Timber/Timbre

A Joe Ink production. At the Scotiabank Dance Centre on Friday, March 14. No remaining performances

On the surface, Joe Ink’s latest work seems like a simple concept: three performers’ mannered baroque ballet gradually spirals into cutting-edge contemporary movement. Yet there is a lot more than a dance-history lesson going on in artistic director Joe Laughlin’s ambitious piece. The witty metaphors for global power struggles range from queens being crowned to rebels being hanged. Timber/Timbre is packed with the kind of detailed choreography that extends right out to the artists’ articulated fingers. And then there are those costumes—shape-shifting soft sculptures that both hint at the baroque era and transform into props and settings.

Dancers Chengxin Wei, Tara Dyberg, and Simone Kingman start out controlled and stiffly stylized, mimicking the baroque era’s pretty movement within the squares of a chessboard-like grid taped across the stage floor. They even perform an equestrian and a nautical dance, Dyberg stretching her pleated, pannier-style skirt into a “boat” for the latter, with Kingman joining her onboard. Dyberg, especially, excels in the baroque mannerisms, coyly smiling at the audience as if it were the bewigged court of Louis XIV. Gradually, though, the music morphs from classic George Frederick Handel and Johann Sebastian Bach to the more discordant tones of contemporary composer György Ligeti, and the dancers strip their costume pieces down to basic black bike shorts, bustiers, and socks. Soon they start pulling off extended phrases of punishing moves. In one duet, Kingman is twirling delicately in Wei’s arms when she drops into a long, low spider-walk with outstretched legs. A trio finds them all whipsawing their legs over each other’s heads; then Wei and Kingman yank Dyberg down into the splits. Laughlin is showing his choreographic chops like never before, revelling in both the beauty of balletic movement and the athletic physicality that harks back to his gymnastics background. About the only flaw is in some of the execution; Laughlin has recruited three highly versatile dancers, but the baroque polish demands perfection, and there were a few moments opening night when Dyberg and Kingman weren’t quite synchronized.

Visual artist Alice Mansell’s sleight-of-hand costumes are by far the most memorable aspect of Timber/Timbre. She and Laughlin, in a testament to their imaginative power, find countless ways to use the wearable art. At one of the most stunning moments, Kingman runs across the floor, suddenly letting her bustle loose into long, streaming ribbons; they’re later strikingly altered into everything from nooses to what looks like the entranceway of a 17th-century travelling-theatre tent. The imagery becomes more avant-garde when heads poke out of the folds of a skirt, or when Kingman floats in, hoisted by Wei under the same white drape, elongated like a towering ghost. On occasion, the costumes don’t transform as easily or organically as they could; fingers sometimes fumble for the strings that will stretch out the skirt, or multiple legs are mistakenly revealed beneath a lifted hem.

Still, when you’ve got this many big ideas rolling at you, you can forgive the small stuff.