Review - iDUB

Folk dancing for the digital world

The Vancouver Sun

Tuesday, March 2, 2004

IDUB: Giving form to the tribal music and dancing found at underground raves

By KEVIN GRIFFIN

In the Bible's hierarchical arrangement of vertical space, heaven is above us, hell below.

Qualities associated with either realm are either praised or condemned. The sky is where our intellect is supposed to soar, our source of light, the place where all the higher, nobler attributes such as rationality, justice, and love reside. Below is the earth, a place of darkness and danger where the lower, base qualities such as passion, emotion and sex reign supreme.

The geography is just like Dante's Divine Comedy where concentric circles lead down past the sinners to Lucifer at the bottom circle of hell and ascend past the saved to God at the top sphere in heaven.

Starting Wednesday this great chain of being forms the raw material for iDUB- short for: interactive Digital Urban Ballet. Not surprisingly, iDUB comes from Montreal, the North American capital of innovative dance. It is the vision of choreographer Martha Carter.

What Carter does with iDUB is give structure to the tribal music and dancing found at underground raves and circuit parties. She believes that rhythmic dancing is a kind of folk dancing for the digital world. In her metaphorical world, the underground is an in-between place, a few rungs above the devil's playground. She thinks of it as a kind of Hell Lite. Whether or not it is physically located below the surface of the earth, the underground has come to refer to ideas or things that exist outside of what's generally considered the mainstream.

For many people, the underground can be a little scary either because the usual rules don't apply, or because they have been re-arranged in a new and startling ways. But that also makes the underground a place of freedom and innovation. It's where new art forms and activities often originate, whether it's rock and roll and performance art or breakdancing and recreational drugs.

"It's dance about dancing," Carter says of iDUB. "It's not a dance about another story; it's about the visceral expression of dance. It's about culture's inherent rhythm and the need for that to be expressed through the body rather than the intellect. In Western culture, dance has not been made a priority in a traditional kind of way – it's not integrated into our culture as it is in other cultures that have dance traditions that are part of everyday life.

"In my opinion, the dance tradition that's part of everyday life – although it doesn't include everyone-is the social dance culture of the clubs."

An average art dance show, she points out, whether it's ballet or modern dance usually attracts a very small audience. But at some of the bigger organized dance parties, anywhere from several hundred to several thousand spend most of the night dancing. In fact, Montreal is home to what is probably the largest Circuit Party in North America, the annual Black and Blue Dance Party Festival on Thanksgiving weekend. Carter's House of Pride dance troupe has performed at many of the big dance parties in Olympic Stadium.

"It's really quite an experience. With my background in ballet and modern to be suddenly on stage in a sea of 20,000 people pulsing to this rhythm not for an hour but all night. You might not even talk to anybody all night or touch anyone. But you feel you are part of this huge community sharing the music, the cultural experience together."

It is also a breeding ground for incredible innovation in music and media. At these large dance parties, some of the most innovative dancing and movement takes place on the edge of the dance floor. With enough space to move, dancers who are largely self-taught combine hip hop and breakdancing moves with their own variations to produce their own unique forms of movement.

Large rave-style dance parties also share another quality - one perfectly suited to the dispersed, leaderless nature of the internet. These dances break down the barrier between performer and audience; everyone plays both roles simultaneously.

"The entire experience isn't about performing or appreciating, it's about communicating and participating," she said in a description of iDUB. The unique opportunity of dance is to awaken the kinesthetic learner in all of us. Each audience member loses out if they don't get to move. This is the vast territory that I am continuing to explore in iDUB."

What this means in practice is eliminating the proscenium arch altogether. The Faris Studio -ironically located underground in the basement of the ScotiaBank Dance Centre - is transformed into a dance club; there is a bar where you can order a drink and then wander into the main hall where couches are strategically placed for lounging. Each performance is divided into three sections. The first part is called Transmission where you are encouraged to mingle around dancers performing on a wooden box as they create interactive video art on large screens with their bodies. Then comes Interaction, the actual dance performance, when the couches are moved to the side. At the end is Reception when everyone gets to dance.

Anyone who is deathly afraid of dancing needn't worry. No performer is going to take your hand and start dancing with you in the spotlight. Be cautioned, however, that the experience is highly addictive. The combination of the music's beat, the choreographed dancing and the innovative visuals in a darkened space invariable leads to one conclusion only: bodies in motion.

"We did a demonstration for a bunch of kids, and they were pounding the floor," Carter said. "We were getting visceral response – and that's a goal of this project. I think there are a lot of people who will enjoy having a choreographic experience with dancers and music and videos, and will respond to the innovative setting."

Carter has previously done two other projects similar in style to iDuB, most recently in June 2002 for the Canada Dance Festival in Ottawa. Called Xdance, it was performed in a club style setting in the theatre, La Nouvelle Scene, and attracted everyone from young hipsters to Gov-Gen. Adrienne Clarkson and her beefy bodyguards. She loved it.

The Toronto Star said that on the basis of Xdance, Carter was a certain contender for the ‘hottest up and coming choreographer' at the festival. The Ottawa Citizen said the House of Pride's dancers were the "darlings of this year's festival."

Inviting everyone to dance and continuing the performance after the choreographed portion of the night isn't a post-modern frill. It comes from Carter's own experience. She recalls times when after a choreographed dance performance where dancers did their best stuff at the after-party.

"I'm trying to get people to realize that the performance extends outside the walls of the theatre. The party is also a performance, and so is this article. It's all part of the piece, and I'm challenged to express myself artistically in all of it."