In a blurb in the 14 Days Top Six in our March 10 issue on this dance performance at the MacKenzie Art Gallery I recalled a famous incident from dance history when Russian composer Igor Stravinsky and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky scandalized Paris audiences in 1913 with their ballet The Rite of Spring.
Last summer, I saw the biopic Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky at the RPL Theatre. It’s set in Paris around that time, and concerns an affair that Stravinsky had with the French fashion designer. The film opens with a recreation of the notorious first performance of The Rite of Spring, where the audience was outraged at the ballet’s feral character and actually rioted in the streets.
Somehow, I can’t picture Reginans doing the same after Heaven. I mean, it’s 2011. And everyone is comfortable with the idea of artistic freedom, and the necessity of humanity acknowledging and exploring primal aspects of our being.
That’s good, because that’s what choreographer Sasha Ivanochko is up to here. And it wouldn’t look good for Reginans to get all Puritan and throw a hissy fit about taxpayers’ money being used to … yada, yada.
Heaven is danced by Ivanochko and two male dancers. And it comes with a nudity and mature content advisory. Here’s a link to an article I did in our March 10 issue after speaking with Ivanochko by phone from Toronto.
If it lives up to its billing, Heaven should be one of the more intense dance works Regina’s seen in some time. Show time tonight and tomorrow night at the MacKenzie Gallery is 8 p.m. Tickets are $25 adults, $18 Seniors, and $22 for Friends of the Gallery or New Dance Horizons.
Also on tonight is the annual Barbara Powell Lecture at the University of Regina (Campion College Auditorium, 7:30 p.m.) The title of Dr. Danielle Fuller’s talk? Everything Becomes Alive!: The Pleasures and Meanings of Shared Reading in the 21st Century.
For more info call 359-1219.
