Toronto Dance Theatre: where the past and future meet.

Toronto Dance Theatre repertoire makes no concessions to such trendy theatricalisms as the spoken word, multimedia accoutrements, dancers in Doc Martens, or nudity. Rather, company pieces exhibit consummate choreographic craftsmanship and artistry, formality of structure, intellectually challenging content, demanding physicality, intensity of mood and emotion, humanistic values, and--most important of all--superbly trained dancers who move beautifully through space. Says company member Coralee McLaren, now into her eighth year, "We keep dancing through all the fads."

The very foundations of TDT can be traced to the New York City legends of modern dance who, along with being unique choreographic voices, were also great teachers and codifiers of training technique. In 1968 Torontonians Patricia Beatty and David Earle and New Yorker Peter Randazzo transplanted American modem dance north of the border by creating TDT. All had studied with Martha Graham and had been profoundly influenced by her teachings. Each had also performed with leading modern companies--Beatty with Pearl Lang, Earle with Jose Limon, and kandazzo with both Graham and Limon.

The collective choreography of the newly formed TDT was Graham-based, flavored with a touch of Limon and Cunningham, as was the teaching at the TDT school. Each of the founders, however, developed an individual style. Generally, Beatty leaned toward the mystical and symbolic, Earle the epic and lyrical, and Randazzo the surreal and abstract. When the three received the prestigious Toronto Arts Award for the Performing Arts in 1988, the jury cited the trio for having "changed the face of Canadian dance."

Present artistic director Christopher House, who took over from Earle in 1994, was nurtured in the TDT cradle. Born in St. John's, Newfoundland, he began studying political science at the University of Ottawa with an eye to a diplomatic career but discovered dance while taking an elective course. Completing his degree in 1976, House then enrolled in the dance department at Toronto's York University, graduating with a B.F.A. in 1979. While at York, he also took classes at TDT and appeared with the company during its tenth-anniversary season, officially joining the following year.

Despite the fact that he had been training for only four years, House was soon recognized as a superb dancer who also possessed an astonishing choreographic ability. His fledgling efforts first appeared in company choreographic workshops in 1978 and 1979, but it was his Toss Quintet in 1980, an exuberant outpouring of pure movement to a driving score by Steve Reich, that proudly announced that a new kid had arrived on the block. Toss Quintet was the first House work to be taken into the TDT repertoire, and after a performance where the audience had acclaimed the new kid's talent, Randazzo turned to his two cofounders and said, "I think we are four."

House became a regular contributor to the repertoire, and was appointed resident choreographer in 1981 and associate artistic director in 1992. For some ten years House's work has dominated the TDT repertoire, but he has also created pieces for Ballet British Columbia, Judith Marcuse Dance Company, National Ballet of Canada, Dancemakers, Peggy Baker Solo Dance, and Les Grands Ballets Canadiens. He has won every major choreographic award in the country and is considered one of the finest contemporary choreographers in Canada.

"It was obvious that Christopher was the heir apparent," says Beatty. "He was a prolific choreographer and a wonderful dancer who came of age in the company, and his becoming artistic director has been an organic process. The founders were ready for a change; our gypsy days were over, and we wanted to do projects for our own enrichment without being tied to the company. TDT has been redefined to mirror Christopher's vision, but because we were his influences, we share karma, and we're still making a contribution."

In fact, the founders' ties to the company are still strong. Earle has been named artist in residence and will continue to set new work on TDT. Both Beatty and Earle teach for the company and school, and both are having pieces from the early repertoire revived during the coming season. Only Randazzo, at this point, has not clearly defined what his future relationship with TDT will be, although in 1992 he created a haunting new work for the company, Summer Evening, the third of his pieces based on paintings by American artist Edward Hopper.

"I want to continue to develop a repertoire of original Canadian choreography," explains the forty-year-old House, "with `continue' being the key word. TDT is an important idea in dance, important enough to carry on past its founders because the company has always been about new work. The philosophy of creation is an affirmation of both tradition and growth. I can't help but be informed by the influences of the founders, yet my choreography is evolving all the time, and dancers need more than just Graham technique to perform my work."

House may be the boy who never left home, but TDT and its school have been the wellspring to such creative spirits as Danny Grossman and Robert Desrosiers who now head major Canadian companies of their own. In fact, the School of Toronto Dance Theatre is now acknowledged as the leading contemporary dance training institution in the country. One graduate is esteemed solo dancer Peggy Baker, who founded Toronto-based Dancemakers before going on to a distinguished career with Lar Lubovitch in New York. When she retumed to Toronto and embarked on her solo dance career in 1990, House was the first georeographer she commissioned for a work. The Windows, to a score by Philip Glass, is a beautiful, poetic dance that conveys the thoughtful reflection of an artist on the cusp of change.

