Fusing hip hop and ballet dance styles, the elastic movements of Montreal-based RUBBERBANDance troupe will spring onto the stage at The Banff Centre next Saturday (Feb. 16).
The company of five dancers will present Gravity of Center, a full-length dance production.
Anne Plamondon, who dances in the production and is the company’s co-artistic director, spoke on behalf of RUBBERBANDance.
“It’s a 70-minute full length work, with five performers on stage, and it’s constant dancing,” she said. “Our focus is totally in at all times – the minute we get inside, there’s no way out – even when we’re out of stage, we need to stay focused, and must keep the relation with the stage.”
Gravity of Center was created by Victor Quijada in 2011. Quijada, who is a dancer, choreographer and co-artistic director with the company, founded RUBBERBANDance in 2002.
“In this piece Victor was attempting to explore how gesture and movement could tell a narrative, and he really set himself the challenge to do a linear narrative through movement,” explained Plamondon. “There’s no script, we don’t talk, but through our bodies the movement is used to tell a story, to explore dynamics between bodies.”
Despite a lack of words or narrative, she stressed the work has a definite story behind it, easily understood by the audience.
“He was looking a lot at what was going on in the world,” said Plamondon. “In one place we’re living in abundance and in a moment everything can be crushed and lost – he was curious about exploring the human behaviour in those moments – like in a hurricane when you lose your home.
“He would give us a role to play within a group, as in society. There’s father, the chief or alpha male, and then there’s the younger one, that’s weak in the group, there’s the matriarch.”
Between the five dancers, Gravity of Center is an exploration of what would happen to them if presented with such a catastrophe.
“It’s 70 minutes of that, of discovering how the relationships between us develop because of that situation,” said Plamondon, noting it’s all one continuous piece with no breaks or intermission.
“It’s a lot of work for us, and we’re dancing the whole time, so it takes a lot of energy out of us,” she said. “But it’s OK, after touring it for three years, we’ve found moments to rest and to pace ourselves. We know when to breathe and that’s the beauty of performing a piece many times, we have the chance to get stronger.”
Creating an intense piece such as this even helps put the dancers in the moment of what it is they are trying to express, she said.
“Part of him wanting to do a piece about scarcity and survival was to push the body physically, to try to reach technical exertion as much as possible and get our bodies in a feeling of exhaustion,” said Plamondon. “If we are exhausted, that’s good, it helps us be in the moment.”
For her role, Plamondon is the matriarch character.
“I’m the one that tries to make peace between everybody and protects – and with one of the dancers, the younger one, I have more of a role,” she said. “What counts is that the audience understands the big lines, the dynamics between people.
“With dance, telling a story without words, it’s very satisfying when the audience tells us they totally get it.”
The style of the work can best be described as contemporary dance, she said.
“Our company is distinctly known for its hybrid work, coming from the urban influences – hip hop, breakdancing – filtered into a contemporary aesthetic, using ballet at times, in terms of composition,” she said. “There’s no category to say it really, but we like to say we reach from one extreme to the other and be a bridge from the hip hop world to the conventional ballet world.”
The accompanying music uses hip hop beats and DJing music mixed with classical compositions.
Plamondon joined RUBBERBANDance in 2002, first as a dancer, then adding the title of co-artistic director in 2005.
“I think Victor’s work is original, it’s innovative, he’s very hungry and curious about what else contemporary dance can be, trying to reinvent what it can be,” she said. “I find that very courageous in the dance world – sometimes we say everything has been done –and I think it takes a lot of courage to try to invent a new movement language with influences that don’t necessarily fit together.”
For three summers in her youth, between the ages of 15 and 17, Plamondon participated in the summer dance program at The Banff Centre. Since then, she’s been to the centre for two residencies and once with Pivot. This will be the first time, however, RUBBERBANDance will perform in Banff.
“It’s a unique place, it’s absolutely incredible that Canada has such a place, it’s phenomenal,” she said. “Everytime I go there, I come out filled with energy.
“Just being there in the mountains is amazing, let alone the fact that artists are treated in such a way, it’s rare to have a place where artists are put in the front.”
For more information on the troupe, visit rubberbandance.com
