This is heaven to
me (2001)
- Darren Copeland
Set in a 1920's train station, Danny Grossman's This is heaven to me is
a touching and gritty exploration of a man's struggle to exist between the cracks
of fantasy and reality.
Transcendence (2000)
- Ann Southam
Transcendence is a meditation on the soul and its path to transcendence.
It is the fourth solo Danny Grossman has created in his repertoire.
Chasing Bird (1999)
- Charlie Parker - "Chasing Bird, commissioned for The Great Plains Symposium
of Music and Dance, pays tribute to legendary jazz man Charlie Parker." "This
is high-kicking, finger snapping jazz dance, in the range of elevated spirit
that is Grossman's trademark. Grossman resurrects the pure joy of dance." --
Susan Walker, The Toronto Star
Passion Symphony (1998)
- Marcel Dupré
- "Passion Symphony depicts the forbidden love between a priest and a
young man ... The piece contains a series of stop-action friezes that telegraph
the men's simmering emotions while conveying images redolent of Christian symbolism." --
Paula Citron, The Globe and Mail
Spiritus (1997)
- Franz Schubert
- sung by Dorothy Maynor - Four men and the animating spirit or muse.
Hear the Lambs a Cryin' (1997)
- Spirituals sung by Paul Robeson
- "Hear the Lambs A Cryin' is about the destruction of a relationship
by slavery in this life and the belief in the next life."
-- Danny Grossman
Visionary Realm (1996)
- Kirk Elliott
- "Visionary Realm was inspired by my own inner life and the writings
of shamanistic journeys to the realm beyond death. The shaman guided by animal
spirits, transcends opposing forces of male and female and birth and death
to attain equilibrium."
-- Danny Grossman
It shall come to pass (1995)
- with Rina Singha
- Bob Becker
- "The escalating action of the narrative combines the delicacy
of Indian gestures with the intense, dramatic physicality of the Danny Grossman
dancers. At times the Kathak influences, emphatic rhythmic patterns and quick,
flickering arm gestures, dart through the dance like snakes tongues, like flames.
The dance is marked by passages, by the inchoate misery of the poor and the
blindness of the rich, by the people's trance-like march through disaster and
famine, through the loss of their children, toward the embrace of Mr. and Mrs.
Death." -- Carol Anderson
Rat Race (1993)
- Kirk Elliott
- "Grossman welcomes us to the rat race, where dog eats
dog, men oppress women and the pattern of everyday life becomes a game of power
and a prison of routine." -- William Littler, Toronto Star
Blessed the Beasts (1992)
- with Lawrence Gradus
- Johann Sebastian Bach
- "The story of Adam and Eve in a primeval jungle
being led by the animals through a rite of passage." -- Paula Citron,
Toronto Star
Human Form Divine (1992)
- Kirk Elliott
- " Human Form Divine deals with the exploitation of children.
It was inspired by the poem 'Songs of Innocence and Experience' by English
poet William Blake (1757-1827)." -- Danny Grossman "Instead
of a frenzy of activity, Grossman gives us stately grace; rather than bombarding
the audience with his anger, he allows us to experience the quiet anguish of
a silent scream." -- Paula Citron, Dance Magazine
Carnival (1991)
- Martinique folk music
- "A celebratory, good times dance, Carnival finds Grossman at
play, affectionately spoofing the rituals of ballet by mating them
with the cheeky gender-switching antics of carnival time." --
William Littler, Toronto Star
Rite Time (1991)
- Ray Charles - "It ritualizes the sexual energy and kinetic anarchy of
all the social-dance floors of history in a mounting frenzy of struts, hops,
a Dirty Dancing sot of sensuality, everything hot and loose and full of snap." --
Max Wyman, The Vancouver Province
Ground Zero (1990)
- Dmitri Shostakovich - "Human Beings at the brink of extinction." --
Danny Grossman Twisted (1989)
- Lambert, Hendricks and Ross - "Twisted enters the mixed-up world of
madness and melancholia ... Company dancers look like hip inmates of a strange
asylum where a trio of physicians look as twisted as they are." -- Deirdre
Kelly, The Globe and Mail
The Equilibrist (1989)
- John Coltrane
- "The fool at the crossroads, betwixt and transfixed" --
Danny Grossman
Memento Mori (1988)
- Johann Sebastian Bach
- "A masterful creation by a mature and ingenious
choreographer. Grossman underscores his mortality by exposing it, quite brazenly." --
Deirdre Kelly, The Globe and Mail
La Valse (1987)
- Maurice Ravel
- "Two couples, grotesquely overdressed, preen, prance,
show off, strike poses and gossip to the point of self-indulgence, impervious
to the plight of their fellows - the victims are hollow-cheeked, empty-eyed
neuters. As the couples skip and caper through the waltz, the ghoulish figures
surround them with images of hunger, pain and despair." -- Paula Citron,
Toronto Star
Hot House (1986)
- Charlie Parker
- Hot House: Thriving on a Riff is a tribute to the musical
genius of jazz master and 'bop king' Charlie 'Bird' Parker. His music from
works of incredible acrobatic and soaring energy, to ballads of delicate poignancy,
sets the stage for the high flying boppers.
