaphor for the exploration of gender, identity and finding one’s place in the world. Lepage uses the 18th century figure of Charles De Beaumont, who worked in the court of Louis XV a a diplomat and spy. Beaumont, known as the Chevalier d’Eon, was a skilled swordsman, and would don female clothing for his spy missions. At the time of Louis’s death in 1774, he was living in exile in London, but was allowed back to France three years later, where he lived as a woman. Even after his (her?) death in 1810, d’Eon’s gender remained a source of debate, though post mortems confirmed Beaumont was anatomically male – not that genitals can or ever should be a pre-determining factor in terms of individual leaning toward frocks over trousers. Why?

The sense of playfulness and provocation that figured so much in d’Eon’s life seems to have seeped into Eonnnagata, with Lepage blending his keen sense of grand theatricality with Maliphant’s muscular choreography and Guillem’s beautiful dance stylings. The 90-minute piece was produced in 2009 at Sadler’s Wells in London and runs here in Toronto for a quick two-night-run starting tomorrow at the newly-refurbished Sony Centre.

At a recent press conference, Lepage sat like an excited parent, with an elegant Guillem and a serious-looking Maliphant both couched to his right, and the director of Sadler’s Wells to his left. Between snatches of French (pour les journalistes Quebecois) and plenty of smiles, Lepage explained the whys and wherefores of choosing Beaumont as the subject of exploration. His answers were long but fascinating, showing a complete passion for the subject matter as well as its presentation. The Chevalier was “a playful character “, a quality that, one realizes, could just as easily apply to the international theatre artist himself. adding that Beaumont’s life “(has) things to say about …our own lives and energies” as well as “how you deal with the idea of identity, not just gender or sexuality” -but the issue of nationality.

The idea of drawing a base identity from gender is one that’s always fascinated me. How does genitalia dictate life choices? Why should it (they)? Professional choices? Sexual choices? Codes of conduct? Codes of behaviour? Even now, three hundred-plus years after d’Eon has passed, we’re still grappling with this notion, even as we both embrace and revile those who might question the strict rules that govern our ideas around what men and women “should” and “should not” do/ look like / react / choose / play / entertain / act in the world (see last post re: female aggression). I can’t help but think of Patti Smith yowling out “Gloria and posing on the cover of Horses, and the accusations of her being gay that floated around. Similarly, I can recall when Annie Lennox donned a brush cut and a suit for the “Sweet Dreams” video back in the early 80s, with the same (stupid/unfair/ignorant) comment being made about her (and me, because I was a huge fan & wound up emulating my heroine by wearing men’s suits for a time, and yes, eventually chopped my hair off too). Nowadays, Antony Hegarty confronts the construct of gender as rumours about Gaga being a hermaphrodite and good-grief-is-James-Franco-gay?!-isms float about. Despite refreshing attitudes in some quarters, I can’t help but smirk: we just have to label, define, know… don’t we? Arrgh.

Charles de Beaumont, or d’Eon as he was called, didn’t think anyone had to know. He did just as s/he pleased, living a stuffed-full life filled with adventure, tragedy, and more than its fair share of political intrigue. He moved between France and England throughout his/her life, and negotiated important historic/political moments (including handing Canada over to England, natch). A sense of self-assured fluidity pervaded everything the Chevalier touched. Such uncommon magic finds its modern equivalent in an artist like Lepage, who, French-Canadian, gay, internationally-sought, multi-lingual, multi-disciplined, and perpetually costumed (he wears wigs after a childhood case of alopecia), has that same embrace of transformation and changeability. His sizable body of work has taken him between continents and cultures for over three decades; from Canada to the U.S. to Europe to the Far East and back, the Quebec-based Lepage is a man in demand. He’s recently directed opera – the Metropolitan Opera Company’s production of Wagner’s massive Ring cycle (Das Rheingold opened the Met’s season earlier this autumn), the COC’s The Nightingale -and created lauded works like the sprawling, nine-hour Lipsynch (part of last year’s Luminato Festival) as well as The Andersen Project (recently produced by the Canadian Stage Company), among many, many more. I’ve always loved the sense of imagination that is so strikingly present in all of his work; you may not come out of a Lepage production completely soothed, but you will certainly come out stimulated, your eyes full of intriguing images, your head swimming with words, your heart bursting with the moving energy of live performance.

