Coming Out of Chaos

1981

About

Coming Out of Chaos was presented in Vancouver, Victoria, Quebec City, Montreal, Peterborough and Toronto with the assistance of a grant from the Touring Office of the Canada Council.

The People

Original Dancers: Karen (Rimmer) Jamieson, Jennifer Mascall, Peter Bingham, Ahmed Hassan, Lola MacLaughlin, Lola Ryan, and Savannah Walling

Music composed by: Ahmed Hassan, with contributions by Elyra Campbell

Costumes: Susan Berganzi

Commissioned by: Grant Strate, Simon Fraser University’s Centre for the Arts

Photos: Chris Randle and Rick Loughran

Coming Out of Chaos Performance. [Front - L-R] Lola MacLaughlin and Ahmed Hassan. [Back] Jennifer Mascall and Peter Bingham. 1982. Photo by Chris Randle. Costumes by Susan Berganzi. Karen Jamieson Dance Archives. — *Coming Out of Chaos* Performance. [Front - L-R] Lola MacLaughlin and Ahmed Hassan. [Back] Jennifer Mascall and Peter Bingham. 1982. Photo by Chris Randle. Costumes by Susan Berganzi. Karen Jamieson Dance Archives.

Reviews

“An examination of Rimmer’s Coming Out of Chaos shows her attempt to come to terms with aspects of 20th century life. Using a sound score by Elyra Campbell and percussion by Ahmed Hassan, the music emanates solely from the dancers whether vocally or by instrument. The work uses the device of a ladder at the side of the stage upon which Rimmer perches for most of the performance viewing the other six dancers down below, sometimes in retreat, sometimes in casual observation, sometimes like a winged serpent ready to pounce.

The main vocal repetition is the phrase ‘Things are not as they seem,’ and the shifting relationships between men and women point out the confusions. At one point, one of the female dancers is tied up with chains and bells. Is she captive of men? Are men her captive? The work ends with the dancers losing any semblance of order or communication and retreating back to their own spaces intoning "‘Date overload’ which cleverly becomes transformed into ‘Man overboard’ with Rimmer reaching back for her ladder in the blackout. The result is an intriguing and unusual look at perhaps an overworked topic – modern malaise – but Rimmer’s representation is a strong one.”

- Paula Citron
“Terminal City’s Karen Rimmer”
Canadian Dance News, July 1982

“It’s a tough piece, complex in structure and rich in texture. Let your attention waver for a second of its 53-minute course and you may as well give up any hope of breaking Rimmer’s particular cipher.

They not only move, they chant, deliver snatches of verse, snort, stamp, beat drums and sing. Coming Out does not have a conventional music score. There is a constant undercurrent of latent violence, of imminent destruction, which erupts in occasional bursts of open hostility.

If Rimmer has a message it’s certainly not written in specific terms. You could see Coming Out a dozen times and get a different feeling from it on each occasion.

Only those willing to work as hard as the dancers of Terminal City are likely to come away from Coming Out of Chaos with any degree of satisfaction. It is not a comfortable, accessible work, but Terminal City Dance Research is not in business to be comfortable and cute. Pushing against the conventional limits of an art form is never easy.”

- Michael Crabb
“B.C. troupe’s tough new dance requires thought”
Toronto Star, May 13, 1982

“Chaos is by no means pleasant. Rimmer, obviously, did not mean to be pleasant. She meant to shock, stun and dismay by creating a grim, dark view of human passions and emotions in a work that, in its essential existential punkiness, is more searing than any bona fide punk group could hope to be.

Her achievement, disturbing as it is, is nonetheless remarkable in its relentlessly focused message.”

- Doug Hughes
“Rimmer’s vision of life intense and terrifying”

“….there seems to be a running theme – the cruelty (but also the inevitability) of the domination of individuals by other individuals; the human wastefulness of stereotype role-playing; the angry, hurtful chaos we have made of the world we live in.

None of this is stated in any overt way, and Rimmer’s style – evocative, elliptical, open-ended – is not the most accessible. It expects the imaginative participation of its audience, and even then there are times, as in all her work, when you question exactly what it is she is trying to do; you seem to be watching movement made apparently at random. But there is organization to this randomness; again and again, it is validated by the coming together on the stage of images of austere beauty and great power.”

- Max Wyman
“Rimmer rouses a re-awakening in Lotus Land”
The Magazine, April 25, 1982

“Karen Rimmer wisely made no promises in talking recently about the genesis of Coming Out of Chaos, the hour-long dance presented by Terminal City Dance Research which is at Harbourfront through the weekend. She said the piece was an exploration of meaning, an experiment that might say more about chaos than emergence from it.

It does. This is an oddly invigorating but difficult and obscure work in which the chant ‘Things are not what they seem’ repeated throughout the piece is no comfort. If things are not what they seem, does that mean that they are really simple, clear and coherent? Like Karen Rimmer, who sits perched on a ladder looking hopeful for much of the piece, one waits for the revelation.

Coming Out of Chaos offers no solution and no theme, but the strength of its fragments provides for some effective theatre.”

- Stephen Godfrey
“Bewildering dance often brilliant”
The Globe and Mail, May 14, 1982

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