Wind

Premiere: August 1998
Choreography: Bill James
Music: Luc Marcel
Set Design: Adrian Blackwell & Ron Perrault
Lighting Design: David Morrison

Performers:
Rob Abubo, Shanon Cooney, Shauna Elton, Robert Glumbeck and Yvonne Ng

About

The project began as an investigation of classical Mediterranean concepts of wind, with the various directions of winds and their associations with emotional temperaments, the god(ess)s, and the marking of seasons. I travelled through Turkey during a three month period from September to December, 1995 to experience the effects of air, wind and flight and found inspiration in dance (Baladu), music, architecture and Byzantine fresco painting, along with Mediterranean, Agean, and Black Sea wind effects.

In April, 1996 I combined work on a dance-based CD-ROM produced by Le Groupe Dance Lab with my ideas for "Wind". The choreography was linked to the physicality of wind, flight and some of the more mythological inspirations gathered in Turkey. Some of it based on Puncak Silat an Indonesian martial art form that I had learned several years ago in Jakarta. It, like Baladu is based on spiraling movement and it seemed to connect to wind. Another inspiration for movement was the Icarus myth.

Luc Marcel composed the score for the saxophone quartet Forty Fingers and in the July, 1996 workshop it was conducted by Charles Bornstein. The set, designed by Adrian Blackwell and Ron Perrault is made of inflatable structures, one a six-foot mylar cube and the other a folded translucent inflatable room on a 15 x 30 platform. After it slowly fills with air, the larger inflatable unfolds and raises up on pulleys to cover the entire space. Other design elements are a large wall that separates an antechamber which is a large camera obscura. The wall later collapses and becomes a stage. The set is in constant transformation as the choreographic design makes use of various parts of the space and eventually expands to use the entire space. The audience is free to sit on chairs placed around three sides, to stand and to move about during the performance.

Quotes

" Toronto's peripatetic maestro of site-specific dance..." - The Toronto Star

" ...follies and vistas hidden in an industrial forest glade." - The Globe and Mail