Performing isn’t something Lepage has done a lot of recently. With Eonnagata, he’s returning to the stage, attempting to get away from the yoke of verbal expression he feels has dominated his work. “When I started my work twenty, thirty-some years ago, I was much more physical than verbal, but in time I became way too talkative. Blahblahblah. A lot of physical explorations (were) pushed aside. (Eonnagata) was a good opportunity for me to shut up! I do speak a little bit, but it was good to go back to something I wasn’t necessarily trained. It’s more organic.” I think he hit the nail on the head on why I’ve returned to drawing and painting. There’ something much more raw and primal about movement, pure sound, pure light, and pure… experience.

Russell Maliphant echoed Lepage’s sense of liberation in terms of working on something outside his area of expertise. “Sometimes those things demand something of you, “he explained, “something you haven’t practiced before, and it’s a new challenge as a performer. I haven’t worked with props before, and there’s a variety of props in this. I haven’t done any singing before. I haven’t spoken onstage for twenty-something years, so in all those things, they’re very… challenging and interesting to go to as a performer. They demand you go to a place you wouldn’t go to if you were working in your comfort zone. That’s inspiring.”

Sylvie, looking like a Parisienne version of Anna Wintour sans the sunglasses and frowning, agreed with this sentiment. She was interested in what she called the “theatrical” possibilities inherent in combining the life of a fascinating figure with Japanese theatrical tradition; that sense of exploration extended to the costumes in the show, done by the late, great Alexander McQueen. “I didn’t know (him),” she said wistfully, “but I knew his work, and I could see his crazy poetic imagination. I felt he was the right kind of person to do it.”

Over the course of their first meeting with the British designer, the team introduced the project and their vision of integrating dance, music, and live performance with kabuki theatre. By the second meeting, Guillem say “he understood completely what it was, but he said one thing: ‘If I do it, I want my costumes to be part of the show. I don’t want to be just dressing, I want to be part of the story, part of what you do, part of the character and who he is.'”

Commenting on the finished product, Sylvie’s delicate features lit up. “(McQueen) had poetry, refinement… it’s just what we needed.” If only he had lived to see it!, I wanted to shriek. There’s something about the fluidity of d’Eon’s life, his easy movement between the world of the high court and the streets, his courting of controversy, his dedication to living his life according to his own mores and the price he paid for his choices that I suspect the British designer liked. This, combined with the strong poetic theatricality of three supreme artists like LePage, Guillem, and Maliphant, and … well, McQueen would (does) fit right in. And yet, his untimely end implies he never gave a thought to any kind of legacy. Again, there’s a parallel with Lepage.

“I’ve never considered myself a master,” he said carefully. “I’ve always been very thirsty for learning new things. Certainly this experience with amazing artists is part of my learning process, I’m not somebody who looks back at the past too much… I’m always interested in what’s the next challenge,where I can go, what can push me off track to find a new path. If there’s no putting yourself in danger, it’s not worth it.”

Bravo. Brava? Whatever.

Boldly Going…

By Catherine Kustanczy

On March 16, 2010

In opera

The Canadian Stage Company announced its 2010-2011 season this morning. Its Artistic and General Director, Matthew Jocelyn, is embracing a new approach for the company, one he hopes will help to re-define the company and its mandate over the 21t century; one might even suppose Jocelyn, Canadian-born but mainly French-employed, is trying to re-define the Canadian theatrical landscape with his bold, unique choices. In looking over the release , there’s something undeniably refreshing about this kind of vision: worldly, unapologetic, broad and arty. It remains to be seen whether Toronto audiences will embrace this vision, but it’s nonetheless heartening to see this kind of chutzpah within the cliquey world of Toronto theatre.

