Kiss Project--Vancouver

[Richard Sutherland]

For the second consecutive year, The Judith Marcuse Dance Projects and the
Playwrights Theatre Centre have collaborated to present "The
Commissions"--seventeen new works created during a five-week period by local
dance and theatre people. The show runs from Feb. 6 to 18 at Performance
Works on Granville Island.
 
Because of the number of pieces, the length of each was roughly five-seven
minutes. Although I really enjoyed the evening, seeing so many pieces in a
two-hour time span made me feel as though I was channel-surfing. This did
have some ramifications--on the one hand, if some pieces seemed abstruse and
tedious (a few were), I knew that they would soon be over. On the other
hand, the pieces that I really responded to I knew would be over before they
became tedious as well--sort of the best of both worlds. As one of the
organizers said in her introduction to the evening, it was really a kind of
smorgasbord, or a sampling of some contemporary Vancouver artists.
 
The evening was nearly evenly trisected into dance pieces, theatre pieces,
and some which combined elements of both. Although some of the dance pieces
were more successful than others, the one that stands out in my mind was "La
Bouche," by choreographer Joe Laughlin, featuring an electrifying
performance to some ve-r-r-r-y postmodern (whatever the hell that means)
music by dancer Lynn Sheppard. Ms. Sheppard was also featured in a typically
wacky but endearing performance piece by Vancouver poet Sheri-D Wilson.
Called "What Happened after my Dorothy Parker Weekend," the dancer played a
desk--very convincingly, I might add.
 
The outstanding theatre piece was put together and enacted by Nicola
Cavendish, based on interviews she conducted with two Vancouver prostitutes.
Alternately funny and gut-wrenching, "Let Hands do What Lips Do" was in an
orbit of its own, and marks a courageous new departure for this outstanding
actress.
 
Oh, I almost forgot to mention that the Kiss Project was so named because
each piece includes a kiss somewhere in the presentation--and believe me, if
it sounds sappy, it's not. All in all, one of the more interesting evenings
I've had in Vancouver theatre, which generally seems in a terminally
moribund state.
 
Your roving Vancouver reporter,
 
Richard Sutherland