Posts by author:

Tao Fei

DANCE

Supergroup Power Failure

Thumbnail image for Supergroup Power Failure

ÉONNAGATA, FTA 2009

by Tao Fei
04.06.2009

Féstival TransAmériques’ mammoth headliner combined the signed-and-sealed talents of three international stage stars: Sylvie Guillem, rebel prodigy of classical ballet; Russell Maliphant, wonderboy of British contemporary dance; and Robert Lepage, revolutionary theatre director and one of Canada’s creative greats. Audiences flocked to Éonnagata like firework-revellers around a harbour. In the end, we got cool lights, [...]

More →

DANCE

The Body, Brutally

Thumbnail image for The Body, Brutally

SASHA WALTZ & GUESTS, FTA

by Tao Fei
28.05.2009

There are dances that conceal the body’s materiality and those that do not. Go to a classical ballet and you won’t witness flesh and bone, visceral weight and dimension. Want the brutal truth? See Körper. Created in 2000 for 13 dancers, the work that brought international fame to German choreographer Sasha Waltz seizes the body [...]

More →

DANCE

A Dance Destination Reborn

Thumbnail image for A Dance Destination Reborn

FESTIVAL TRANSAMÉRIQUES 2009

by Tao Fei
22.05.2009

One look at the programming of this year’s Festival TransAmériques and the memo reads loud and clear: Montreal is back on the map as a major destination for contemporary dance. Only in its third edition since debuting as both a theatre and dance festival, the FTA has prepared a walloping feast for the city’s dance [...]

More →

DANCE

The Guiding Shadows

Thumbnail image for The Guiding Shadows

CRYSTAL PITE / KIDD PIVOT, AGORA DE LA DANSE

by Tao Fei
06.05.2009

Crystal Pite is far and away Canada’s most exciting choreographic talent today.  She’s on a meteoric rise internationally, with a growing roster of commissions from some of the world’s leading companies.  Judging from her newly-minted work, Dark Matters, created on her Vancouver-based company Kidd Pivot and onstage in Montreal through Saturday, this artist lives up [...]

More →

DANCE

A Dream Of No Man’s Land

Thumbnail image for A Dream Of No Man’s Land

LES BALLETS C. DE LA B., Cinquième Salle

by Tao Fei
20.04.2009

Argentinean choreographer Lisi Estarás had all the right ingredients when she created Patchagonia, her first full-evening work for vanguard Belgian company Les Ballets C. de la B. Great dancers who can act. Live musicians on stage. A dramaturge. A clever title underscoring the listless (“patcha”) agony (“agonia”) of the most fabled desert in the Americas. [...]

More →

DANCE

Facing The Rite Music

Thumbnail image for Facing The Rite Music

LES GRANDS BALLETS CANADIENS, Théâtre Maisonneuve

by Tao Fei
31.03.2009

The arrival of a new Rite of Spring inspires a kind of bloodlust among dance audiences.  Not for the maiden who we know is sacrificed in the end, but for the latest choreographer stepping up to the towering Goliath of Igor Stravinsky’s 1913 score, arguably the seminal scandal that defined twentieth century music. Now, Belgian [...]

More →

STAGE

Equal Parts Labour and Mystery

EDGY WOMEN FESTIVAL 2009

by Tao Fei
20.03.2009

A TINY, MERCURY RIVULET of meaning dips and ducks in the stony regions of minimalism, and Antonija Livingstone has found it. An interdisciplinary movement-based artist now living and working in Montreal, Livingstone creates mysterious semiotic worlds out of task-like, repetitive movement and subtle evocations of connectedness. She nails the formula in her latest incarnation of [...]

More →

Page 2 of 212