Jocelyn aims to “redefine Canadian Stage as a home not only for great Canadian and international plays, but also for trans-disciplinary theatre that pushes the boundaries of convention and reflects a resolutely 21st century aesthetic.” That aesthetic includes featuring the work of Quebec native -and theatre visionary – Robert LePage in the 2010-2011 season. LePage’s The Andersen Project will be making its Toronto debut in October; according to the release, it’s “a modern-day multimedia fairytale” that is based on the work of Hans Christian Andersen. LePage? Andersen? Sounds like all kinds of mad, manic magic. I was bowled over by the artistry LePage brought to The Nightingale at the Canadian Opera Company last October, and though The Andersen Project isn’t new (it was commissioned by Denmark in 2005 to mark the 200th anniversary of the famous writer’s birth), there’s always something so inspiring and fresh about seeing LePage’s work in Toronto. It feels as if he’s bringing a European sensibility that Toronto, for all its talk of being a “world-class city”, is still deathly afraid of truly embracing.

Come November is the multimedia production Studies in Motion: The Hauntings of Eadweard Muybridge by the Electric Company Theatre, featuring the poetic choreography of accomplished Canadian dancer Crystal Pite. Quebecois dancer Edouard Locke will also be part of the Canadian Stage season with his grond-breaking La La La Human Steps company in as-yet-untitled work set to premiere in May 2011. (You might recall La La La worked with David Bowie in the 1980s.) I love the fearless combination of dance and drama here; again, it’s a European approach to theatre (and its integration of other artforms) that is indicative of the kind of worldly thinking Jocelyn’s experience (mainly with Atelier du Rhin) entails.

That experience also lends itself to reaching out to Canada’s national arts organization. Thus, the National Arts Centre‘s English Theatre head honcho Peter Hinton arrives in 2011 to direct Saint Carmen of the Main by Michel Tremblay; the work is a co-production with the NAC and runs February 7th to March 5th. Canadian dynamo Jennifer Tarver will also be directing for Canadian Stage. She might be best-known outside of Canadian theatre circles for her celebrated production of Beckett’s craggily moving work Krapp’s Last Tape featuring Brian Dennehy that ran in Stratford and then Chicago. Come April 2011, she’ll be helming the Canadian premiere of The cosmonaut’s last message to the woman he once loved in the former Soviet Union, by David Greig. The work was first produced at the Edinburgh Festival in 1999 and went on to run at the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego and the Donmar Warehouse in London. Now there’s a play with passport cred to burn.

Along with smaller productions at the Berkeley Street Theatre (the smaller stage used by the Canadian Stage Company) involving local companies like Nightwood and Studio 180, the Berkeley will also host a Spotlight On Italy series March 15th through 26th, 2011. Programming is totally intriguing, and includes many works that won’t be familiar to Canadian theatre audiences. Nunzio and La Festa, two award-winning plays from Sicily’s Compagnia Scimone Sframeli will see productions, along with the dance theatre of la natura delle cose by Florence’s Compagnia Virgilio Sieni, whose Artistic Director, Virgilio Sieni, has twice received the UBU prize, Italy’s top theatre award.

“The Spotlight Festival,” notes Jocelyn, “demonstrates (the Canadian Stage Company’s) commitment to showcasing some of the most extraordinary international companies that challenge the classical notions of theatre.” I can hear some Canadian arts types moaning that we already have companies that do that -but how much more can they -and we -learn by including the works of others within our own diaspora? Culturally, they inform our “Canadian-ness” every bit as much as works by Michel Tremblay, David French, Judith Thompson, Florence Gibson, George F. Walker, and the myriad of other playwrights who are studied and produced across this country. If the 1960s and 70s were all about establishing a distinctly Canadian voice, the 21st century is about seeing how much that voice can sing with other voices -in harmony, or not. Will audiences go for it? That remains to be seen. But it’s surely good to see Jocelyn’s vision of the Canadian Stage Company going above and beyond the predictable, the safe, and the well-worn. It’s time for something new. Welcome to the world, Toronto. I think you’re going to like it.

2009: Not A List, a Remembrance.

By Catherine Kustanczy

On December 30, 2009

In opera

Lists are, to my mind, a way of categorizing those things that generally defy categorization. They’re also just a cop-out for reminiscence. I tend to shy away from lists that show up this time of year, mainly because what I think is the best so-and-so of the past year (or decade) probably won’t match anyone else’s -nor should it. Memories are personal things, like opinions, and rather than arguing over veracity or validity, I tend to find a deeper meaning in simply reading the personal remembrances of others -for instance, someone’s most memorable meal or personal highlight for the year -as opposed to any top ten list that’s designed (usually solely) to ruffle feathers.

