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Tag: Ne. Sans

Powerfully against othering

Powerfully against othering

Into the Little Hill runs May 19 and 20 at SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre. (photo by Flick Harrison)

“Into the Little Hill is a powerfully emotional opera,” soprano Heather Pawsey told the Independent.

Pawsey is the artistic director of Astrolabe Musik Theatre, which, with Simon Fraser University Woodward’s Cultural Programs, is presenting the opera’s Canadian première May 19-20. A multidisciplinary, modern take on the medieval story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, Into the Hill features two singers, three dancers and live music. Written by English composer George Benjamin with libretto by Martin Crimp, Jewish community member Idan Cohen of Ne.Sans Opera and Dance is the local production’s director and choreographer.

“From the moment I first heard Into the Little Hill, I knew I had to have dancers in the production,” said Pawsey. “My company, Astrolabe Musik Theatre, has been experimenting with dance and movement in classical music, in varying degrees, for over 10 years now. Dance and movement are such normal, natural, innately human ways of expression, yet we see it so rarely in opera and classical music.”

When she heard Into the Little Hill, she said, “I literally saw the dancers in my mind … and knew that this was the perfect opera to intentionally incorporate them as amplifications of the characters, as commentators on the story, and as true partners with the singers (who are also precisely choreographed).”

After that, she was just “waiting for the perfect person with whom to work.” And she found that person in Cohen – his company, Ne.Sans, exists to reimagine and reconnect opera and dance.

“When Idan and I met in Amsterdam in 2018 on an opera I was singing and he was directing, I knew at the first rehearsal that he was the person I’d been waiting for: someone who knows music, who knows dance, who can work with professional dance artists and with singers who may have little or no dance training, and whose knowledge and experience come together in a profound understanding of the possibilities of singing and dance.”

“We’ve connected on so many levels,” said Cohen of Pawsey, who introduced him to Into the Little Hill. “Since then,” he said, “we’ve enjoyed many long conversations about this wonderful opera that is so close to both our hearts. I am so excited to finally be able to share our version of this brilliant work.”

“As far as I know,” said Pawsey, “l’Opéra de Montréal is the only other company in Canada to have produced one of George Benjamin’s operas (Written on Skin, his second). In 2014, I watched Written on Skin on MediciTV and literally got goosebumps. Singing contemporary music is a huge part of my career, yet I had never heard of this composer nor heard music anything like his: crystalline, precise, profound, spare, yet filled with emotion, colour, shadow, passion and power. I looked him up immediately and discovered that Into the Little Hill was (at that time) the only other opera he’d written…. I knew then that I had to produce (and sing!) it; that it would have dancers; and, voilà! A decade later, here we are. This opera speaks so profoundly against ‘othering.’ I know that people will come away having experienced something powerful, intense and beautiful.”

Pawsey and mezzo-soprano Emma Parkinson sing all six of the opera’s characters.

“One of the things I love the most about Into the Little Hill is its exquisite precision,” said Pawsey. “Vocally, orchestrally, dramatically, dramaturgically there are no extraneous notes, no extraneous words, and the power of this concentration is intensified by having only two singers portray all the roles. We aren’t distracted by multiple singers coming on and off the stage, nor by the differing ranges and timbres of their voices – we have focus.

“We also have gender-neutrality, something that is difficult to achieve in traditional opera, where characters’ genders have historically been determined by voice-type (ie. tenor, soprano, etc.). Having only two singers sing all the roles makes gender, sexual orientation or how one presents to the world irrelevant, and leaves the make-up of the characters to each individual audience member’s imagination. As an artist, it frees me from having to imagine or recreate assumptions about how ‘men’ or ‘women’ move, behave and speak (sing), and allows me to enter fully into what that character is actually expressing. My hope is that this also helps audiences to identify more freely with the characters.”

The opera speaks to Cohen on many levels.

“As a queer artist, a descendant of Holocaust survivors, coming to Canada from Israel/Palestine, I have always valued the importance of raising voices of underserved communities and to acknowledge our troubled past, learn from it, and aspire to do better,” he said. “I chose to leave my country in search of a better future and, as I arrived in Canada in 2017, I was amazed to find how relevant the history of Canada is to my own, from multiple angles, both as the oppressed and the oppressor, often against my will.

