Filming Vida!

It wasn’t enough for Veronica Tennant to see the production of Vida! A Celebration of Life. It wasn’t even enough for her to become closely familiar with Danza Cuba, the dance troupe that put on the performance, or Lizt Alfonso, the show’s choreographer and composer.

No — she wanted to make a movie.

“I could tell right away that this was a force,” Tennant said in a phone interview. “I could tell right away that I wanted to chronicle this.”

Tennant retired from her career as a prima ballerina with the National Ballet of Canada 11 years ago and has been (among other things) producing televised dance specials since then. It was when she saw Danza Cuba perform in Havana that she knew this film (its working title is Direct from Havana: Vida!) would be her next project.

Participants at Luminato’s opening gala could see Tennant’s filmmakers darting around the VIP area, cameras and sound gear in hand, to cover every moment of the dancers’ time at the concert. They’ve shot in Cuba already; while they’re still months away from a final cut, Tennant suspects Danza Cuba’s Luminato performance may be the climax of the film.

In the fashion of the performance itself, she envisions the film as a wide portrait of Cuba through the eyes of its artists.

“I find it most fascinating to experience all the social interaction from the point of view of the art, and from the heart of the artists,” she said.

You can see Vida! A Celebration of Life at 2 p.m. or 8 p.m. today, or at 5 p.m. tomorrow, at the Royal Alexandra Theatre.

Last chances

We at the Luminato Blog are starting to get a little sad. We know that the festival has fewer than 48 hours left to it, and we’re starting to get that “so long, farewell” song from The Sound of Music stuck in our heads.

But we don’t despair. We know there’s still plenty to do. But unlike Pulse Front and Speigeltent’ntavern, many of the Luminato shows are coming to an end this weekend.

Here’s a rundown of the ticketed shows it’s your last chance to see:

An Evening With Glenn Gould. Saturday at noon and 5:30 p.m.; Sunday at 1:30 p.m.

Vida! A Celebration of Life. Saturday at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m.; Sunday at 5 p.m.

Shen Wei Dance Arts. Saturday at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m.

The Walker Project: Better Living. Saturday at 4 p.m.; Sunday at 2:30 p.m.

The Walker Project: Escape from Happiness. Saturday at 8:30 p.m.

The Walker Project: Tough! Sunday at 1 p.m.

Back Home. Saturday at 7:15 p.m.; Sunday at 7:15 p.m.

Risk Everything. Saturday at 7:30 p.m.; Sunday at 4 p.m.

Constantinople. Saturday at 8 p.m.

The Passion of Winnie. Saturday at 8 p.m.

The Walker Project: Escape from Happiness. Saturday at 8:30 p.m.

The Walker Project: Tough! Sunday at 1 p.m.

Carnivalissima: For All Ages

So, here’s what we imagine the situation to be: You’ve got kids. You want to have a good time at Luminato absorbing some art and culture, but the kids tend to get squirmy when you take them to see opera or modern dance recitals. You’d take them to Speigeltent’ntavern, but you know that nobody ever won Parent of the Year for taking their kids to a burlesque show. Where’s a family to go?

We at the Luminato Blog feel your pain, and we’ve got an easy answer: Carnivalissima. It’s a celebration of the diversity and creativity of Toronto’s vastly multicultural population, featuring concerts, art, film, fashion, dance, jazz, international crafts and cuisine… we’re getting out of breath just listing it all.

Here’s the full schedule:

Masquerade Ball: June 8, 8 p.m., Carnivalissima Tent
The Masquerade Ball will start with a call to dance by Maracatu Nunca Antes and continue with music by Jay Douglas and the All Stars and dance lessons by Miko Sobreira and Company. Performances in the Venetian tradition will occur featuring commedia del’arte by MetaPhysical Theatre. Amazing fashion competitions and two fashion shows created by Len D. Henry of Fashcam Productions take place.

Carnival: The Spirit and the Soul: All Weekend, Marilyn Brewer Community Space
An exciting new art exhibition curated by Theodoro Dragoneri will examine tradition based on more contemporary aspects of the uses of theatrical narrative and masking. This three-part exhibition will include masks, photography and mixed media from Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas.

FireWalk: June 9, after dusk, Congo Square
When day turns to night, Carnivalissima ignites the Toronto waterfront with spectacles of swirling fire dancers, daring fire-eaters, majestic stilt performers, mythical giant puppets, and the glimmering lights of a thousand lanterns! Join in a dance procession of shadow and light and follow the sound of Samba, Steel Pan and Tassa Drums through Harbourfront Centre’s transformed boardwalk and streets.

Family Programming: June 9 & 10, Topsy Turvy Territory and Kid’s Hands-On Tent
A two-day carnival arts and crafts extravaganza will take place by the waterfront. Children of all ages, family and friends are invited to create dazzling carnival masks and costumes, bamboo and paper lanterns, and musical instruments from all over the world. Jump up and dance along to the beat of live steel-pan orchestras, chutney Soca, African drums, stilt-dancers, and hoop-dancers all performed by professional youth artists. Special dance workshops, mask theatre performances, aerial dance performances, and the aroma of live food demonstrations from the master chefs of Pier 4 Restaurant and Radisson Hotel will ignite the carnival spirit in kids and adults alike.

Carnivalissima happens entirely at the Harbourfront Centre.

The Luminato Express: Come on and take a free ride

Bless the good souls at the Toronto Transit Commission. They’re providing all of us art-lovers with free rides this weekend.

