“A ROCKY MOUNTAIN HIGH: THE BANFF CENTRE” RUNS JUNE 27-29. FREE. MENAKA
THAKKAR’S WORKSHOP IS JUNE 29, 2PM. PARASHAKTI BEGINS AT 2:30PM.
harbourfront cetnre, TORONTO STAR STAGE, 235 QUEENS QUAY W.
416-973-4000. WWW.HARBOUR
FRONTCENTRE.COM.
The Banff Centre marks its 75th anniversary this year, a milestone that touches artists of all disciplines across the country. Harbourfront Centre joins in the celebrations this weekend with “A Rocky Mountain High,” a tribute to the arts and culture mecca’s impact on Toronto, which is, as one might guess, considerable. There is a literary ode to the Centre on June 29 (featuring its director of writing programs, U of T alumnus Greg Hollingshead), music concerts (featuring Jill Barber, Jane Bunnett and others) and dance programs.
One of the latter is Parashakti: Primordial Energy by Menaka Thakkar Dance Company, preceded by a workshop in Bharatanatyam dance led by Thakkar herself. Thakkar — a figurehead in the local dance community, whose company, at 35 years, is Canada’s oldest Indian one — was at the Banff Centre for the first time this year, to work on two as-yet-unfinished projects: Beloved Earth, which will have its premiere next spring, and a transposition of the classic 12-century Hindu poem, the Gita Govinda.
In conversation, Thakkar lavishes praise on the Centre, ranking her brief time there (she only stayed for two weeks in February, but will return later to complete a production residency for Beloved Earth) among the most delightful experiences of her career. “It frees your mind from everything else, and you don’t have to do anything but concentrate on the work,” she says. “The environment, the facilities, the support and help of the staff: all of these things make such a big difference in the quality and vision of what you do.”
Parashakti, one of the company’s standard pieces, is performed at the festival partly because the Banff-born pieces are still in development, but also because its themes relate well to what Thakkar went through during her tenure at the Centre. The piece is an illustration of the cycle of creation, in four stages, going from what Thakkar calls “primordial self-absorption” to an explosion of inspiration, to order, and then to abandonment and destruction. Thakkar locates this cycle in the setting of the Rockies, likening being there to “having a blanket around [her],” and noting the simultaneous constraint and freedom such a state offers.
Thakkar is not alone among local companies who have benefited from Banff. (Former National Ballet dancer-choreographer Roberto Campanella’s new company, ProArteDanza, is on the program this weekend as well.) When she and her team of collaborators were at the Centre, they took in a show by the Toronto Dance Theatre, who were performing artistic director Christopher House’s Timecode Break in the Eric Harvie Theatre. She mentions, however, that its residencies are a resource that might be tapped more by the city’s ethnic dance troupes.
“After I’ve come back, it’s all I can talk about,” jokes Thakkar, “So maybe there will be more interest in it. We’re so lucky to have it and it’s so wonderful,” she reiterates. “Even not working there is wonderful. The ideas just keep coming to you whether you want them to or not.”