“My work is embedded in this life experience and perspective, and I am passionate in telling classical stories through alternative lens,” he continued. “Into the Little Hill is such a powerful opera that speaks of the human condition in a very creative way. There are different ways to speak of the tragic history of Western culture, and one of the reasons I chose to be an artist is because I see the importance of speaking of the violence and hurt, and to fight against discrimination.

“This opera is such a great, complex example of the fact that there is no one source of harm, and not one source of knowledge and perspective,” he said.

Critics have generally lauded Into the Little Hill, though some have expressed concern over the way in which the story is told.

“The narrative style of this opera imposes a certain detachment or distancing,” Pawsey said. “Traditionally, opera is all about emotion – big, huge, dare I say OPERATIC emotion! Here, Martin Crimp’s libretto uses Brechtian techniques (such as the Narrator directly addressing the audience, breaking the fourth wall, etc.) to discourage the audience from becoming too emotionally involved. Brecht used these techniques to encourage a deeper focus on the socially significant aspects of the story. This is particularly relevant in this opera’s tale of ‘who are we labeling as the “rats” in our society, what are we willing to do to get rid of them and what happens when we refuse to “pay the piper,” ie. take responsibility for the consequences of our actions?’

“Detachment, distancing – this is what we, as humans, do when we label, when we ‘other,’ when we divide into ‘us’ and ‘them.’ It’s a part of the de-humanizing process, which allows us to plan or to undertake horrific acts. But this is not to say that audiences will feel emotionless at the end of Into the Little Hill,” she stressed. “Fascinatingly, the muting of emotion evoked for individual characters and their stories makes us feel even more deeply and keenly the emotion of the story overall and how its outcome affects all the characters – and, by extension, us.”

Into the Little Hill takes place at SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre. Conductor Leslie Dala is music director for the production, whose orchestration includes bass flute, basset horns, mandolin and banjo. Lighting design is by Victoria Bell, with costume design by Elena Razlog. The dancers are Juolin Lee, Daria Mikhalyluk and Hana Rutka.

For tickets and more information, visit littlehill.eventbrite.ca.

Format ImagePosted on April 28, 2023April 26, 2023Author Cynthia RamsayCategories Music, Performing ArtsTags Astrolabe Musik Theatre, dance, Heather Pawsey, Idan Cohen, Into the Little Hill, Ne. Sans, opera, theatre
Celebrating Leonard Cohen

Celebrating Leonard Cohen

Take This Waltz performers Ted Littlemore, left, and Daniel Okulitch. (photo by Victoria Bell)

Take This Waltz world premières at Rothstein Theatre Sept. 10-11.

“The concert as a whole tells a story, and each song finds its place within that story,” Idan Cohen told the Independent about Take This Waltz, which sees its world première as a Chutzpah! Plus event Sept. 10-11 at the Rothstein Theatre.

Cohen is the artistic director of Ne. Sans Opera and Dance, so it might seem odd that he’s staging a show celebrating the music of Leonard Cohen. But he’s a fan of the Canadian icon, who died in 2016, and this production piqued his interest.

“I’ve admired Cohen’s lyrics and music for years,” said Cohen, who is not related to the singer-songwriter. “So, when Daniel Okulitch, one of Canada’s most appreciated operatic baritones reached out to me to directly to produce Take This Waltz, I immediately said yes. Daniel’s vision was to look at Cohen’s music through the classical tradition of the Song Cycles (Lieds). I thought that it was a really interesting way to look at Cohen’s music through a fresh, exciting lens.”

Okulitch contacted Cohen after having created a successful online concert that included some of Leonard Cohen’s work, as well as that of other singer-songwriters, which took place via Pacific Opera Victoria in winter 2020. Okulitch wanted to add dance to the concert.

“I knew that, if I was to take this on, I would want to focus on Cohen’s body of work and say something meaningful about the times we live in,” said Idan Cohen. “Ne. Sans’ mandate is to follow the operatic tradition in the full sense of it – to create work that integrates all the classical arts of theatre, music, dance, set and costume design. It is challenging to do in this economy, but I strongly believe in this type of offering.

“It took us some time to fundraise so that we can present this work as I believe it should be presented,” he noted. “We have an ensemble of cello, violin and accordion, with stunning arrangements by Adrian Dolan, and Daniel’s voice is so rich and sensitive, that it speaks straight to the heart. Amir Ofek is designing the set, Itai Erdal creating the light design and Christine Reimer the costumes. Alongside Daniel is the dancer/musician Ted Littlemore, with whom I’ve been collaborating for almost five years, who’s such a wonderful artist. I am truly blessed, and I hope that we’ll not just do justice to Cohen’s legacy, but help audiences experience it in a different, new way.”

