Thank you so much all for coming. It was a true treat to be part of Montreal Fringe 2019 and thank you for all your positive feedback and a wonderful reviews.
Montreal Theatre Hub
Celine Cardineau / 2019 Fringe Reviewer at Montreal Theatre Hub
Fringe Review: “Re-Imagined”: A Colourful Everyday Embodiment of Philosophy
2019 MONTREAL FRINGE FESTIVAL COVERAGE
June 15, 2019 Celine Cardineau
In this short dance piece, international choreographer Eva Kolarova presents “Re-Imagined,” an excerpt from a contemporary ballet. As a stand-alone piece, it breathes relatable representations of love and loneliness, corporeality and connection, self and other, life and death, and other experiences of human existence.
Performed by Kolarova, Jerimy Rivera, and Ashley Werhun in an intimate black box setting, this existential choreography displays Kolarova’s reputedly unique “hybrid dance vocabulary.” Incorporating both classical and contemporary techniques, the choreography features stunning lifts, embraces, and spins, as well as deliberate laughter, smiles, and eye contact. Sometimes, the dancers simply cross the stage, like a fleeting passerby. Sometimes, they reach toward the unseen audience, searching for connection or perhaps something deeper beyond our gaze. Sometimes, they run in place, as if being called, alone, toward something. Sometimes, they allow themselves to fall, or to swim through existence.
“Re-Imagined” is a simple yet vibrant production that simultaneously provokes thought and stimulates the senses. Its use of sound and lighting create a multi-sensory experience, while also piquing the audience’s intellect. The lighting design creates a sense of magical realism, with brightly saturated yellow and blue washes, and wide dream-like spotlights, framed by columns of black drapes. The costume design—street clothes with red socks—gives the bodies onstage a vibrant everydayness.
The dancers move to music, silence, and Alan Watts lectures on philosophy, metaphysics, and. spirituality. The spoken score interestingly the viewer’s inner voice attempting to interpret the abstract movement before them. Instead, in the split activity of listening to a lecture and observing complex choreography, the mind must allow the one to interpret the other, whatever correlations or discrepancies may arise.
The first solo is scored to Alan Watts speaking about death, the interval of life, while a soft piano plays. Kolarova’s choreography complements Watts’ imagery of the crests and troughs of a wave. Movements with mandala-like symmetry contribute to a beauty both mathematical and poetic, observed and imagined. The next excerpt from Watts’ lectures is on the subject of the Self and Other, the inside and outside, coming together to form “one total body,” and the feeling of being alienated from one’s environment. These relatable philosophical musings act as questions burning within the different characters onstage. Watts also speaks of the difference between seriousness and sincerity; the former being a “kind of gravity,” while the latter is godlike in its playfulness and lightness. An intimate duet between dancers embodies the intermingling between gravity and levity, as they play with tension, weight, and centripetal force.
Kolarova’s choreography artistically represents elements of human experience: intimacy in the face of existential uncertainty; connection between strangers, however forced, desperate, awkward, sweet, or unreciprocated; or how people learn from each other, imitate each other, thinking others have life more figured out.
Although only just 25 minutes, the piece follows a cyclical narrative, as the last moment brings us full-circle to the first moment. Given this cyclical structure, as well as the richness of the images in between, “Re-Imagined” is definitely a show that merits being seen twice. SHOWTIMES:
13 JUNE - THU at 22:00h
14 JUNE - FRI at 19:45h
15 JUNE - SAT at 17:45h
16 JUNE - SUN at 17:15h
At the studio of Jean-Valcourt du Conservatoire ( 4750 Henri Julien Ave, Montreal )
Box-Office: 514-849-FEST/ Tickets price: 12$
RE_IMAGINE
Interpreted by Eva Kolarova, Jerimy Rivera and Ashley Werhun.
Music by Sam Airey and Charles Bicari, text by Alain Watts
Choreographed by Eva Kolarova
Kolarova Danse presents her new creation RE_Imagine, which will have its premiere within the Festival St-Ambroise FRINGE de Montréal in June 2019.
With the language of contemporary dance, she explores loneliness and relationships. "The best relationship is one that does not foster too much independence nor too much dependence, but exists in the healthy interdependence zone.“
