A Danceworks Presentation
at the Enwave Theatre
March 4-6, 2010

   Choreographer-dancers Denise Fujiwara and Susie Burpee play to some of their great strengths in two new pieces. Fujiwara’s solo Lost and Found has a basis in butoh, her signature master form, but less of a narrative than in her marvelous Sumida River or Komachi. Dressed in layers of costume coloured pink, white, and pale green, she wears mismatched high heels and has her head crowned with an empty bird’s nest. She rolls over repeatedly in frustrated attempts to find her balance and centre of gravity on the floor, and she staggers when she arises. Is she simply mad or is she incarnating a metaphor? The metaphor grows stronger as the dance wears on, as does her madness or, at least, her frustration and single-minded preoccupation with restoring some sense of her identity and balance in life. The bird imagery is reinforced by the translucent nylons that pull tightly over her wrists and fingers, turning them into stocking puppet heads of nervous birds. At one point, she finds a green egg that she puts into her nest, and later she resembles a fledgling on unsteady feet as she tries to find flight. Accompanying this bird imagery is the idea of losing balance and rediscovering it, of losing sanity and restoring it, of interrogating change while wanting it. As is her custom, Fujiwara’s face is a mask of signs suggesting fear, anguish, relief, and triumph, but my own preference is for this dancer’s other expert butoh pieces.

   There is only the skin of a narrative in Fidelity’s Edge, but the piece is utterly riveting in its energy, patterning, and sheer symbiosis. Co-choreographed by Susie Burpee and her long-time dance partner Dan Wild, it has an almost relentless momentum and drive, becoming a thrilling spectacle of an intimate relationship that is often dangerously close to mad obsession and wild despair. Impersonating a couple that watch and listen to one of their own video-conversations on a television in their living room with a red couch and a white fur carpet, Burpee and Wild perform a highly stylized yet charged duet of confrontation, meditation, and release. Their bodies are their texts, though the video contains dialogue and the background song by Christine Fellows and John K. Samson supplies a sort of urban domestic libretto that amplifies the tense interaction of the dancers. Going from progressively forceful games of flirtation and contact-repulsion to the woman’s savage pleading and spasms of despair, Fidelity’s Edge thrives on arcs and swoops of yearning, love, anguish, and memory as Burpee charges at Wild, only to be rebuffed by the pillow he wields against her. As her momentum gains, she is met by his strong chest and she ricochets off him, sometimes landing on the floor from which she rolls back onto her feet. For his part, Wild can be seductively sensual or he can turn away from her in wild spins that become an emblem for their cyclical rites of passion. But their duet occupies two planes: one in real time; the other in symbolic time, so the dance grows in the viewer’s imagination, generating a sort of narrative with enticing ambiguity and undeniable power.

pic 1: Denise Fujiwara in "Lose and Found: (photo: John Lauener)

pic 2: Susie Burpee and Dan Wild in "Fidelity's Edge" (photo: Omer Yukseker



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