“The only way of knowing a person is to love them without hope.” –Walter Benjamin

Dis/(sol/ve)r was created by Christopher House in close collaboration with nine wonderful performers. Influenced by House’s work with iconic choreographer Deborah Hay, the sentient presence of these performers is the animating force in Dis/(sol/ve)r’s choreographic structure. House reinvents his vocabulary in a work that examines the beauty of uncertainty in our personal encounters.

Dis/(sol/ve)r looks at desire, hope and the ephemeral traces of the loved one. The movement palette is convulsive, tender, percussive, joyful and proudly vernacular. According to Michael Crabb in The Dance Current, “Compositionally, Dis/(sol/ve)r shifts from clearly formal arrangements - lines, chains, circles, repetition and unison passages - to seeming anarchy. Even when not looking at each other, the dancers seem acutely conscious of each other’s presence.”

With an elegant set by designer Cheryl Lalonde and sophisticated evening wear by Philip Sparks, the stage resembles a fashionable nightclub in which the dancers move through space and time with assurance and a heightened sense of expectation. Ron Snippe’s atmospheric lighting bathes the dancers in rich tones, continuing the metaphor. Transitions, gestures, entrances and exits accumulate to form a dense archive of images and sensations. Dis/(sol/ve)r conjures a rich emotional world.

Dis/(sol/ve)r is a co-production with The National Arts Centre.

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