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Culture Dance

All paired up

MIXED REPERTOIRE choreographed by Robert Glumbek, Kevin O’Day and Tedd Robinson, performed by Glumbek and Yvonne Ng. Presented by DanceWorks and tiger princess dance projects at the Enwave Theatre (231 Queens Quay West). From tonight (Thursday, April 28) to Saturday (April 30) at 8 pm. $33.50, stu/srs $22.50. 416-973-4000. See listing.

Yvonne Ng does a great robert Glumbek impression. She’s describing how the two contemporary dance artists first decided to collaborate. More than a decade ago, during rehearsals for Bill James’s Wind, the two were sitting around in a west-end warehouse when Ng casually suggested they do something together.

“And Robert said, Yeah, sure,'” says Ng, lowering her voice and mimicking Glumbek’s gruff Eastern European accent. “That’s when I thought, Oh, shit, now we have to really do something.’ It just came out of my mouth. It was a whim.”

Whim or not, their collaboration has endured and resulted in some of the most striking performances around.

Onstage, they’re an unlikely duo: he’s tall, buff, Caucasian, with a shaved head she’s petite, compact and Asian, with a long mane of black hair. But they make their differences work to their advantage.

One duet created for them, Tedd Robinson’s Stone Velvet, has been remounted many times – nationally and internationally – since it debuted in 2001.

This week they unveil a new program consisting of one solo apiece plus two duets, one by Kevin O’Day and the other a reworking of Glumbek’s 2004 A Tale Begun. That work, in which the tiny Ng is strapped to Glumbek’s back, was originally inspired by the birth of the latter’s daughter.

“She’s older now,” explains Ng, “so the piece has changed because of that. The dependency and need for each other has changed. The metaphors have evolved.”

Ng doesn’t want to give too much away about her new solo, Sticks, by Robinson, but she admits the creation process was different from that for Stone Velvet.

“He created steps for us with that earlier piece,” she says, “but here we experimented a lot with props, scenery, music. He had to see me work with things, carry branches and sticks.”

Ng says she and Glumbek have never discussed what makes them click onstage.

“We’re very different, of course, but we have similarities,” she says. “We’re both immigrants, Robert from Poland and me from Singapore.”

The mixed program doesn’t have any overarching theme.

“Except for us,” she says. “We’re the common denominator.”

glenns@nowtoronto.com

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