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IMTA - a creative production by Motus O Dance Theatre


Motus O Dance Theatre is a dance company based in Stouffville, Ontario, since 1990. The three co-artistic directors – Cynthia Croker, James Croker and Jack Langenhuizen – create contemporary dance works, enhanced with theatrical elements. The style is imaginative, physically risky, and irrepressible in spirit and energy. Through physical inventiveness and beauty, the created pieces communicate, in a very powerful manner, ideas relevant to our times with wit, wonder and revelation.

Motus O Dance Theatre has performed several times at the Imperial Theatre in Saint John, New Brunswick. Over the years, Cynthia, James and Jack have become good friends with the Chopins. In March 2005, Marine and Morgan, along with a number of other young dancers from the Saint John area, performed in Motus O Dance Theatre’s version of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”.

In the spring of 2007, Motus O Dance Theatre stopped at the Chopin’s, while touring Atlantic Canada, and a wonderful and creative evening ensued. Motus O Dance Theatre was in the process of developing a new show that would address, through the art of dance, issues facing our present day Society. Thierry Chopin proposed – the legend is that the vision matured during a few morning showers – that Motus O Dance Theatre create a piece on IMTA. Creativity was definitely flowing that night, and that’s how IMTA was “integrated” as a piece in a new production that became “Perspectives” to “barrage your senses with a fusion of dance, video, music and lighting, illuminating an array of social and dimensional perspectives through comedy and pathos”.

On October 15, 16 and 17, 2009, “Perspectives” had its World Première at the Lebovic Centre for Arts & Entertainment in Stouffville. “IMTA (Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture)” was the longest piece of the performance, closing the first act superbly (see programme here).

The Lebovic Centre for Arts & Entertainment in Stouffville, Ontario Kelp surrounded by blue mussels Blue mussel in a bed of kelps Half blue mussel/half salmon in a bed of kelps

The libretto of the piece is the following:
The world will face a 50-80 million tons seafood shortage by 2030 that fisheries will not be able to meet. Aquaculture, already providing almost 50% of the seafood worldwide, will fill this gap; so, for the future, the right practices have to be developed. One solution is IMTA, an innovative approach developed by Dr. Thierry Chopin and his colleagues at the University of New Brunswick, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Cooke Aquaculture Inc. and Acadian Seaplants Limited. IMTA combines the cultivation of fed organisms (fish) with others that extract inorganic nutrients (seaweed) and organic particles (shellfish) to provide healthy seafood through a responsible and balanced ecosystem approach.

Kelp among the kelps The dance of the undulating kelps Salmon, blue mussel and kelp interlaced Blue mussel, salmon and kelp interlaced

Add to that the imagination of Cynthia Croker, and her collaborators, and you get a purely delightful choreography, just short of fifteen minutes, in which six dancers – wonderfully metamorphosed into kelps, blue mussels and salmon – dance, swirl and interlace in a crescendo towards a harmonious co-cultivation in which each thrives better than if they were on their own! The audience cheered loudly when it finished!

A few comments heard after the three performances:

Blue mussel, salmon and kelp swirling together Jumping salmon Jumping salmon

With such artistic success and interesting message added to their impressive and diverse repertoire, Motus O Dance Theatre will certainly take this IMTA piece and the whole “Perspectives” performance on the road. If they are at a theatre near you, do not miss this remarkable and unclassifiable dance/theatre troupe, directly inherited from the Saltimbanque tradition!