The Doorway

The adventure of The Doorway began when I was asked to choreograph a piece for the 2011 Genie awards. Producers from CBC had seen Moulin Rouge in Toronto and found me after the show to talk about the piece for the award show. It was then that I was introduced to the band Karkwa and Leonard Cohen’s haunting music. After the broadcast of Dance Me, I was commissioned to do a ballet for the RWB using Leonard Cohen music, spoken word and selections from interviews. The piece was going into a mixed repertoire program (several short works in one evening of dance) so I could not use the whole company and it had to be relatively short (20 minutes). This was a great challenge as there is so much incredible music written by Leonard Cohen spanning several decades. I also had only seven dancers to work with. It was then I decided to use songs that could be danced by one, two, three or four dancers – and to make it a rather intimate work depicting human relationships, a doorway if you will to the emotional sides of humanity. I hope to one day expand the work with more dancers and use some of the bigger and more expansive songs by the great Canadian icon that is Leonard Cohen.