'The Cabaret' good in parts

By Michael Reckord, Contributor

Dancers Trixi McMillan and Pedro Bosch perform the piece Fallin' during The Company Dance Theatre's 13th anniversary season which opened last week. The season closes on Sunday. - Michael Sloley

LIKE THE egg in the old joke, The Company Dance Theatre's current production at the Little Theatre is "good in parts".

Artistic director and chief choreographer Tony Wilson forces a really bad part on the audience with the first item, a violin solo by a young woman who later shows she dances better than she plays. The shock of such an item being in a professional company's production, and the fact that it's the opening number keeps one seated; though a friend of mine was tempted to walk out.

Happily, the show, The Cabaret, gets better as the evening passes and by the end of its two-hour run you are enjoying yourself. Most of the two dozen items ­ comprising song, dance and instrumental music ­ give pleasure.

Wilson's most admirable works are his long ballets ­ like Red City and Rosehall ­ but no doubt he wasn't up to one this year and instead gave us a concert of the cabaret variety. There are problems with this format: weak items lie cheek by jowl with good ones, non-dance items are tossed in too frequently into what is, after all, an evening of dance; and there is no single venue suggested.

Neither is there any linking of the items. Why, for example, doesn't the show have an emcee, as cabarets normally have?

I found the first several items lifeless. The dancers seem emotionless, even mechanical. Nature Boy, a powerful solo choreographed and danced fluidly by Pedro Bosch ­ for me the star dancer of the evening ­ was an exception. The audience showed Bosch their appreciation with enthusiastic applause.

The singing of the popular blues number Georgia followed by the cabaret's chanteuse, Samantha was by Big Spender (from the musical Sweet Charity) with Kamika Fletcher enticing three young men (Bosch, Leighton Moffat and Victor Brown) to spend their money in her nightclub. Trixi McMillan's energetic solo, I'm Not Going, was one of three more which, like Bosch's earlier, were first class. The others were And Then Came A Spider, in which Shani Fletcher played a frightened fly caught in a web and I Am Changing, with Sade Bully being lyrical and elegant, despite an injury she suffered to her back and hip during rehearsals.

Also delightful were the last couple of dances before intermission, Silky Thoughts, a happy, romantic duet featuring Bosch and Kammina Johnson, and the tremendously varied and entertaining The Mission. The latter was choreographed by Shelly Maxwell, the production's official guest choreographer who, though still a young woman, has been creating fine dances for many years.

Maxwell's other major dance is Libertango, which is full of leaps, somersaults, cartwheeling and leaping around the stage ­ but no discernible tango steps ­ and she teams with Wilson to create the bouncy finale.

Another of the production's special guests is singer Suzanne Couch. On keyboards, her husband, Peter Couch, complemented a trio of young professionals, and her renditions of Summer Night and ­ from her new CD ­ How Sweet the Night were professionally rendered and most enjoyable.

Tony Wilson not only choreographed most of the dances, he also designed the costumes and decor, the latter consisting of, mainly, the facade of ten-foot tall columns on the periphery of the stage.

The season continues this weekend with the final performance on Sunday.

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