A Joe Ink production. At the Scotiabank Dance Centre on Thursday, October 1. Continues until October 3
Strange, eclectic, and deeply personal, Joe Ink’s 4OUR has many moments of striking imagery that get under your skin in ways you might not fully understand.
Alice Mansell’s gauzy, white fabric sculptures hang above the stage like ghosts, and dancers lower them to become costumes, masks, veils, and props throughout the work. Eric Chad’s projections digitally generate immersive environments, from waves that crest on the stage to a star-studded night sky that swallows up the performers. Dancer Kevin Tookey turns what looks like a bonfire-style stack of ballisters and old tennis-racket handles into a classic chair. And there is even a slapstick-y silent-movie sequence near the end, where Joe Laughlin and Heather Dotto scurry in sped-up motion.
The work meditates on life, relationships, and memory; dedicated to dancer-choreographer Laughlin’s late father, dancer Gioconda Barbuto’s late father, and long-time arts philanthropist Yulanda Faris (all of whom died over the creation of 4OUR), the work has many scenes that read as parental or familial, where one person is comforting and supporting the other. At one moment, the intensely emotional Barbuto seems to pull Kevin Tookey out of a rising ocean; at another, she seems to free him from a strangling mask. The moving, transcendent ending, with Barbuto disappearing into that dark sea of starlight, could be read as the moment when you have to part from that person who has guided you through life.
But it is just as much a piece about the act of putting four dancers, each at a different stage in their career and all good friends, on-stage and seeing what happens. The improvisational process behind the work may be the reason it feels like a group of impressions and studies. There is a lot of chemistry that happens in the pairings here, as bodies pull each other, tangle, and burst apart.
Laughlin’s diverse threads do coalesce in some magic moments. The sequence of Barbuto and Tookey in the waves is moving and surreal, especially with her gauzy white veil and a platform that lifts her off the ground. Another moment finds all four dancers holding round screens that project video of their own faces, sped up and contorting to disorienting effect. And the finale, with Barbuto dancing in what looks like a snowstorm turning into the Milky Way, is serene.

Coupled with James Proudfoot’s dramatic lighting (dancers often emerge eerily from the shadows) and a soundtrack that includes remixed Johann Sebastian Bach and the sentimental piano music of Ludovico Einaudi (with sound design by Kate Delorme), it’s a show that creates different enveloping environments.
The silent-movie routine, which finds Laughlin in a bellhop cap? It’s one of the show’s highlights, hilariously executed and aided by a scratchy screen projection, but like some of the other moments it comes out of nowhere. Sometimes, the show seems like a series of random tangents—but then, come to think of it, that’s a lot like memory, and, of course, life itself.