So here, in no particular order, are just a few of my favourite 2009 highlights:

Jessica Jensen
The Canadian designer best known for her exquisite leather goods ventured into the world of clothing at the start of this past autumn’s LG Fashion Week. The pieces were interestingly presented in artist Thrush Holmes‘ studio, located along Queen Street West in Toronto.

What made this marriage of fashion and art so fascinating were the various intersections between creativity and commerce; with the muted colours and billowing folds of Jensen’s pieces draped onto white, faceless, feature-less mannequins, Holmes’ studio resembled something of a retail space; it was less creation, and more consumption. But placed together with the work of Jensen’s photographer-husband (which definitely had hints of Sugimoto in its contemplative simplicity), the set-up encouraged lingering, contemplating, and connecting different ideas and pressentations. The links between the source of her inspiration (the moody climate of the American Eastern seaboard) and the end result (simply-constructed pieces in an array of pre and post-storm colours) was made clearer, with the space transformed into an intriguing mix of old and new definitions of art, artfulness, creation and commerce. Nicely done.

Goran Bregovic
The Eastern European singer, in Toronto this past June for the Luminato Festival of Arts and Creativity, proved to be wonderful, charming, curios conversationalist, and it remains one of my favourite interviews. His first appearance here -he played two shows, the first being a massive, open-air show in a main square in the city’s core -was met with a riotous response. Singing, clapping, dancing, climbing the scaffolding -and two of the city’s main roads closed -all for a man who doesn’t sing in English (okay, one song). His concert the following night -in a smaller club, the celebrate the release of his Best-Of album -was warm, ebullient, joyous, and raucous, and brought me closer to my own Eastern European background than I’d ever been before. It also re-awakened my love of dance. Easily one of the most musically fascinating -and personally important -concerts of my life.

The Nightingale
The Robert LePage-directed work received its world premiere at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts this past fall. I had my doubts about pairing Stravinsky and the Quebec-born artist, mainly because the former’s music is, to my ears, so incredibly difficult at points. Where -how -would LePage find his way into this? Find his way he did, though, with the use of creative puppetry, shadowplay, sumptuous costuming, and a pit-full of water. Using a fascinating visual palette that embraced the Russian flavour of the piece, as well as the piece’s Oriental leanings, The Nightingale was a feast for the eyes, ears -and the heart. Easily one of the most memorable opera productions, ever.

Food Writing
From walking around Antony John’s wonderous, beautiful farm, to attending the Brickworks Picnic, to tasting teas -and champagnes -at Hart House, this has been one heck of a great year, food-wise, for me. Not only have I expanded my professional (and photographic) repertoire by chasing these features, but I’ve received a great education in the process.

I’ve also become keenly aware of both my own purchasing power, and of the power of social media with regards to food. I was interviewed by AP reporter Michael Hill about my love of twecipes. And I’ve met and spoke with some truly wonderful people, some of whom I met via the wonders of the interwebs, including Food & Drink/Globe writer/author Lucy Waverman, Ruth Klahsen (the Queen of Monforte) and Maria Solokofski, the Guerilla Gourmet; there’s been more enlightening yacks with raw milk farmer (and good food crusader) Michael Schmidt and Earth To Table authors/chefs Jeff Crump and Bettina Schormann, who were so informative, affable, and down-to-earth (irony intended) in their approach to food. More than ever, 2009 was the year in which my kitchen became my haven.

Toot Toot
One more thing: I was profiled in Shameless Magazine. It’s not very often I feel completely proud or satisfied with my work -creative, professional or otherwise (my inner critic is also a relentless bully) -but really, having this piece out there and so widely circulated was a personal boon, and the response I’ve received has been tremendous, and inspiring. I’m going to try to keep myself open to more of these good moments in 2010, and the decade it heralds.

Here’s to continuing the magic.

Jessica Jensen / Thrush Holmes’ studio photo by Kimberly Lyn.

