The Most Together We’ve Ever Been is big on concept

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      Choreographed and performed by Ame Henderson and Matija Ferlin. A Public Recordings/Provincija production, as part of Dancing on the Edge. At the Scotiabank Dance Centre on Saturday, July 13. No remaining performances

      In one of the most gripping moments of The Most Together We’ve Ever Been, a dark, ominous droning filled the cavernous Scotiabank Dance Centre. Coming after 20 minutes of performer-choreographers Ame Henderson and Matija Ferlin making a long series of entrances and exits underneath glaring fluorescent lamps, this was promising.

      Could it prefigure a change of plot? Maybe even an actual Event?

      Alas, no. It was just the air conditioning kicking in, adding extra chill to an already alienating, although highly conceptual, exercise in testing an audience’s patience.

      Now, I am not personally opposed to monotony in art. I once watched in rapt fascination as the British performance artist Nigel Rolfe spent two hours wrapping his own head in twine. I’ve listened to Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music all the way through, twice. I enjoy hearing Philip Glass play the piano. But the combination of insult and ennui that The Most Together We’ve Ever Been offered was hard to take.

      The brief passages of dance that flickered through the hourlong piece suggested that Toronto’s Henderson and Croatia’s Ferlin would be worth watching in a different context. One segment where Henderson crouched on the floor with her arms rippling like ocean swells was a lovely little benediction, and both are capable of moving with a feral sensuality. Here, though, they were most often blandly confrontational. Dressed in street clothes and wearing sunglasses, they paced the stage and stared at the audience, again and again and again. (In one nice touch, Henderson wore heels and Ferlin spent most of his time on his toes, mimicking the aggressive jut of her torso, but even he tired of this after 40 minutes or so.)

      In the end, though, the audience was touched by the two performers, quite literally. Breaking the fourth wall, they climbed into the seats to perform mock psychic readings on a few viewers, then led us, one or two at a time, across the stage to an exit, where we were offered a piece of watermelon and ushered onto sunlit Granville Street. My date and I were among the first to go; watching the others emerge, the relief on their faces was palpable.

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