THE STUDIO directed by choreographed by Helene Langevin (Bouge de la/Young People’s Theatre, 165 Front East). Runs to October 6, October 1 at 11 am and 2 pm, October 3-6 at 10:30 am and 12:45 pm. $15-$20. 416-862-2222. See listing. Rating: NNN
Helene Langevin, artistic director of Bouge de la, doesn’t think of her performers in The Studio solely as dancers. Instead, she uses them as human paintbrushes, creating not just the show’s steps but also most of its visuals.
One of the few dance troupes in Quebec devoted to young audiences, Bouge de la uses a multidisciplinary approach in its productions. The result is impressive in The Studio, which features four dancers who play around in an artist’s studio filled by designer Veronique Bertrand with paintbrushes, picture frames, brightly coloured ribbons, mannequin parts, hoops and lengths of richly textured fabric.
Inspired by 20th-century paintings by Fernand Leger, Robert Delaunay and others, Langevin has her dancers (Audrey Bergeron, Nicolas Labelle, Jean-Francois Legare and Jessica Serli) use the materials around them to create images and brief scenarios, many of them acrobatic in nature.
We meet a robotic doll, a human-sized figure with a rabbit’s head, another who becomes a bird, others who look like they’ve escaped from a Rene Magritte painting. At the end we visit a dance club, complete with platter-spinning DJ.
What makes the show intriguing is the use of video designer Pierre-Marc Beaudoin’s images. He captures the dancers by means of an overhead camera and then changes the images by varying colour and shadow the visuals are then projected onto a rear screen, so we see the same actions from different viewpoints.
It’s not a new technique, but the young audience (five and up) regularly offer “oohs” and “ahs” to the changing images, which include dots and dribbles of “paint” that appear on the canvas, based on the dancers’ movements.
The kids clearly enjoy the antics of the performers, who move themselves and objects under the overhead camera’s lens, creating constantly altering visuals, lit by Lucie Bazzo. At one point the four dancers execute a series of interconnected movements using different-sized picture frames the result is like a vertical, standing-up version of Twister.
At an hour, the show might go on too long for some young viewers, but there are enough things to play with in this toy box to satisfy just about everyone.