Scherzi (1985)
- Jean Baptiste Arban
- "Scherzi, a romp for three zany characters who
look as if they have escaped from a Victorian circus. Grossman's almost childlike
delight in packing the piece with witty, acrobatic movement transmits a simple
pleasure in the physicality of dance which needs no explanation." -- Michael
Crabb, Toronto Star
Ces Plaisirs (1985)
- Ann Southam
- "Ces Plaisirs with its underworld of predatory sex, shows
Grossman the social commentator, no necessarily judgmental, but with his personal
concern for human dignity always visible." -- Michael Crabb, Toronto Star
Magneto Dynamo (1985)
- Charles Mingus
- "A riveting pas de deux - in which the dancers transform
themselves into human pinballs set berserk in the game of life...this is a
tough, athletic piece, gutsy and satiric." -- Gary Smith, Hamilton Spectator
Divine Air (1985)
- Gordon Phillips
- "Populated by an earthy band of sprightly dryads and
a smaller group of furry-legged satyrs, the piece could have been equally inspired
by Nijinsky's rendering of pastoral eroticism in his 1912 work L'apres midi
d'un faune, as by the fecund drawings on a Grecian urn." -- Deirdre Kelly,
The Globe and Mail
Endangered Species (1981)
- Krystof Penderecki
- "Endangered Species, the haunting 1981 work that
exposes the terros of war - is something of a minor masterpiece and its place
in the Grossman repertoire is sacred." -- Deirdre Kelly, The Globe and
Mail
Nobody's Business (1981)
- Jelly Roll Morton and Joe Turner
- "Nobody's Business, to
jazz recordings by Jelly Roll Morton and Joe Turner, featured a
male duet for Mr. Glynn and Mr. Grossman that leavened its boldness
with movement humor. The theme of gender roles was set into the
context of two chorus lines - the women flexed their
muscles, the men acted like pinups." --
Anna Kisselgoff, The New York Times
Flurry
and Bebop Meet Sideslip and the Muse (1979)
- Cecil Taylor, Art Tatum and Thelonious
Monk
- "The title refers to musical
jazz terms as well as characters in the dance. Two magicians orchestrate and
control the romance between a woman and her two lovers. As in the music, the
dance becomes a joust between sentimentality, disonant chords and raw physicality." --
Danny Grossman
Curious Schools of Theatrical Dancing (1977)
- François Couperin
- "A lone figure in a circus ring, dressed
in the ragged remains of a harlequin costume, jerks and twists himself on the
floor, entertaining an invisible audience with the spectacle of his infirmity
and virtuosity. It was riveting, horrifying, grotesque; like a medieval juggler
crippled by plague, who must perform if he's going to live." -- Burf Kay,
Ottawa Citizen
Ecce Homo - Behold
the Man - (1977)
-
Johann
Sebastian
Bach
- "Ecce Homo, to music by J.S. Bach, is a work
of almost devestating beauty. Inspired by paintings and sculptures of the passion
of Christ, Grossman has given paint and marble the warmth and movement of flesh.
It is a work that fills the eye and the spirit." -- Christopher Dafoe,
Vancouver Sun
Bella (1977) - with Judy
Jarvis
-
Giacomo
Puccini
- "Bella is a small gem in which two lovers fly, swing,
slide and hang from a .flowered horse. Their interactions are by turns tender,
humourous and sexual. Like Chagall lovers, they are enraptured; but the come-hither/go-away
sexuality with its astonished stares and suddenly stiffened postures, are pure
Grossman at its best." -- Alina Gildiner, The Globe and Mail
National Spirit (1976)
- Johm Philip Sousa
- "National Spirit is a light-hearted send up of same,
a tweak of Uncle Sam's beard, which finds a squad of gung-ho guys and gals
in stars and stripes making like a phys-ed class to the patriotic songs and
anthems of Sousa and company. It offers push-ups and headstands to the Star
Spangled Banner, criss-crossed marching to the American Patrol, and a total
collapse to America the Beautiful. Danny Grossman knows his target, takes straight
aim and once having delivered his shot, retires quickly from the field." --
William Littler, The Toronto Star
Fratelli (1976)
- Darius Milhaud
- "Fratelli, meaning Brothers, had all the cheerfulness
associated with brotherly affection, at the same time a sense of cajolery." --
Richard Newman, The London Free Press "Fratelli documents
two Chaplinesque brothers in jerky, mechanical movements reminiscent of early
movies. Clowning antics around colorful panels progress to feuding positions
as they divide and try to conquer the stage." -- Trish Wilson, Kitchener-Waterloo
Record
Couples (1976)
- Terry Riley
- "Three pairs of dancers spinning like Swiss clock miniatures
in tandem. Looking with wide angled eyes at the stage it appeared to be a kaleidoscope
with movement on one side stirring simultaneous action on the other." --
Larry Scanlan, Nelson Daily News
Inching (1976)
- Dumisani Abraham Maraire
- "Caterpillar-like, the two dancers ooze inexorably
towards each other and then inch by inch unfold the intracacies of an inventive
pas de deux." -- Robert A. Fredericks, Morning Union ( Beckett , Massachusetts
)
Triptych (1976)
- Darius Milhaud
- "Triptych displays the kind of motion that makes the
air quiver, motion that makes a hush around itself. A beautiful and touching
dance for three people, it is a power in sustained movement as the dancers
move as if in a universe of emotional pain. Grossman has choreographed a harrowingly
beautiful study in desolation." -- Freda Crisp, The Hamilton Spectator
Higher (1975)
- Ray Charles
- "Higher launched the Danny Grossman Dance Company and
remains today a signature piece for the Company. Set to the sensual music of
Ray Charles, Higher celebrates control, sex, humour and athleticism." --
Danny Grossman "Not since Fred Astaire proved he could
make a coat rack dance like Ginger Rogers (in Imperial Wedding) has an inanimate
object made such a charming partner. A six-foot, white step ladder is the companion
around which Grossman and Hendin spun their dance magic." --
Liz Oscroft, Edmonton Journal |
