SKIN DIVERS & CARMEN choreography by Dominique Dumais and Davide Bombana (National Ballet of Canada). To June 14. $20-$200. 416-345-9595, luminato.com. See listing. Rating: NN
The National Ballet of Canada’s less than luminous Luminato double bill promises a night of passion and sensuality. Instead it leaves you cold.
First up is Dominique Dumais’s Skin Divers, inspired by Anne Michaels’s poetry.
Erotic but tasteful images of naked women’s bodies are projected onto a scrim while scantily clad dancers partner then separate in the murky space behind it. An audio recording of Mich aels herself reading two poems weaves into the piece, while an ensemble ably plays Gavin Bryars’s melodic second string quartet.
Thankfully, that scrim eventually lifts – it was hard to see anything – but Dumais’s choreography doesn’t evolve and becomes repetitive. As choreo graphy, the piece feels like a series of exercises. More multimedia elements – including the video projection of an eye – distract, as does Michaels’s lulling voice and dense imagery.
Davide Bombana’s Carmen feels much longer than its 50-minute running time. Less a straight interpretation of Bizet’s opera than a deconstruction of its elements, it draws on Bizet’s music and Prosper Mérimée’s original novel but also ventures into more contemporary territory by sampling music by Meredith Monk, Rodion Shchedrin and Tambours du Bronx.
The concept is fine – as is Dorin Gal’s stark set, which resembles a slick minimalist nightclub – but Bombana isn’t much of a storyteller. Characters and situations aren’t sufficiently set up, ensemble scenes feel purposeless, and one drag sequence near the end gets a laugh but stinks of gimmickry.
Bridgett Zehr and Aleksandar Antonijevic were Carmen and Don Jos in the performance I saw. She was razor-sharp in her executions but strangely bloodless, while he showed how much he’s grown as a dramatic dancer. Apart from Christopher Stalzer’s Garcia, a figure present in the original novel, the other performances – including Aarik Wells’s Escamillo, here represented by an actual bull – remained unmemorable.
Not what you want in any interpretation of Carmen.
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