Sisyphus

1983

About

“In 1983, the year of this work's creation, I had undertaken to try to build a dance company, something I experienced as pitting myself against impossible odds. I was interested also in the idea of dance itself as hard labour and the dancers forming the working class of the arts. As part of the research process, the company of dancers built our floor, the same floor that we then created Sisyphus upon.

During the creation and rehearsal of Sisyphus I did not know that it was Sisyphus that was coming into being. I was interested in the path of most resistance, I was interested in giving a physical, spatial and temporal form to the act of undertaking a monumental task, and I was looking for the rhythm and energy of effort, of building. I wanted to create an image of pitting the human spirit against the impossible. Neither did I start out with Jay Hirabayashi in the solo protagonist role. That also emerged to surprise me, as did the recognition, close to the completion of the work, that it was Sisyphus, the figure from Greek mythology that has come into being in this choreography.”

- Karen Jamieson

Sisyphus was first created in 1983 as part of Vancouver Dance Week, with a score by David MacIntyre, and was later included in the official premiere of the Karen Jamieson Dance Company in February 1984. Dance Collection Danse has since named Sisyphus one of the ten Canadian Choreographic Masterpieces of the twentieth century.

More information on the 2007 remount of Sisyphus can be found here.

The People

Dancers: Paulette Bibeau, Alison Crawford, Jay Hirabayashi, Karen Jamieson, Lyne Lanthier, Aaron Shields, Tom Stroud

Music Composition: David MacIntyre

Musicians: David MacIntyre and Sal Ferraras

Costume: Susan Berganzi

Reviews

Through the Greek myth of Sisyphus this dance gives a “…unique, pared-down language that synthesizes form and idea…giving visible shape to the idea of human indomitability in the face of impossible odds. We are touched, saddened, thrilled.” - Max Wyman

"[Jamieson's] material here is as old as all myth-making - the familiar tale of the man who was condemned to roll a rock up a hill for eternity. But her treatment of her material is at the absolute forefront of modernity, rendered in a superabundant rush of expended energy for seven dancers, (some of the most interesting dancers, incidentally, of the rising generation). There is a sense of shock at her force and daring, and of exultancy at the immediacy of her movement language – slamming herself and her dancers in rhythmic routine against the wall, building impossible hills for Sisyphus to climb, integrating a crescendo of straining breath-sounds with the movement’s rhythms, letting the almost-triumph happen, falling back, then dragging the forces together to do it again. It's a major new artwork that speaks in the movement language of the moment about a timeless and universal issue. In itself, Sisyphus justifies the marathon experiment that was Vancouver Dance Week."

- Max Wyman
The Province, November 14, 1983

Please note that populating the Karen Jamieson Dance website with new information and images from the archives is an ongoing process that we are undertaking as fast as we can. Karen Jamieson Dance welcomes any corrections or missing information to the description and acknowledgments listed above. These can be forwarded to admin@kjdance.ca