Mocean Dance Double Bill
Feb. 23-24, 8 p.m.
Alderney Landing, Dartmouth
Mocean Dance is letting audiences take in two of their hit performances in one night for their double bill event: Canvas 5 x 5 and Sable Island.
Choreographer Tedd Robinson drew from both Scottish and Japanese influences to create Canvas 5 x 5. Four dancers use the stage as their blank canvas, as if to create a work of art before the audience’s eyes. A literal canvas is also featured as a prop. In July of last year, Canvas 5 x 5 was the recipient of the Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia Masterworks Arts Award.
Ahead of the show’s initial performance in 2012, Mocean’s artistic director Sara Coffin said dance never failed to pull on her heartstrings.
"Imagine the dancers folding, whipping, and flying with the fabric, at times in control of the canvas, and at times vulnerable around these blank sheets of infinite possibility.”
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Sable Island, which premiered in spring 2015, is a five-dancer piece. At the time, choreographer Serge Bennathan told The Coast it was largely inspired by themes of survival and adaptation—two things required of any person or animal who lives on Nova Scotia’s remote island. The dancers’ physical movements are meant to reflect the forces of nature and "what it is like to be in a storm on the island.”
"By looking at the dancers I hope we will be able to feel the storm coming.”
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