From the “Taking an interest into what Jen, my GF likes” Dept.

For Jen’s Birthday, I bought her tickets to Garth Fagan Dance at the Harbourfront Centre yesterday. He is a Tony Award winning choreographer (his most recent success being the Lion King) from NY State University.

When Jen and I went to see Les Ballet Jazz de Montreal, she expressed interest in the Garth Fagan troupe, so I bought tickets. That made Jen happy.

Unfortunately, the entertainment didn’t live up to my expectations (which were rather positive after having seen the Jazz Ballet). Among the 5 ensemble acts, the beginning and ending of the show, was great. The third episode was good, not because of the dancing, but rather because of the music (composed by Wynton Marsalis) had some interesting moments—in particularly a nice, syncopated base-line that would change scales on the OFF-beat rather than the ON-beat. Act 4 was utterly b o r i n g. So boring, that I nearly fell asleep.

The final act had a lot of African undertones. It was a great crowd pleaser (especially the woman behind us yelling, “I can feel it, Baby!” over and over again—she sure could feel something at least…), but I was too tired by that time to get my energy back up to fully enjoy it.

Again, the dancers were amazing athletes, but on the whole, it was too abstract and didn’t suck me in like the Jazz Ballet did.

It was nice to see some different sized dancers too. When people think of dancers, they think of tall, slim-built women, and very fit men. Some of these dancers were short and stocky; one even had a pot belly. Nice to see that some people can be successful and amazing while not having to “fit-the-build”.

Tai