Craft Table Clue
A craft table. Only a practiced eye would have caught that cluttered craft table filled with bread, cookies, fruit juice, jam and peanut butter as a clue that Saturday's Winter Salsa Carnival show was a theatrical production, not just a salsa show.
Lights, cuing, scripting, stage manager, grips, lighting techs. It was all there. But for what?
Fusion
Warsaw 2008 ... Think the 2008 Warsaw Salsa Congress. That is where the inspiration came from.
Mark-Anthony saw Warsaw's theatrical performance and it gave him an idea - Fusion - a concept that would push salsa performance in Canada into a totally new direction.
Running Fusion by the only salsa school in Toronto with extensive broadway and stage production, Tina and City Dance Corps, the creative team came together. City Dance Corps' Julie researched and wrote a script that would tie various performances together. Keeping Mark-Anthony's concept in mind, Fusion would link disparate styles of salsa performance, showcasing various aspects of something that had rhythmic roots in Africa with European sourced partnering that grew out of 19th Century Cuban Danzon. A tall order indeed.
iFreestyle.ca's Angus would play the grizzled stagehand, the visual and spoken thread that would weave Fusion bits into a whole.
The first clue that something different was coming was the late 2008 venue change from the Berkley Church to the National Ballet School's Betty Oliphant Theatre, one of Canada's best stages for dance and performance and a renowned source for 19th-21st century dance.
A second clue that the 2009 Winter Salsa Carnival was indeed different was the 4:30pm. Tech Rehearsal call, terms not commonly heard for most salsa shows.
The big challenge was weaving the different performers and their personalities and performances into a seamless whole. The opening and closing numbers showing shards of lifts, poses, lines and movement in casual rehearsal clothing got it going.
From the opening scene, to "Dirty Dancing" and other projected dance movie snippets, to the old stagehand reminiscing past performances, sprinkling Danzon, Urban, African sources of dance and salsa, Fusion did indeed evoke a coming together of rhythm; three continents - Africa, Europe, the Americas; past - present - future; and the passion that infuses dancers and those who watch them.
Taking the audience on a musical and dance journey from the Forbidden Dance - Salsa and Tango - with their scandalous mix of African rhythm, busy busy hips and close European Waltz inspired holds; to the 50s-70s swing inspired but still sexy aura; to the "Westside Story," latin dance's big Broadway debut; Fusion brought it all forward to the Urban, Contemporary, and Classic influence on 21st century Salsa and Mambo.
Mark-Anthony's Fusion has set the bar, or is it barre, for salsa shows in Canada.
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