DANCING DARKNESS Peggy Baker conjures 'who we are in the dark'

DANCING DARKNESS explores the distinctively personal and profoundly collaborative creative process through the conjuring of Peggy Baker’s latest and most ambitious work, “who we are in the dark”. Renowned American choreographer Mark Morris calls Baker a “living treasure of Canada”. She burst into modern dance in 1971, working with dance greats Morris, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Lar Lubovitch, James Kudelka and others in New York and Canada, dancing into her late 50s before turning full-time to choreography.

Baker’s accomplices for ‘who we are in the dark’ match this ambition, including celebrated Canadian contemporary dancers* as well as violinist/singer Sarah Neufeld and drummer Jeremy Gara (of the famed indie-rock band Arcade Fire) who composed and perform the dance’s fast-paced, haunting score. Set paintings are by Montreal artist John Heward and lighting design by Baker’s long-time collaborator, Marc Parent.

In three acts, DANCING DARKNESS examines Baker’s creative odyssey (including a bio brief on her career); human responses to darkness, in the dance and as the artists otherwise express; and the mystery and necessity of art itself. The dance’s technical/dress residency provides the film’s rich visual backbone and extensive interviews with principal collaborators form its narrative ‘voice’.

A single outsider, actor/ playwright Daniel MacIvor**, witnesses the dance to ask: Why make art? What does it mean? Baker and several of her collaborators also engage these questions, deepening reflection on this luminous work and the mystery and motive behind any art.

“How we understand if a work is powerful,” comments Baker, “is if the meaning has got enough space.” Her dance opens with a soloist whirling in a fractured circle of light, soon accompanied by the drummer and violinist, then the violinist’s ethereal voice, then the growls, sighs and groans of seven dancers as they navigate each other and the wild or sublime in the dance’s theme. So our experience in darkness is revealed: in solos, in sensuous or fraught duets, in groups of roving, threatened or threatening alliances. In its final scene, alone again, the first dancer embraces the dark.

DANCING DARKNESS examines this artwork as it emerges, conjuring something of the alchemy that motivates the creative process.

* Sarah Fregeau, Mairi Greig, Kate Holden, Ben Kamino, Sahara Morimoto, David Norsworthy, Nicole Rose Bond and Jarrett Siddall.
** His latest one-man play, Let’s Run Away, ran November 2019 at Toronto’s (CanStage) Berkeley Theatre: https://www.canadianstage.com/Online/default.asp?BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::permalink=lets-run-away&BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::context_id=