About that legacy, Cohen added, “I had coffee with the wonderful Vancouver-based composer Rodney Sharman the other day, to discuss a future project that we’re working on, and Rodney said something that I found to be really relevant to Take This Waltz. He said that he thinks that my body of work is a variation of two core elements: love and death. And I thought to myself, that’s life, right? Cohen got it. His wisdom is so profound that it sometimes seems as if he knew the secrets of the human soul. I think it’s because he was brutally honest, a thing that we don’t see a lot in our contemporary culture. There’s so much pain and often bitterness and anger in his work, that are then composed in such generosity and love. What a beautiful combination. My work is to honour that.”

About his collaborators on Take This Waltz, Cohen said the production started at Pacific Opera Victoria, “as an intimate, beautiful concert of various music that included just a few of Cohen’s songs, and Vancouver Opera decided to support its development and creation. Jessica Gutteridge, a wonderful human and the artistic director of Chutzpah!, has given us a very generous creative residency at the Norman and Annette Rothstein Theatre in Vancouver’s JCC [to further develop the work]. It’s all live, no film or projections. I felt that Cohen’s work needs to be honest and direct. Having said that, there are quite a few surprises in the show – you’ll just have to come and see!”

Take This Waltz is being presented with Pacific Opera Victoria and Vancouver Opera, and Chutzpah!’s live music programming is supported by a grant from AmplifyBC. The Sept. 10-11 shows are also being supported by the Bierbrier family, in memory of Len Bierbrier, who was a dear friend of Chutzpah! board chair Lloyd Baron, said Gutteridge. Bierbrier was also a friend of Leonard Cohen, she said.

While most people cannot claim that level of connection to the legendary musician, many people do feel connected to him in some way. When asked to confirm that, indeed, he was not related to the singer-songwriter, Idan Cohen said, “We are all related, aren’t we? I first heard Cohen’s music through my dad and, in many ways, always felt that he is a father figure to me. So many of us feel that way about him and his music and poetry. I love him like family. Does that count?”

For tickets to Take This Waltz, visit chutzpahfestival.com.

Format ImagePosted on August 19, 2022August 18, 2022Author Cynthia RamsayCategories Performing ArtsTags Chutzpah!, Chutzpah!Plus, dance, Idan Cohen, Leonard Cohen, music, Ne. Sans
Dance-opera closer to final

Dance-opera closer to final

Ted Littlemore is one of seven dancers in the latest iteration of Idan Cohen’s Orfeo ed Euridice, which will be available online April 6-13. (photo by Flick Harrison)

The first article the Jewish Independent published about choreographer and opera director Idan Cohen was about his reimagining of Christoph Willibald Gluck’s opera Orfeo ed Euridice. Much progress has been made in the few years since, and excerpts from the contemporary dance work will be streaming on demand April 6-13.

Cohen was a relatively recent arrival from Israel back in 2018. As artistic director of Ne. Sans Opera and Dance, which he established here in 2017, he has become a prominent part of the Vancouver arts scene. He is currently artist-in-residence at the Dance Centre, which describes Cohen’s approach to this 18th-century opera as one that interprets

“Orpheus not as a god, but as an artist – a human who looks at the complex and sometimes violent history of Western, classical opera and dance with eyes wide open, the dancing body serving as a living example of human strength and fragility.”

In the myth, poet and musician Orfeo mourns the death of his wife, Euridice, and tries to get her back from the Underworld. It is an effort fraught with challenges, not unlike creating a new artistic work.

“Staging an opera is a monumental task, and it is really exciting to have an audience who has been following this production from its inception,” Cohen told the Independent. “Alongside the Dance Centre’s residency, we were given a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, through the Piercey family – the Sheila Kathleen Piercey Fund – which enabled us to continue and present this final phase of the research, leading to the full production in 2022.

“For the past few months,” he said, “I have been rehearsing with Leslie Dala as the music director and with seven incredible dancers and five opera singers. We are presenting almost 40 minutes of a piano reduction of the score, played live by Leslie, and the singers, as a dance-opera. So you’ll get to see and listen to a live opera that is also a dance performance.”

