‘We became like one living being’ — dancers bond, literally, at ‘Bodies in Urban Spaces’ audition

Your garden variety dance audition does not ordinarily conclude with a clump of tangled bodies heaped on the floor but then, last week’s audition at the Bentway Studio for a Toronto iteration of “Bodies in Urban Spaces” was not really a dance class at all, despite the attendance of many dancers.

As the eager auditioners — fully masked, of course — piled on top of each other it resembled slow-motion scrimmage. As they contorted into unusual shapes, it looked like yoga on steroids.

“I’m willing to dive into anything,” said Maria Riano, a recent graduate of Ryerson University’s four-year dance performance program. “It was totally cool and lots of fun.”

At age 29 and with sterling credentials in ballroom, Latin, contemporary and breakdance, Ottawa-raised Bradley Eng, tall and robust, was among the more senior and experienced auditioners. Like most of the class, he’d scoured the web for photos and videos of the production. Even so, Eng likely had not expected to find himself at the bottom of a horizontal stack of four dancers.

“We became like one living being,” Eng explained. “I could sense the slightest shift of weight above me. I had to keep countering it.”

Esther Baio says she’s always on the lookout for people of Eng’s proportions and strength to provide a dependable base for some of the production’s more demanding stack-ups. Baio had flown in from Vienna for a busy three-day visit to conduct the audition.

She explained that “Bodies in Urban Spaces” is hard to categorize. Baldly described, it’s a site-specific street performance. Following a predetermined route, locally recruited casts of about 20 people in colourful, gender-blurring sweatpants and hoodies squeeze themselves into improbable urban nooks and crannies. They might cascade down stairways, cantilever themselves off bike racks and handrails, or coil themselves around trees and lampposts. For a few minutes they become complex human sculptures. They then unravel and run ahead to the next location, pursued by what generally turns out to be a continuously growing audience.

“Bodies in Urban Spaces” is fun to watch, but Willi Dorner, the 62-year-old multidisciplinary Austrian artist who originated this globe-trotting event in 2007, hopes it will awaken a new awareness of and appreciation for the urban environment. Dorner sees it as a means to reimagine and repurpose the structures and spaces around us.

Given the work’s nature, it’s no surprise that the Bentway’s late-September audition call especially sought to attract those “with backgrounds in circus, physical theatre, breaking, contemporary, contact improv and parkour.”

To achieve this, apart from deploying its own social media networks, the Bentway, which will present “Bodies in Urban Spaces” here next spring, distributed the call to a broad range of dance and movement schools and organizations citywide.

“There are a lot of artist communities on social media,” said Riano. “The word spreads quickly.”

For health and safety reasons, each of the two auditions was limited to 22 participants. In an environment where interesting performance gigs are hard to come by, all the available places were booked within 24 hours of the announcement. Those not fast enough to grab a spot were placed on a wait list.

“Actually, it was my girlfriend who told me about it,” said Eng, who was on the brink of moving to Toronto from Montreal, where he completed a dance degree at Concordia University. “It was easy, a few clicks on a web page and I’d applied.”

Auditions can be unnervingly impersonal affairs, but a common response among attendees was gratitude for the way Baio put everyone at ease, offering encouragement and even joining in the action at times. Instead of requiring auditioners to wear numbers, Baio took photos as she noted down names. By the end of the session everyone was on first-name terms.

That said, Baio tested everyone’s limits because the work itself is very demanding.

“It takes a different kind of strength, physical and mental,” commented Riano, who noted several familiar faces at the audition from Toronto’s pool of independent artists. “At one point my wrists were shaking.”

One comment pretty much summed up the general sentiment: “I don’t even care if I get in because this was the most wonderful class I’ve been in for a very long time.”