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Dancing a score: Mark Morris Dance Group’s “L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato”
Reviewed in this essay: L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, Mark Morris Dance Group, which ran June 2013 at Canadian Stage as part of the Luminato Festival During the most recent Luminato Festival, the Mark Morris Dance Group (MMDG) finally reconnected with Canadian audiences after an absence of nearly two decades. L’Allegro exemplifies Morris’ commitment…
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Sensing Silence: Ars Mechanica’s “Show and Tell Alexander Bell” at SummerWorks
Reviewed in this essay: Show and Tell Alexander Bell, Ars Mechanica. Ran August 8-18, 2013 at the SummerWorks Performance Festival. I need to start this review with an apology to Mary, the lovely telephone operator played by Sasha Kovacs who politely, if a little desperately, asked for my digits upon entering the theatre. I obliged,…
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Scandals behind the stage: A review of Deidre Kelly’s “Ballerina”
Reviewed in this essay: Ballerina: Sex, Scandal and Suffering Behind the Symbol of Perfection, Deidre Kelly, Greystone Books, 2012. Following the recent acid-attack on Bolshoi Artistic Director, Sergei Filin, and the scandals unfolding in its wake, the cracks in ballet’s veneer of perfection have never been more visible—or as puzzling—to those outside of the discipline.…
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Futuristic species love irony too: A review of Marie Chouinard’s “The Golden Mean (Live)”
Reviewed in this essay: The Golden Mean (Live), Compagnie Marie Chouinard, which ran May 8 – May 12, 2013 at Canadian Stage Canadian Stage recently welcomed Compagnie Marie Chouinard’s The Golden Mean (Live), a repertory piece first mounted at the 2010 Vancouver Cultural Olympiad. This was the first presentation of a major Marie Chouinard work in Toronto…
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Hell in the Round: Soup Can Theatre’s A Hand of Bridge and No Exit
Reviewed in this essay: A Hand of Bridge & No Exit, Soup Can Theatre, which ran Mar. 27-30 at the New Tapestry Opera Studio Soup Can Theatre’s double bill of A Hand of Bridge and No Exit in theatre-in-the-round style emphasizes the blunt reality that we can never get away from other people. No Exit…
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Can’t go home no more: An interview with Chris Williams, editor of The Richard Burton Diaries
Forty-two years after Richard Burton played to Toronto audiences in John Gielgud’s Hamlet during its pre-Broadway run, Swansea professor of Welsh History and former director of the Richard Burton Centre for the Study of Wales Chris Williams was in town to promote The Richard Burton Diaries (Yale University Press, 2012). The book is his edition…