In 2019, Ne. Sans presented Trionfi Amore, as a part of the research for Orfeo ed Euridice. That production featured Ted Littlemore, Kate Franklin and Jeremy O’Neill. For this April’s production, they are joined by dancers Hana Rutka, Rachel Meyer, Aiden Cass and Stephanie Cyr.

“The wonderful counter-tenor Shane Hanson is singing Orfeo and the chorus singers are Heather Pawsey, Tyler Simpson, Heather Molloy and William Grossman,” said Cohen. Costume designer and stylist is Evan Clayton, while Littlemore pulls double duty – not only performing, but in charge of the makeup and masks.

The number of people involved now brings its own challenges, given the continuing pandemic.

“The Dance Centre’s residency enabled us to rehearse in large spaces that allowed for our relatively big group to remain socially distanced at all times,” said Cohen. “Following COVID-19 protocols meant that we needed to be wearing masks and that the performers could not touch. I tried to look at these not as obstacles but as creative opportunities and I am very proud of what we’ve managed to achieve.”

Ever the one to look on the bright side of things, Cohen added, “It was wonderful to gather musicians and dancers and create. There’s nothing quite like it, and I hope that the result will be as pleasurable to our audience as it was to us.”

The April streaming, which will have been pre-recorded, includes a discussion with Cohen. Tickets are on a sliding scale, and can be purchased from thedancecentre.ca/event/idan-cohen.

Format ImagePosted on April 2, 2021March 31, 2021Author Cynthia RamsayCategories Performing ArtsTags coronavirus, COVID-19, dance, Dance Centre, Idan Cohen, Ne. Sans, opera, Orfeo ed Euridice
A further peek at Cohen’s Orfeo

A further peek at Cohen’s Orfeo

Dancers Jeremy O’Neill, Ted Littlemore and Kate Franklin. (photo by Idan Cohen)

Last May, Idan Cohen introduced local audiences to his reimagining of Christoph Willibald Gluck’s opera Orfeo ed Euridice. He will share more of this ongoing work in EDAM dance company’s Spring Choreographic Series, in which he is a guest artist, along with Jennifer McLeish-Lewis.

In six performances between April 10 and 20 at EDAM’s home at the Western Front on East 8th Avenue, Cohen and McLeish-Lewis will present new work, while EDAM, under artist director Peter Bingham, will present a directed improvisation.

“I was introduced to Peter and the EDAM family through Linda Blankstein, who I met through the DanceLab residency I took part in last May at the Dance Centre,” Cohen wrote the Independent in an email from London’s Heathrow Airport, as he waited for his flight back to Vancouver. “Among the many other roles through which Linda supports Vancouver’s arts community, she is on the board of EDAM, and was kind enough to introduce my work to Peter.

“The space and people at EDAM were very welcoming,” said Cohen, who is artistic director of Ne. Sans Opera and Dance. “Peter invited me and the performers to take his daily morning classes, and offered this wonderful opportunity for me, Ne. Sans and the artists collaborating on this piece – musicians/dancers Jeremy O’Neill, Ted Littlemore and Kate Franklin.”

The part of Orfeo ed Euridice that Cohen will showcase next week is called Trionfi Amore (in English, The Triumph of Love).

“In Greek mythology, Orpheus [Orfeo, in Greek] was a musician and a poet who had the ability to enchant all living creatures through his musical gift, and could even stop the waves of the ocean from rolling,” explained Cohen. “In an attempt to bring his newly married wife Eurydice back to life from the dead, Orfeo persuades the guardians of the underworld to allow him entry to their kingdom.

“Trionfi Amore deconstructs the key elements and motives of the story and puts it into a contemporary context. We integrate dance with a bit of live music in a piece that speaks of love, and of the power of music and art to move, entertain and touch us. We also look at the power of art to manipulate, exploring the ways in which different aspects of love can be transformed into the act of performance. I am focusing on the ‘love story’ part of the mythological tale, recreating its themes through the intimacy and fragility of the body.”

For more about Orfeo ed Euridice, see jewishindependent.ca/the-power-of-music-and-love. For tickets to one of the EDAM Spring Choreographic Series performances, visit edamdance.org.

Format ImagePosted on April 5, 2019April 2, 2019Author Cynthia RamsayCategories Performing ArtsTags choreography, dance, EDAM, Idan Cohen, Ne. Sans, opera, Orfeo ed Euridice
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