TTC will run two buses this weekend every half hour, between the Distillery District and the Harbourfront Centre, with a stop at Union Station in between.

So, you just checked out Carnivalissima and you’re ready to head to the Luminato Poetry Slam Semi-Finals at the Distillery? Hop on the Luminato Express at Queen’s Quay West. You just learned how to breakdance at the Distillery’s Breakdance Workshop and now you want to get your masque on at Carnivalissima’s opening Masquerade Ball? Head to the Mill Street Entrance of the Distillery and be on your way.

The buses will run tonight from 6 p.m. to midnight, Saturday, June 9 from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., and Sunday, June 10 from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.

And just like all of the events at Carnivalissima and Luminato at the Distillery, the buses are absolutely free of charge.

Donald Sutherland loves Vida!

This week Donald Sutherland — star of Ordinary People and MASH — attended Vida! A Celebration of Life, featuring the Cuban dance troupe Danza Cuba and Omara Portuondo of the Buena Vista Social Club.

He loved it so much he sent an email to Luminato dancer and filmmaker Veronica Tennant, which is available in its entirety right here on the Luminato blog:

Dear Veronica: — It was brilliant. Terrific. Passionate. It confirmed for me what I’ve longed suspected: if a revolution’s going to happen it’ll have to come from women. If this sad world is going to be saved, it’ll have to come from the hearts and souls and sensibilities of women; good women. Passionate women. I loved this evening. It thrilled Francine and me. Congratulate them all please. From our hearts to theirs.

Signed with a mouse but what the hell, it’s signed. Love Donald

Vida! A Celebration of Life

During the run of Vida! A Celebration of Life, there are, in the lobby of the Royal Alexandra Theatre, a collection of posters and stand-ups advertising Cuban tourism. It’s probably a good thing there wasn’t some sort of sign-up sheet; the lobby would have been substantially more crowded than it actually was.

We’ll say this as directly as we know how: Vida is huge. During the most recent performance by Cuban dance troupe Danza Cuba, the line for tickets stretched down King Street and nearly rounded Simcoe Street. And that was for a Wednesday afternoon show.

The show, about one woman’s relationship to Cuba’s troubled and turbulent bout with the Twentieth Century, stars Omara Portuondo, perhaps best known to Northern audiences for her role as a vocalist in the legendary Buena Vista troupe, featured in the Wim Wenders documentary The Buena Vista Social Club.

Vida’s narrative — a chronological picaresque through Cuba’s history from the 1930s to the present — allows for series of set pieces of escalating beauty and complexity, framed by a birthday party and funeral for its main character. Costume and set changes abound; while the opening dance number features the all-female cast in the festive sun dresses viewers might normally associate with Cuban fashion, the style quickly moves to gauzy and ethereal during Vida’s girlhood introduction to Catholicism (where dancers in white dresses stand piously in cruciform) to sharp-footed and militaristic during revolution in the 1960s.

Anything featuring Portuondo will certainly feature music as prominently as anything else, and Vida! is no exception. Her voice is prominent here, though it’d be a failure not to mention the dancers’ feet, which function musically as much as the trumpet or the conga drum. Occasionally the band stands back and lets the stoming steal the show, a move that never gets old.

The chances are good that viewers will be exhausted by the end; Vida! is as visceral and as involving as any trip to the gym. But like the runner’s high that also results from strenuous exercise, it’ll leave you with a considerable grin.

Vida! A Celebration of Life runs throughout the weekend, with shows every night (and during the day Saturday) through Sunday.

From the journals of Rear Admiral Horatio Hammerbotham, Adventurer in Her Majesty’s Service

The following passage regarding Spiegeltent’ntavern was taken from the Rear Admiral’s journals, discovered in the possession of a thief in a Marrakesh opium den:

5 June, The Year of Our Lord Two Thousand Five and Twain

Not since my great-uncle Lord Thaddeus Hammerbotham, Royal Man of Science, created a mechanical-man composed of naught but a wax storefront-mannequin and an ape’s brain suspended in a mason-jar of men’s hair-pomade, have I seen such a pleasing sight as the gentleladies and comely house-boys of the Speigeltent’ntavern, a burlesque and circus attraction here in the City of To-ron-to, in Her Majesty’s Dominion of Canada.

Would but that I had eyes circling my head like a stone-crab or a house-fly, I would be able to take in the myriad of foreign wonders that surrounded me! Statuesque cigarette-girls strode through the night-time gas-light as it filtered through the stained-glass windows of the tavern, offering tobacco and confections. On the stage, a lovely young lass (named, I recall, Mina LaFleur — such a name!), removed garment after garment, revealing her be-tasselled bosom and a waist of a mere twenty-one inches. Later, an acrobat of the Greek Isles elicited gasps from an appreciative crowd as she suspended herself from the ceiling-beams with only a gossamer strip of silken-fabric as support. And the ale! Oh, how the ale did flow, like rivers in der Schwarzwald of the Empire of Germania!

I have taken a tramp steam-ship to the Orient and danced the Tarantella with the Queen of Siam. I have hunted the dodo and the marsupial-wolf on the veldt of Africa. I have been crowned King of the Hoboes while riding a locomotive across the plains of America. But never have I seen such a sight as this!

Speigeltent’ntavern runs nightly at the Harbourfront Centre until June 8, then again on June 10.