lush and lifts

On Monday, the 31st, I went again to the 509, almost a week after my first visit. The company had moved to the larger studio space on the first floor where Roberto was putting a larger group of dancers through the development of the scene in which the Pawnbroker dances with Roxana at an art gallery opening and she steals the attention of the men attending. The sequence occurs about a third of the way into the film. With his customary exuberant gestures, Roberto marks through the sequence, displaying an energy and spirit that are irrepressible. I want it to be lush, he says to me later. Lush is my key word for this production.

Later in the afternoon, Producer Stephen Traynor showed up. While the dancers worked, he and Moze sat in a corner and discussed possible locations for a production office. In quiet whispers they mulled over the Carlaw space (has a parking lot) or the Labatt Avenue possibility. Each man had a preference but like good colleagues they weighed out the pros and cons. Stephen and Moze worked together on Moze's previous film, From Time to Time. Looking around the room, I saw another alumnus of that project, Emma Lu Romerein, whose lead role in the film garnered her a Gemini nomination.

The camaraderie among the group is high. Roberto and Moze have selected dancers who are an equal mix of those they know well and brand new faces. Moze points out a particular man in the company as someone he’s always wanted to work with.

Roberto takes the men through a particular lift in which Greta Hodgkinson is lifted over the shoulder and appears to do what looks to this laygirl like an upside down cartwheel, changing position several times on route.

After a full day of rehearsing it, Roberto runs the whole sequence. The experience of dance rehearsal is not unlike that of a movie set itself. Things happen in little increments - a minute here, a minute there, with lots of down time between. But just like a movie, when the combinations are put together, the effect is magnificent. Stephen, Moze and myself look up and are spellbound as the dancers move like lightning across the floor, swirl, lift and pass off to each other. I was fascinated all day by the geometic patterns of the dancers in the room, both unconscious and choreographed. Random and precise. A model of the flow of atoms or the movement of time. Accidental and beautiful. The final run-through of the sequence, though still just roughed together, was like a large wave approaching shore and crashing on it - the water pushing through as the new wave of dancers come from behind to repeat the pattern. Lush indeed!