Le Sacre Du Printemps
Arts Umbrella, Vancouver Playhouse

Working closely from the written score, this staging of Le Sacre Du Printemps began with precision: in the opening sections, each dancer's movement was mapped almost one-to-one against individual instrumental lines, tracking Stravinsky's shifting orchestration detail by detail.

As the piece progresses, that precision gives way. Individual voices collapse into unison, and unison itself begins to fracture, the dancers moving into a final passage of running, jumping, and colliding, deliberately courting danger in their proximity to one another, until they arrive, exhausted, at the front of the stage.

The structure traces a single idea: a tipping point, built through accumulating tension, the kind I heard in Stravinsky's score, and the kind I recognise in the world around us.