Shattered Space
Shattered Space
1996
About
“Karen Jamieson Dance Company transforms Performance Works on Granville Island into a non-proscenium, multifaceted, indoor/outdoor performance dreamscape. A combination of new and old works of varying length performed in a unique and inventive light never staged before.
With a cast of eight dancers, live music, the input of four designers, and two stage directors, Shattered Space is an evening that will be more than a collection of dance works. KJDC is working from a collaborative tradition which, in addition to dancers, includes musicians and the designers to affect a feeling of intimacy, an element of surprise, and an impression of the unusual, that will challenge the relationship between the performers and the audience, taking you to another place, another way of looking at dance.
[…] this performance event will tell an arrangement of stories from many points of view. Shattered Space is an interwoven, juxtaposition of performance snapshots that will capitalize on the creative possibilities spirited by this unconventional venue.”
- From Shattered Space program, May 28-June 1, 2020
THE PEOPLE
Choreographer: Karen Jamieson
Dancers: Rita Bozi, Sylvain Brochu, Shinn-Rong Chung, Marie Hamber-Clements, Caroline Farquhar, Jerry Longboat (Cayuga/Mohawk, Turtle Clan from Six Nations of the Grand River), Donald A. Morin (Saulteaux mixed lineage), Karen Jamieson
Composers: Peter Hurst & Simon Kendall
Voice: Justine Mellor
Musical Director: Peter Hurst
Lighting: Gerald King
Costumes: Deborah Dunn
Sound Design: Jay O’keeffe
Producer: Jay Rankin
Assistant Director: Susan McKenzie
Stage Manager: Jan Hodgson
Technical Director: Dusty Rhodes
Space Design: Nicola Kozakiewicz
Climbing Instructor: Bill Kipper
Reviews
“The randomness of a car accident or of a rogue bacterium can descend upon us in an instant. And it is an instant like that – a chaotic, fateful, terrifying moment of change – that sparks the latest work of dance theatre by Vancouver choreographer Karen Jamieson.
Although there is not a word about it in the program, anyone who follows the dance community here knows that Jamieson and her longtime creative partner Jeff Corness were involved in a terrible car accident last winter.
It is, of course, possible to read Shattered Space in other ways: as a formal exercise in opening out the performing space, for instance. Jamieson wraps her audience around concentric circles of stage, demarcated by curtains and scrims that are pulled down, or drawn aside by the performers. She leaves the glass walls of Performance Works uncurtained, so that passers-by form part of the scene.
Her performers end the work by leaving the theatre entirely, and staging their apotheosis out-of-doors.
It is also possible to read Shattered Space as a fusion myth, drawing as it does on elements of earlier Jamieson works, Euro-Canadian fable, and the First Nations traditions of several of the current performers.
You might also read it as a generalized lament about the loss of a loved one, filled as it is with keening calls, and attitudes of grief and disbelief.
But the most meaningful, and perhaps most penetrating way to approach Shattered Space, is to think of it as a kind of requiem for the creative partnership that Jeff Corness and Jamieson once shared.
In this way, every element glows red hot: the way Jamieson hangs back physically from much of the work; the gruesome references to eggs and the ease with which they are cracked; the flickering glimpses of the accident itself, viewed through a haze of shock and pain; the dolorous postures of the Pieta that line the work; the elegiac quality of so much of the proceedings.
‘Humpty Dumpty had a great fall,’ Marie Clements intones, in her central role. ‘Don’t we all?’
There is a Trickster figure, played by Sylvain Brochu, prowling the piece in improvised costumes made of the black curtains he pulls down from the ceiling. At times a crone hunched in her widow’s weeds, at others a squealing daytime television host, an antic observer, a traffic cop, Brochu is an animating spark.
Shattered Space is an uneasy package, to be sure, constructed of so many tiny shards and splinters, but this seems to be Jamieson’s intent. Even the score, by Peter Hurst, is rangy and deconstructed, encompassing everything from Gregorian plainsong to rhythm and blues.
As the curtains come down, opening the theatre to the outside world, Jamieson reminds us with great eloquence that even in the midst of our tragedies, life goes on. The strolling tourists and dragon-boat squads practicing on False Creek and passing rollerbladers are not disconnected from us, or we from them.”
- Michael Scott
“Shattered space turns tragedy into an eloquent elegy”
The Vancouver Sun, June 1, 1996
“Space designer Nicola Kozakiewicz deserves full marks for innovation for her simple, effective series of curtains. As the show opens, the dancers are standing behind black panels that are so far downstage that the audience can touch them as they head to their seats. The dancers wrap themselves in the fabric as if cocooned like the victims in Alien, or play peekaboo with the audience, until the panels are dropped, gradually, like an onion being peeled layer by layer. It’s reminiscent of the Wizard of Oz being exposed.
Jamieson makes full use of the space: she herself hangs from the rafters (literally), suspended by a climbing harness; the dancers run up and down the theatre’s glassed-in staircases, and eventually move the action outdoors. This is probably the single best moment in the piece, when the dancers march off up a grassy hill, followed by the musicians banging on their makeshift drums. Talk about a site-specific work: two of the dancers hop into a canoe and exit east on False Creek.
On May 31, nature cooperated with set design. Twilight stayed bright enough for a big finish, while a fat, golden full moon hung low in the sky, providing a backdrop for Jamieson as she repeatedly ran up the hill and tumbled back down again.
Sylvain Brochu does a variation on the Sisyphus myth – the story of the man condemned for eternity to push a boulder up a hill, only to have it fall back down – by rewriting the story. In this version, after waging a hilarious struggle with the rock, Brochu/Sisyphus gets wise and wedges the boulder against a tree to prevent it rolling. Brochu has a wonderful clown’s face, mobile and expressive, and he turns the simple act of rolling a rock into a rich piece of comedy.”
- Shannon Rupp
“Pairing Magic with Absurdity”
The Georgia Straight, June 6-13, 1996
“One of the most interesting dance events this week is Shattered Space by Karen Jamieson Dance Company, which has transformed Performance Works on Granville Island into a multi-faceted indoor-outdoor performance dreamscape.”
- Renee Doruyter
“Shattered Space highlight of week”
The Province, May 30, 1996
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