Nothing is quite what you expect in Toronto Dance Theatre’s remount of their 2001 multi-media production Persephone’s Lunch. Yes, an elusive Persephone-like figure does appear fleetingly-on live-feed video-coyly munching a pomegranate, but the Greek myth is never directly referenced or enacted.
Simply put, Persephone’s Lunch is one of those cryptic contemporary dance works that now tantalizes, now mystifies, with a collage of ambiguity. Here and there, it also enthralls.
In the programme notes, choreographer Christopher House tells us that his inspiration was The Odyssey, and as the show begins, he intones over the sound system that “we are floating on a text.” With this, we are set adrift with 12 anonymous dancers who perform a 65-minute montage of abstract choreographies.
The flow is interrupted sporadically by video images that illuminate a small screen and by House’s narrated musings on topics as diverse as the diseases of sheep and the futility of painkillers. But disappointingly, even if you happen to be on familiar terms with Homer’s epic, the narrative is often intangible (is the video image of Brad Pitt’s bellybutton meant to represent a postmodern navel-gazing Ulysses?). This raises a controversial question: are audiences today woefully undereducated or should the choreographer be faulted if a work leans too far towards the obscure?
But while Lunch doesn’t necessarily always deliver the anticipated intertextual journey, there is, fortunately, much else to enjoy. Timely injections of wit relieve some of the tension, and a delightful moment occurs when six men gallop across the stage in black leather pumps as House’s voice claims, deadpan, that recent archeological findings show that high-heels were first worn by ancient Phoenician athletes.
One of Lunch’s motifs is the recuperation of a nomadic past, and this notion of travel and recycling is most successfully rendered in the designs. James Robertson’s set of found objects-plastic water bottles and wooden crates suspended in a vertical grid-evokes nautical rigging; Anna Michener’s medley of costumes in beige and crimson suggest reconstructions of existing clothing pieces; and Phil Strong’s aural samplings roam from medieval plainsong to contemporary samba rhythms.
Best of all, the dancers are unfailingly impressive: technically precise and polished. House’s choreographic idiom is punctuated by sharp lines, flowing shapes, and an edgy quirkiness. His dancers sink to the floor, writhing and spinning; then they are airborne, darting, soaring, and hoisting one another like acrobats into the air. Where Lunch satisfies most is in the group compositions, the tastiest of which are the appetizer and dessert. The opening sequence exudes arcane mystery as an incense-carrying priestess initiates a stylized orgy during which the company playfully intertwine throats and limbs, then snake around the dimly-lit stage in a harmonious single file.
And the lyrical finale is a jewel worth waiting for (although only well-versed spectators will recognize it as the magical episode on Circe’s island from The Odyssey). Bathed in a languid light that evokes the Mediterranean sun, the men luxuriate on their backs with their legs extended into the air, while the women, perched atop their partners’ flexed feet, sway sensuously like sirens. A press release for Persephone’s Lunch promises “a feast for the senses,” and in that it certainly succeeds, even if the menu is at times hard to decipher.
