Nuit Blanche

A Corpus production.

At the Firehall Arts Centre on Wednesday, January 28. No remaining performances

Fitful sleep is usually a source of frustration and annoyance. However, it's anything but an aggravation in the hands--and feet--of Toronto's Corpus dance company. Featuring six engaging performers wearing white silk PJs, Nuit Blanche (Sleepless Night) is a hilarious romp through a nighttime that slides in and out of whacked-out dreams.

Headed by Sylvie Bouchard and David Danzon, Corpus is the troupe that each summer brings Dusk Dances to Stanley Park as part of Dancing on the Edge. The picnic-area performances are consistently a fest highlight, charming and goofy at once. The artists are just as irreverent in their latest ensemble piece, offering Charlie Chaplin ­esque slapstick with panache.

Their antics make audiences laugh out loud over and over, a rare and refreshing phenomenon in contemporary dance. Yet despite their exaggerated facial expressions and irresistible childishness, the performers are just as adept at evoking tenderness.

True to an evening of real dreaming, Nuit Blanche has no logic whatsoever. The action swirls from Amy Hampton's Olympic gymnastics routine--a fanciful sequence made all the more convincing by her enormous, phony smile--to Bouchard starring in a ballroom-dancing scene, a red rose clenched between her teeth. Keiko Ninomiya pairs up with a rubber ducky and later uses a toy gun to robotically knock down everyone around her. Danzon makes a fine Jacques Brel when he strums a guitar and sings in his native Parisian French, a long cigarette hanging out the side of his mouth.

In between are group numbers and duets, the steps simple but impeccably timed. Then there's the recurring game of rock-paper-scissors, in which Danzon always ends up getting his face slapped.

Nuit Blanche has creepier moments, for instance when Bouchard flops around at the end of a noose, and more touching ones, like the way she and Ray Hogg play jewel-box figurines in love. Still, humour dominates, the most riotous scene being a Keystone Cops parade wherein the dancers leap naked past an open doorway, covering their privates.

See? No sense, but no matter. The performers take us on a vivid, wild ride through darkness, with a clever use of sets--multiple black baffles and one fixed white door--and a mind-bogglingly eclectic score that ranges from tick-tocking percussion to swooning classical strings to the irritating drip of a leaky faucet.

If it were always this entertaining, insomnia wouldn't be so bad.