The Nightingale: Fluttering Simplicity

By Catherine Kustanczy

On October 19, 2009

In opera

Igor Stravinsky has never endeared those who crave traditional melodic lines. His music is raucous, rough, and challenging –not the kind of thing you can hum or whistle to.

So it was with a mix of trepidation and curiosity that I took my traditional-opera-loving mum to see the new production of his 1908 opera The Nightingale, an adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen fable. She’s always thought of Stravinsky as “weird” (you might too, if your favourite music is grand Italian opera) and I know she was never a fan of the Russian’s challenging, difficult, definitely non-hummable music. His infamous statement, that “music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all,” has been assessed and analyzed, criticized and derided, and yet I suspect he may’ve been onto the same kinds of thing as Marcel Duchamp, or even later, Brian Eno. Stravinsky’s work isn’t about making you feel comfortable, and indeed, that isn’t the point of what I’d consider good art. Spoon-feeding is atrocious; it takes a keen director, respectful of the material but strong in their own sense of individualism and craft to bring a vision that might express something through the myriad of sounds and effects Stravinsky laid throughout his scores.

Enter Robert Lepage. The Nightingale marks his return to the Canadian Opera Company after a sixteen-year absence. Just as he brought a bold, striking vision to the 1993 production of Bluebeard’s Castle and Erwartung so he brings a playful, if equally visionary sense to this latest work. Stravinsky was the musical revolutionary of his time; LePage is his contemporary theatrical equivalent. Neither artist has ever taken the safe road with regards to their respective arts, so it came as no surprise when it was announced last year that the Quebec born, multi-award-winning theatre director would be filling the orchestra pit of The Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts with 67,000 litres of water as part of his vision for the piece. That’s a whole lotta water, and people like my mother (a longtime COC subscriber) wondered if it was also a whole lotta waste-of-time.

But the idea -in its audacity, grandeur, and sheer weirdness -intrigued her, and I would imagine, many of those in attendance at Saturday’s opening. Opera is meant to be big and bold and ballsy; there’s no such thing as subtle opera in the larger scheme of things. The adjective “grand” is attached to opera (or at least some styles) for a reason, and it’s always this sense of “the big” that pervades popular notions around the artform. I’ve sat through more than one production of Aida that featured live animals, including elephants, horses, and even -once -a zebra. So why not fill up the orchestra pit? Why not have puppets? Why not embrace the grand-opera mystique and majesty?

But even majesty is best used when it’s done with simplicity, class, and most of all, awareness. To be big just for the sake of it smacks of narcissism; to go large without an overriding artistic idea feels simplistic. And the line between “simple” and “simplistic” is fine but it’s important. Too often in the arts world -of high culture and low culture equally -the “large” aspect is blindly presented and unquestioningly embraced. Lepage doesn’t offer any solutions for this modern artistic conundrum but he does have the visionary mindset to look behind and around him for clues as to how to solve it. In the program notes, he offers his theory theatre’s origins: “Man was sitting around a bonfire in a cave telling stories and one day he stood up and used his shadow to illustrate his tale. Theatre was born using nothing more than light and imagination.” It’s this sense of childlike play that the director transfers onto the complex musicality of Stravinsky, making for a unique opera-going experience that both pays homage to the roots (or suspected roots) of theatrical performance, and opens the door to a new way of seeing an old, frequently-stodgy artform. In other words, he reinvents the way we perceive opera and its relevance to theatre, performance, and music itself. he also make it personal, by injecting elements many of us recognize from childhood. They’re simple elements, but not simplistic. Lepage trusts and respects his audience -their capacity for creation, imagination, comprehension and invention -and this abiding love of humanity shines through every aspect of the production. Clever, creative use of light, shadow, water, and the human form tease out the the complexities of Stravinsky’s work, revealing its inherent playfulness and its gentle parody of the foibles and follies of human nature.

