TORONTO is the third-largest theater town in the English-speaking world, and its dance activity is appropriately lively. And swinging around merrily in all that activity is the 31-year-old Toronto Dance Theater, Canada’s leading modern-dance troupe, which has returned for a week-long season at the Joyce Theater.
Perhaps the best thing to be said about this 12-strong ensemble originally started by Martha Graham stalwarts is to note the quality of its dancers. And perhaps the second-best thing to be said is also to note the quality of its dancers. For its choreography is an iffier prospect.
The opening work, Mitch Kirsch’s “Good Vibes,” was a lot squiggly movement and abortive jokes combined into dances that looked like a wallpaper frieze and were largely accompanied by solemn and sonorous electronic chords provided by composer Sarah Hopkins.
Worse was to come. James Kudelka, artistic director of the National Ballet of Canada, seemed be doing his modern-dance counterpart no favor with his work, “The Provincial Suite,” unfairly placing the accent on provincial while using Darius Milhaud’s chic, sophisticated music.
Kudelka had five funny-peculiar peasants (at least three of them in drag, but it could have been four, gender was at a low premium) clumping and galumphing around in a drab comedy routine which elicited not a single laugh from a seemingly dumbfounded audience.
The current artistic director and chief choreographer of the Toronto Dance Theater is Christopher House, and his first contribution was a solo for himself indifferently enough danced and indifferently enough choreographed to qualify as self-indulgence.
Luckily, House did better with his other two offerings, “Fjeld” and “Vena Cava.”
“Fjeld” is set to chamber music (from the 1977 “Arbos”) by the wonderfully imaginative Estonian composer Arvo Part, and House has named his ballet after the Norwegian word for “a barren plateau.”
Barren or not, House’s ballet seems a series of post-holocaust vignettes, quite impressive in their visual power. Better yet was “Vena Cava” (“Open Veins”) to a percussive score by the 62-year-old American avant-gardist Robert Moran.
This scurry-around, with all the men in red kilts and all the women in red split skirts, not only revealed the considerable dance skills of this ensemble, but also House’s ability to handle large-scale dance patterns.
However, as someone who has followed to company for many years, I would suggest that some visit back to its Grahamesque roots might prove useful, as might a more inventive if less varied repertory.
