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Winnipeg’s Contemporary Dancers will close off their 60th anniversary season with two unique commentaries on relationships, be they interpersonal or with the wider world.
Tomato Blues by Montreal’s Lina Cruz and By means of each other by Vancouver’s Generous Mess duo will be the two projects on display this weekend. Although the nature of the pieces are quite different, they both address different power dynamics that exist between people and with the systems that govern them.
Tomato Blues uses bricks and chairs as well as spoken text by Cruz to highlight the duality of being the oppressor and the oppressed in the world. The piece uses a tomato as a metaphor to examine the cycle of the journey Cruz describes from being something abused by power to potentially being an abuser of power.
“I have no idea why I chose the tomato,” Cruz laughs. “But when I chose it... it became like the symbol of purity.”
Another quality of the tomato that drew Cruz’s attention was its fragility, the nature of something that has power held over it, but also something that can be made fragile if the things it holds power over gain agency. As a result, Tomato Blues inquires if there is a way that power can benefit everyone all at once, or if it is something that has to be held by something over something else.
Cruz also wants to confront the uncomfortable reality that people may not realize the power they hold over others and then abuse their power without meaning to. “I think we are potentially very good and generous and caring,” says Cruz, “but it’s obvious that we can all of a sudden destroy all the goodness.”
“I think whatever position, each person has to perhaps be a little more flexible about it,” she continues as she talks about what she hopes Tomato Blues communicates to an audience. “It opens the door to understanding whoever is on the other side.”
The other piece being performed in the double bill, By means of each other, also applies a lens of understanding to a real-life partnership. Sarah Hutton and Aiden Cass are both partners in life and dance through their duo Generous Mess, and their piece explores the lengths to which we care the most about.
The movements contained within By means of each other are not so much informed by actual day-to-day activities that a couple experiences, but the subtext behind the movements. Both Hutton and Cass say that processing their interactive behaviours through dance is helpful as they grow their relationship, but also hard work as the lines between their professional and personal lives blur.
“The bleeding of those two lives is so easy to do and to separate them actually takes a lot of effort and we’re still working on it,” admits Cass.
Hutton notes that while creating the show was difficult, their community helped them to ground themselves. “It can be hard when it’s just the two of us,” she says, “so it’s something we’re definitely still working on.”
While the work to develop the show has been challenging, the duo have also used dance to strengthen their relationship. ‘Being really present with each other in the moment when we’re dancing solves a lot of our problems,” Hutton says, “so it kinds of reminds me that a lot of the things we’re working through are happening because we’re not present or because maybe we’re being distracted by other things.”
“The comedy – or kind of ridiculousness – of putting our problems in a show kind of makes you realize how funny some of these situations can actually be after time has passed, or maybe when you’ve stepped away from them. So, I think those are two ways that it’s quite cathartic for us to put our life or a version of our life in this piece.”
Tomato Blues and By means of each other run at the Rachel Browne Theatre in the Exchange District on April 25 and 26 at 7:30 p.m. and on April 27 at 4 p.m. with an artist talk to follow. Tickets and more information can be found at Winnipeg’s Contemporary Dancers’ website.