In so doing, the composer’s seemingly-barren, cold modern music is infused with a new richness. In The Fox, a Russian folk tale based on Russian Folk Tales by the writer Aleksandr Afanasyev, he creates a world where we see folk tales being literally shared -told, re-told, re-interpreted and recycled -with choruses of singers dressed in traditional Russian garb standing on side platforms. Fables about wily foxes, proud roosters, crying babies, and curious cats are shared, expressed, and laughed over. Another layer of theatre is literally grafted on top of this via a large, cinematically-shaped screen running the length of the stage, over top of the orchestra. Using shadows made by hands and later bodies (thanks to puppeteers), we see a cat’s tail swishing about, a rabbit’s eyes dancing to and fro, a rooster guarding his hens; each movement matches and accentuates elements in Stravinsky’s score. Here is a whole new way of experiencing the Russian composer -as well as the operatic form itself : as mischievous, theatrical, imaginative, perhaps even fun. Opera? Fun? Hell yeah. Even my mother said as much at intermission.

For The Nightingale, Lepage has taken Andersen’s fable about the golden-throated bird and the Chinese Emperor who covets her and turned it into a magical metaphor about the relationship of man and nature. As the singers control their puppets, with the aid of five talented puppeteers, I couldn’t help but notice the near-identical dress between the performers and their doll-like counterparts. Puppet designer Michael Curry has fashioned a series of creations that gorgeously complement their human counterparts in both appearance, and, thanks to choreographer Martin Genest, movement. Each puppet is like a child, with a larger grown-up version of itself controlling, manipulating, sounding, and speaking for it. It reminded me a bit of when my own mother would take me to the opera when I was very young, in fact. There was something sentimental and touching about the way each singer cradled and carefully controlled their smaller, ornately-dressed selves.

With lights from the orchestra musician’s music stands reflected in the water, I found myself musing, amidst the swirling raucousness of the music: art is reflected in nature; nature shows art what is truly is; nature reflects but has its own qualities one can’t totally control -and that is a good way of approaching (if not describing) the best sort of art. All this, from filling up an orchestra pit, though the genius was in the design. The reflections (intensified at the opera’s end by Diwali-eque floating candles) were not incidental; Etienne Boucher‘s specific, focused lighting strongly recalled the work of Bill Viola, with all of its spiritual, simple-meets-challenging aspects, encompassed within a live performance presentation.

The Nightingale involves so much more than mere, simplistic effect; it is a wonderous, child-like vision of an eternal dance between the natural world and the constructed one. Via the shadowplay of the first half, and the waterplay/puppeteering of the second, we’re reminded again and again to re-connect with our own playful instincts –ones, it must be said, that are as ancient as those first stories he refers to in the notes. Sometimes it’s via the most unexpected and challenging means that we come to find our own common humanity, and come to recognize our own nightingale, singing, flying, just waiting to be heard.

As to my mum? She’s still not a Stravinsky fan. But she adores Lepage. Bien sur.

Talking, Past

By Catherine Kustanczy

On March 8, 2009

In opera

Spending this Sunday prepping for a busy week, I received an email from a Toronto artist and photographer who shared a recent experience shooting a visiting celebrity. It lead to a series of exchanges around the nature of fame, the demands of blogging, and the ways some artistic disciplines translate visually. Expressing his frustration with photographing theatre, he wrote, in effect, “they were just talking. How is that interesting?” Good question -not just for photographers, but for audiences, theatre directors, and companies. He continued:

Maybe I’ve just seen too much theatre recently, but the monologuing of character interaction – where two characters talk past each other rather than to each other – and the lack of passion, emotion, or even dramatic moments seems to be areas where someone could be writing something different.

Don’t you sometimes come out of a play thinking it wasn’t really any different than many others you’ve seen?

Surprisingly, I found myself agreeing with him -though I reminded him that the Robert Lepage work Lipsynch is coming in June. But still, yes, on a personal level, I am sick of talk, or talk-and-shock. I’ve seen some great works, unquestionably, but they’ve been very text-centric, and indeed, after a while, they do begin blurring into one another. To me, theatre is more than talk, and good directors will understand the myriad of possibilities at their disposal. Regardless (or sometimes because) of budgetary limitations, creativity and inventiveness are always the hallmarks of great theatre.

So it was with some interest that I came across this recent post about Operation First Casualty. Visceral, immediate, timely, and unabashedly milking the idea of spectacle, IVAW gave San Francisco residents something to talk about. I have a feeling this kind of theatre affected those who experienced it on a far deeper level than words could ever reach.