By Sharman Yarnell for Curtains Up
How very brave – a scene done it total darkness. Hallelujah!
The scene is found on the Centaur Theatre stage in Dance Me to the End On/Off Love.
Another scene done inside a small, tight box, with a candle, in the nude. The confined dancer rotates and twists her body within the box to the melancholy sounds of Leonard Cohen.
One could hear a pin drop in the audience.
The Granhoj Dance company, is an institution in Denmark. Its Artistic Director and Founder, Palle Granhoj, has created his own style of dance using restriction and obstruction on movements. Hence the nude woman in the box. In another scene, Palle’s bald head only is exposed above a dark table, surrounded by bald wig molds. The movement is solely his head, face and eyes, with the other heads being moved around his by another performer. Another consists of a woman sitting on a performer’s lap, his arms wrapped tightly around her, constricting her every move, and finally her voice.
There are 13 people performing in the company, most of them playing musical instruments, all singing and others involved in the movement aspect of the show. Living through the works of Leonard Cohen, Dance Me to the End On/Off Love, has had rave reviews following it across Europe. And deservedly so.
The voices are good, the body movement very controlled. The set moody and supportive of the suspense that leads us from one Cohen poetic masterpiece to another.
They have even found comedy in Cohen’s work. And that comedy is savoured as the work is somewhat dark and heavy – well, it is Leonard Cohen. When it surfaces, it is well appreciated by the audience.
The show is performed on a very low lit stage, sometimes only with candles illuminating the faces and bodies of the dancers. Although a dance company, it would be more seemly to call this presentation movement to words, the words of Cohen. In fact, words play strongly into the show. At the start of the show, Granhoj referred to “the spoken word, Leonard Cohen’s words and the words that are Granhoj’s own”. It is actually an autobiographical piece: he has absorbed Cohen into his own flow of life.
This is not a show that theatre goers are accustomed to seeing in Montreal, and if they do, certainly not at The Centaur Theatre. It has no middle and no real end, no clear story is spelled out. You leave the theatre either questioning what you have seen, or shaking your head at the ingenuity of the performers on the stage. It is one of the most expressive, exploratory and imaginative pieces I have seen.
What a magnificent tour de force, with supreme performers of one of the best European companies to visit us – Well done.
Leonard Cohen you are here.
Dance Me to the End On/Off Love is on at The Centaur Theatre until April 14.
For more information: http://www.centaurtheatre.com
Box Office: 514-288-3181
