Breaking free from the monotony in Catherine Gaudet’s Les Choses Jolies

 Les Jolies Choses | Compagnie Catherine Gaudet | Vancouver Playhouse | November 22 – 23, 2024  The premise of Les Jolies Choses sounds mundane on the surface: five dancers accompanied by a metronome repeat the same gestures, with slight variations and gradually increasing intensity, for almost an hour. The result, however, is a completely mesmerizing spectacle of endurance, a compelling commentary on the monotony of daily life and the pleasures of breaking free of conformity.   Catherine Gaudet’s piece starts in silence with five dancers in stark white leotards spread around the stage, each repeating their own short movement sequence. This

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The Mirror reveals contemporary circus at its best 

The Mirror by Gravity and Other Myths presented by DanceHouse and The Cultch January 24 – 27 | Vancouver Playhouse  A hand reaches through the black stage curtain, fumbling as it tries to turn on a boombox. Giving up on that, the body attached to the hand emerges from behind the curtain and moves the boombox, which is perched atop a stand, to sit in front of a microphone. As singer Megan Drury pauses on a catchy song on the radio, the curtains open to reveal the rest of the company performing various dance moves or acrobatic tricks. With an improvisational,

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