Passion in performance

DANA SCHLANGER

I like how the Chutzpah! promotional blurb for ProArteDanza started: "Get ready to shed the February blahs." I don't agree with it, though. What February blahs? With the kind of programming Chutzpah! offers, I couldn't wait for February to roll in. One of the main reasons was those amazing dancers flying off the ground, off the poster, straight into our faces. Talk about chutzpah!

You look at the poster and you know, before even reading the promos, that these dancers will "burn up the stage," as the Globe and Mail put it. With an explosive and athletic style of dance, bringing together the highest level of artists from the worlds of classical ballet and contemporary dance, ProArte-Danza has emerged as a force both nationally and internationally.

Roberto Campanella, artistic director of ProArteDanza and its main choreographer, talks with great enthusiasm about the uniqueness of the company. "In our struggle to define ourselves, we fused together the idioms of ballet and contemporary dance and connected the two worlds. When we started four years ago in Toronto, those worlds were quite far apart. We believe in both grammars and speak both languages fluently. We all have the high-level ballet training and we add to it an extreme physicality of the choreography and vibrant expression. And I think the result speaks for itself: our shows are incredibly well-attended, our performances sold out as soon as we launched the company and we had to move into a bigger venue in a few short years."

Born and raised in Rome, Campanella trained at the Scuola Italiana di Danza Contemporanea and he gratefully mentions his incredible teachers who exposed him to all types of dance, including ethnic ones. In 1985, Campanella joined the Compagnia Italiana di Danza Contemporanea and became a principal dancer. In 1993, he joined the National Ballet of Canada, where he was soon promoted to soloist and was cast in many classical and contemporary roles. He founded ProArteDanza in 2004 with his dance partner, Robert Glumbek, who became artistic associate of the company.

Glumbek comes from an almost exclusive ballet background. He graduated from Bytom State Ballet School in Poland, joined the Great Theatre of Opera and Ballet in Warsaw as a soloist and worked with choreographers such as John Neumeier, Maurice Bejart, Hans Van Manen, John Butler and Constantine Siergiejew. In 1987, Glumbek came to Canada and worked for a variety of corps, including Theatre Ballet of Canada in Ottawa.

When the two dancers started working together, their commonality of vision led to the creation and success of ProArteDanza. And, while Campanella doesn't dance on stage any longer ("I faded away quietly," he quipped), Glumbek, at 45, is in top form and artistic maturity.

Their tagline is "Passion in Performance" and Campanella said this is truly the essence of their vision and their company. They will simply not go on stage if there's no passion. "Passion is love," he explained, "but also suffering, in the biblical sense. This is especially relevant for dancers, because of the demanding, intense physical aspect of our work. But we wouldn't give it up for the world and will continue bringing it on to the stage, no holds barred, at the highest possible level"

Dana Schlanger is a Vancouver freelance writer and the director of the Dena Wosk School of Performing Arts at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver.

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