About a month ago I walked into Peggy’s favourite studio, number 5B at Canada’s National Ballet School and thought I was in the wrong place. Several young dancers were there, and I had thought that we were supposed to be working on one of Peggy’s most physically demanding, intensely emotional solos.
It turns out that Peggy was going to teach the opening section of Brute to a few students from the graduating year of School of Toronto Dance Theatre for performance in their March 2010 showcase.
Here we are, a month and a few rehearsals later, and she surveys the remaining three dancers in front of her. “You’re all very different, physically,” she observes. “Even your haircuts are all different lengths.” Everyone laughs and self-consciously smoothes down their hair. “I’m not saying ‘Don’t change your hair’,” jokes Peggy, “but it’s just very interesting.”
Peggy in fact tells Paige Culley from Rossland, British Columbia, Mairi Greig from Penticton, British Columbia and Stéphanie Tremblay from Montreal, Quebec to embrace their differences by not over-practicing the choreography of the eight minute piece.
She encourages instead practicing a different element of performance: “Raw energy drives this dance – you’re a conduit of emotion. If you refine the shapes too perfectly you’re going to lose that.”
I pointedly look at Sahara Morimoto, Peggy’s Artistic Associate, who will be filmed “learning” this dance next month. After rehearsal I remind her about not practicing. “I want to have time to actually notate this one,” I beg her, “and I can’t do that if you perform it perfectly after Peggy demonstrates it only once.”
This was the case with Unfold, which was filmed at a break-neck pace: 30 minutes of dancing in 12 two-hour sessions.
If Sahara hadn’t generously spent several hours afterward helping me catch up by answering my detail-oriented questions – “Wait! Stop! Where is your left wrist facing in that jump? Are you looking down, or outwards and down? Do you think of that step as a half turn, or a segue into a whole turn?” – I would be chewing away my mechanical pencil out of stress.
The structure of the rehearsal dates of Brute – a few days in November, December, January, and finally March before the showcase – lends itself to Peggy’s idea of exploring the dance from different perspectives. She suggests that one can approach the choreography in many ways, which gives the dancer a more thorough understanding of the piece without dancing it full-out over and over.
“We’ve been working like dogs,” Peggy sighs, as we get ready to start filming. She looks at Sahara and bursts into laughter. “For two hours a day!”
