Words: Alex Grunberg

4 Stars

In ‘pAges,’ a company of dancers creates memories through sketches and scenes of a dancer’s life. The performance blends a variety of dance styles and incorporates mime, clowning, and a surprising puppetry highlight. The pieces lean into the abstract and whimsy in the highs, while exploring passion through movement for the lows of the dancer’s emotional journey. Standout moments also included a lovely swing pas de deux and a contained and strong solo tap piece.

The clear and creative costume and makeup design is very striking and does a wonderful job both building the world we are in and showing the artists’ expressions, especially important in a dance piece like this that leans into silent storytelling to help guide the audience following the tale. Splashes of white and black highlights turn the dancers into living pieces of art, while also mirroring the sketchy nature of memory, and allowing for direct communication of the performance’s themes. This carefully constructed design is used to its best advantage in a story-focused number that had a ballerina struggling with jazzy spectres of pressure. 

While the group dances sometimes felt a little crunched in their choreography on the smaller stage, the inclusion of the full company worked wonderfully in the final stomp number that utilized a creative prop to tie together movement, sound, and theme in a very fun way.

An enjoyable and original dance performance.

pAges
Annexe at theSpace @ Symposium Hall
12:05
August 18-23