Cantus

1980

The People

Choreographer: Karen Jamieson

Dancers: Karen Jamieson, Savannah Walling, and Terry Hunter

Composer: Michael Baker

Photo: David Cooper

Reviews

“Cantus, choreographed by Karen Rimmer, utilizes three members of the group in a highly vocal, unnerving work. The chanting and whispering of Hunter and Walling torments Rimmer and her dance is a struggle to overcome these two aggressors. She is brought to the point of panic by their drone in series of elegant but unorthodox gestures and moves.”

- Mandy Chepeka
“Dancers deploy quizzical charm”
The Windsor Star, April 6, 1981

“Miss Rimmer’s pieces were undoubtedly the most successful of the evening. Both Cantus and Two Strand River have remarkable senses of dynamic timing. In Cantus, Miss Walling and Hunter sing at the sides of the stage as Rimmer struggles to free herself from a position of bondage. As long as she is helpless, they are gentle; but as she becomes freer, their words and tones grow increasingly menacing. By the end, it seems that she has had to go mad to preserve whatever individual freedom she managed to gain.”

- Alina Gildiner
“Terminal City stretches its dance points too far”
The Globe and Mail, April 10, 1981

“The struggle reached a more identifiably social level in yet another solo, Cantus (1980), in which Alison Crawford, head bowed, hands clasped behind her, gradually rose from her knees amid vocal torments visited upon her by Lyne Lanthier and Gary Kurtz.

The word ‘cantus’ bears the baggage of ecclesiastical musical authority and in this solo the individual’s striving is occasionally egged on only to be thwarted by surrounding authority figures.”

- William Littler
“Dance troupe struggles to find life’s meaning”
The Toronto Star, April 17, 1985

“It is particularly good to see Cantus again. There’s a new cast, with Alison Crawford as the dancer. Jamieson has changed it a bit – the musicians now become involved in the movement. Cantus is a very evocative piece of theatre and probably one of Jamieson’s best works. It is mindful of those incessant voices within us that occasionally become too unbearable for words.”

- CHQM AM/FM
“Q’s Reviews”
April 25, 1985

Excerpt from Terminal City Dance...At Work
1991 Documentary by Michael Goldberg
Distributor - VIVO Media Arts Centre (https://www.vivomediaarts.com)

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