The more one reads about Peggy Baker -- "legend!", "icon!", "exceptional, influential!", "an Olympian of dance", "one of the most outstanding contemporary dancers of her generation!" -- the more superlatives one encounters. But here's the thing: it's all true and none of it is an exaggeration. Peggy Baker is simply a mesmerizing performer/dancemaker. She is famous for the long, angular lines of her lithe dancer’s body, her loose yet careful composure. Her performances are masterpieces of angularity, athleticism, and grace. With sharply-defined outline and well-toned body, she moves with assurance. "Her unending arms, her square shoulders, her strongly-defined joints and her angular features lend her a striking, almost androgynous aspect. And it is this that makes her so fascinating." (Stéphanie Brody, La Presse)
A brilliant dancer and choreographer who still embodies passion and energy -- at age 60 -- these qualities are clearly evident in her own performance and those of her dancers. The evening of four works by Peggy Baker Dance Projects -- combining powerful musical scores (performed live), enthralling lighting designs, and stunning choreography -- features Baker as both dancer and choreographer. Again without exaggeration, this quartet of visually and audibly dynamic dance pieces will leave you spellbound.
- Peggy Baker dances her own double-Dora Mavor Moore Award-winning work, Portal, a 10-minute solo performed in total silence. With no music to manipulate the emotions, her dance transmutes in the perceptions of the audience. Arms waving crazily like a colossal tree dashed by a storm, she tears through light, only to be swallowed by darkness.
- The hyperkinetic Benjamin Kamino performs Baker's 1996 work Encoded Revision, set to a score by Michael J. Baker.
- The radiant Andrea Nann dances Baker's 1995 solo, In a Landscape, to John Cage music of the same name.
- And a major new work (in celebration of the centenary of the birth of composer John Cage, 1912-1992), Piano/Quartet, is choreographed by Peggy Baker to Cage's Sonatas and Interludes. Piano/Quartet focuses on Peggy Baker's characteristic line, musicality, and sense of design in space. Until now, Baker has mostly choreographed works for herself. With Piano/Quartet, however, she unveils a mesmerizing new dance, made from the ground up for young dancers Ric Brown, Sean Ling, Sahara Morimoto, and Andrea Nann. It's a shining example of how Peggy Baker is recreating herself -- and how dance can be passed on from one generation to the next. It's the living legacy of an extraordinary artist.
In 2008, Dance Collection Danse Press/Presses published Carol Anderson's Unfold: A Portrait of Peggy Baker. Anderson wrote, " ... the art of dance is a profound metaphor for physical and spiritual attainment. Peggy Baker brings this metaphor to life through her ongoing love and devotion to dance, and through her splendid dancing. Gutsy, intelligent and elegant, animating force of an eloquent art, Peggy Baker sustains her love affair with dance, a story of shape-shifting, enriching change. Out of the curious alchemy that makes a dancer -- sweat, will, physical gifts, intelligence and vision -- Baker has created her dancing being. She has followed her own path, understood process and aesthetics with rapture and devotion, with determination, discipline, will, and by sweating it out. Over the span of her career, Baker has risen to the singular challenges of becoming a dancer, a company member, a solo artist, a creator and a masterful teacher. She is a living integrator of impulse and emotion, and she shines with transformation. She is a complex and inspiring figure -- and she loves to laugh. Her infectious laugh is unmistakable, recognized in dance audiences across the country."
Peggy Baker says simply, “Dance takes me into a realm of learning and questioning. It takes me into the absolute, distilled essence of my person.”
Don't miss this chance to see Peggy Baker in performance -- and the work of Peggy Baker, choreographer -- at the National Arts Centre!
