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Uniquely ambitious

Toronto
The Citadel
02/14/2013 -  & February 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 2013
Rodney Sharman: From the House of Mirth
Dancers: Laurence Lemieux (Lily Bart), Claudia Moore (Judy Trenor), Victoria Bertram (Aunt Peniston), Christianne Ullmark (Grace/Gertie Farish)
Singers: Scott Belluz (Selden), Graham Thomson (Trenor), Alexander Dobson (Rosedale), Geoffrey Sirett (Dorset)
Parmela Attariwala (Violin), Carina Reeves (Cello), Jeanie Chung (Harmonium), Sanya Eng (Harp), Maika’i Nash (Musical Director, Piano)
James Kudelka (Director and Choreographer), Alex Poch-Goldin (Librettist), David Gaucher (Set Design), Jim Searle and Chris Tyrell (Costume Design), Simon Rossiter (Lighting Design)


L. Lemieux (© Paul Antoine Taillefer)


From the House of Mirth, billed as a music/dance/theatre collaboration, is an hour-long work with an overwhelming density of talent on display.


The producers are the two-person dance company Coleman Lemieux & Compagnie. Their resident choreographer since 2008 has been James Kudelka, former artistic director of the National Ballet of Canada, who has been creating dance since he was a student. This work, based on Edith Wharton’s 1905 novel The House of Mirth, brings back memories of Kudelka’s Washington Square (1979) based on the Henry James novel.


The venue is The Citadel, formerly a Salvation Army facility. Bill Coleman and Laurence Lemieux have managed to rustle up a million dollars (plus in-kind donations) to convert it to their needs. The performance space (called the Mimi Herrndorf Studio) seats 60. As the audience arrives we find a soirée underway, with eight elegantly dressed guests and salon music being performed. As one would expect, the intimacy of the space magnifies the impact of the work. (Even the harp comes across has a declarative instrument.) James Kudelka packs the essence of a rich novel into this reltively brief work (much as Frederick Ashton did in his one-act A Month in the Country).


The work recounts the story of Lily Bart, an attractive young woman of “good background” who gradually runs afoul of society’s unwritten rules. No theatre piece could be as heavily populated a novel so there is a cast of eight: four women, all dancers, and four men, all singers. The men also do some dance partnering, while one woman, Claudia Moore, has a single (crucial) spoken line.


Laurence Lemieux in the central role comes close to stealing the whole show. She truly excels when Lily performs a barefoot dance piece (à la Isadora Duncan) which serves to demonstrate just what a misfit she is with respect to the social mores of the day. For this section of the work, composer Rodney Sharman has arranged a Liszt élégie which gives cellist Carina Reeves a starring moment as well.


The four dancers are all sharply defined. It helps to have Victoria Bertram, character dancer extraordinaire, in the role of the stern aunt who acts as arbiter of the social rules.


Alex Poch-Goldin’s libretto consists of 13 numbers for the four men. Their fine voices are all distinctive - and they are stage-canny performers - but somehow their individual characters don’t emerge as clearly as the women’s. This perhaps reflects the subtleties of the novel which avoids stock characters - there is no mustache-twirling villain or some such.


Maika’i Nash has quite a job co-ordinating all this from the piano placed toward the rear of the performing space. I thought Rodney Sharman’s inclusion of a harmonium an odd choice but it adds a subtle but effective degree of menace.


I can think of only two other works that were designed to combine dance with singing: Stravinsky and Nijinska’s Les Noces of 1923, and the Brecht/Weill/Balanchine Die Sieben Todsünden (The Seven Deadly Sins) of 1933. Neither of those works, however, so closely intertwines dance and singing as From the House of Mirth.


The work was first performed last May when its seven performances sold out. The same cast has been assembled for this 14-performance revival. In the indie dance scene this amounts to a runaway hit.



Michael Johnson

 

 

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