Divergent Dances

Divergent Dances is a response to Raymond Moriyama’s architecture of the Bata Shoe Museum. It contrasts the softness and slowness of bodies occupying the vast angular space of glass, steel and concrete of the building’s design. An early repertoire piece that examining the suspension of time, multiplicity of space, and the fractalization of audience gaze, Divergent Dances examines multiple bodies in the action of slowly falling.

“...Divergent Dances for Windows and Walls is like life: everything is happening at once and nobody knows what the hell is going on. There is no one way to watch the show, every perspective and vantage point is valid and every experience unique… The performers and Leary, like the angular architecture of the museum, show us another way to orient ourselves, a new perspective on space, movement, and performance, and what can be created if we’re willing to take a few risks…”

-Victoria Mohr-Blakeney, Toronto Standard

“The final moment is as casual and tranquil as most of the rest of the work: volunteer audience members entangle themselves in the ropes, leaning out together, creating a structure of tension for the performers to move in, hang on and maneuver around. After a few moments of this, the rope holders collectively come back on to their feet, everyone applauds and the work is done”.

-Brittney Duggan, The Dance Current

“Divergent Dances for Windows and Walls gave aesthetic form to the randomness of life, where everything is always going on and where our choices to look in one direction also prevent us from seeing something else. Thus the audience, in having this freedom, this license to create their own performance, is at the same time forced to take responsibility for their own aesthetic experience. In the show’s finale, audience members can enter the performance itself, anchoring with their own bodies the rope the dancers writhe and twist through, feeling the shifting weight of bone and muscle.”

-Gitanjali Kolanad, Audience As Practice

Year: 2012

Venue: Bata Shoe Museum (architect Raymond Moriyama)

Choreography: Brandy Leary

Composition: James Bunton

Dramaturge: Kevin O’Connor, Audrey Dwyer

LX Design: Siobhán Sleath

Dance Artists: Brandy Leary, Kevin O’Connor, Louis Laberge-Côté, Amy Hampton, Ryan Lee, Lucy Rupert, Natasha Danchenko, Mark Segal, Jennifer Robichaud

Curator/Presenter: ĀNANDAṀ / Bata Shoe Museum

Photos: Walter Lai