"I taught Christopher at York," she says, "and he was way beyond his class. In fact, he was beyond me in many ways with his deep intelligence that allows him to see inside of things right away. He's an exceptional talent. He broke through a barrier at TDT by introducing technique for its own sake rather than to serve a deeper thought. His dance vocabulary is so strong and articulate and bone clean that it is of interest in itself His more mature works, like Fjeld and Artemis Madrigals, have an ambiguous, mysterious quality about them. Because the dancers execute such precise technique, nothing is muddied, which allows Christopher's choreography to reveal other aspects of itself."

According to Baker, many of House's choreographic ideas in context and structure are taken from music, literature, or history. House is both very well read and very well traveled. "Ideas are distilled down to an essence," says Baker, "and you are left with images that hint at deeper meanings, but the work is so fascinating that you don't have to know the background to appreciate what you see onstage."

Baker points to Encarnado (1993) as a work that is perfectly distilled. The enigmatic pas de deux for two men, inspired by the Iliad and set to an exotic oriental score by Canadian composer Claude Vivier, evokes images of warriors and heroes, but there is also an underlying sadness for a civilization lost forever--and this is just the tip of the iceberg. Repeated viewings of Encarnado reveal layers upon layers of nuance and innuendo. And House agrees with Baker: "My pieces show my Gemini tendencies--or two distinct streams. On one hand, I explore the architecture of movement and play with rhythm structure and counterpoint. My other side likes to work with the mystery and poetry of implied relationships that you can find in dance because I'm not good at being explicit. The two streams intersect, though. Even in pure dance, the physical language I create is sending signals to the audience."

According to dancers who have had House's choreography made on them, he begins by building up a pool of movement motifs that are specific to the work and will be woven together to become it. He does not discuss the genesis of creation with the cast. Instead, he prefers that they embark on a journey of discovery through the choreography itself. The individual personalities of the dancers are allowed to inform the dance. How they employ his movement vocabulary leads him to new ideas.

There are emotional and even physical risks along the way when House's brilliant musicality allows him to choreograph against the score. For example, during a passage in eights he may have the dancers move in fives and threes. A strong sense of balance is essential because so much of House's complex choreography is off-center, with sudden shifts of direction. Dancers say they also need great imagination to come to grips with the psychic density of his work and its constantly shifting moods.

House is also setting up choreographic challenges for himself. In recent years he has created works as diverse as Colder Ink a Cunninghamesque attempt to excise all emotion from movement, and Distant City, in which movement patterns hauntingly mirror and respond to a score inspired by Eastern temple bells. In Four Towers, a dark piece, the individual was pitted against the mass; while in Barnyard, a romp, saucy Broadway show-dancing was set to polkas. Amor's Gavottes was a fun-filled gallop through Mozart; Early Departures was a stunning AIDS piece. In an unusual concert last season both House and Earle set original works to live accompaniment by Arraymusic, an important Toronto new-music ensemble of cutting-edge composers and musicians. In Cactus Rosary, set to a Terry Riley score, House's choreography involved both musicians and the dancers in an intriguing invocation to ritual and musticism.

Ironically, being labeled "modern dance" and "mainstream" is both the curse and the blessing of TDT. How does a group remain true to the values of Graham and yet be a vibrant and vital dance force in the nineties? How does one move forward while symbolizing the past? TDT general manager Jini Stolk admits that, in some circles, TDT is a hard sell. "It's a funny situation," she says. "On one hand, we're called old-fashioned by cutting-edge experimental devotees, while other consider us somewhat exotic because of our strong `dancey' presence. The bottom line, however, is that we're proof that a company can be long established and still be exciting."

Suzette Sherman, a TDT dancer for eighteen years, believes that the continual freshness of the repertoire lies in the company's commitment to creation. "The choreographers have always pushed the physical limits for both themselves and the dancers; they've never rested on a formula that proved successful. When you watch Christopher in the studio, you can see him take familiar things and bend them out of shape until something new emerges. In the early years of the company, works used to be more narrative and dramatic. Now I would call our repertoire `aerobic,' filled with high-energy and intensely physical works. We're a hotbed of new movement ideas, but at the same time, we're performing in the modern dance tradition. We'll always be in fashion for people who love dance."