YOU CAN’T BUY IT (BUT I’LL SELL IT TO YOU ANYWAYS) SUCKA created and performed by Andrew Tay, at the dance: made in canada/fait au canada festival. At the Betty Oliphant Theatre (404 Jarvis), Thursday (August 13) to Saturday (August 15). $25, stu/srs $20. princessproductions.ca.
Given its provocative title – You Can’t Buy It (But I’ll Sell It To You Anyways) SUCKA – you’d never know that Andrew Tay’s new dance piece is an investigation into our relationship with spirituality.
The piece premieres tonight, opening the four-day biennial dance: made in canada/fait au canada (d:mic/fac) festival.
“We’re going through a period where it’s so easy to turn anything into a spiritual event,” Tay says as we sit over tea at a busy Avenue du Parc coffee shop in Montreal. “You know like, ‘My morning coffee is my daily ritual,’ or going to a concert and singing along in a call-and-response with the artist that turns into a kind of pop spiritual experience. We elevate things to this spiritual level so fast.”
Tay questions the popularity of self-help books like Rhonda Byrne’s 2006 bestseller The Secret, or meditation as a way to get ahead professionally, even when they are based in serious tradition.
“In order for something to become a sacred object, you do have to take a leap of blind faith. That’s really beautiful in a way, but it’s also scary because it can lead to dangerous ways of thinking.”
Tay hopes to provoke his audience into similar lines of questioning, all the while recognizing people’s right to make up their own minds.
“I’m not interested in telling anyone what to think.”
The festival’s artistic director Yvonne Ng is looking forward to seeing how that quality, along with Tay’s characteristic reflectiveness, meshes with his lack of inhibition while performing.
“He exercises a freedom,” she says, “almost a loss of control onstage. But that masks an underlying rigorous process and deep understanding of his art and audience.”
Tay comes by that understanding honestly. As part of the Montreal presenting duo Wants&Needs danse, he, alongside partner Sasha Kleinplatz, has been initiating opportunities for Canadian dance artists for more than 10 years.
Their rambunctious collective events – like Short&Sweet, in which emerging and established artists are equally constricted by a three-minute time limit, or Piss In The Pool, held in the beloved Mile End institution Bain Saint-Michel – have become important aspects of Montreal’s famous cultural scene.
“It’s definitely a balancing act,” says Tay of juggling Wants&Needs duties with his own creative practice. “But working with all of these diverse artists feeds me creatively.”
At d:mic/fac, Tay shares a program with fellow Montrealer Lina Cruz, also presenting a world premiere, a duet called Waiting For A Sleepless Night.
In fact, the festival is jam-packed with brand new work by Toronto’s Marie France Forcier, Kate Hilliard, Throwdown Collective, Troy Emery Twigg and Jacob Niedzwiecki.
And that’s just the main stage. A lottery series of 10-minute works by Canadian artists and a full slate of Arts Encounters programming that includes labs, workshops, visual arts exhibits and film screenings round out what has to be one of the busiest dance weekends of summer.
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