Scott McCabe, Sully Malaeb Proulx & Jessie Garon in Heaven | Photo by Kendra Epik Photography
Heaven, a 20th anniversary remount of Sasha Ivanochko’s nude, music-less dance work, presented here in association with The Theatre Centre, is a quietly thrilling experience. Whenever I see nude works—especially fully nude works—I always ask myself: would this lose its potency if the dancers were, say, in black tights? Where this is concerned, as in most cases, the answer is an emphatic yes.
That observation in no way diminishes Ivanochko’s choreographic achievement. In fact, it betrays an embodied understanding of how the bare human form, and our visceral response to it, intensifies the dynamics as they unfold before us. She anticipates the audience’s initial hyper fixation on the nudity. The beginning is also the most unsettled period, before we’ve intuited what we’re witnessing, when the movements are most agitated and agitating—three figures (Jessie Garon, Sully Malaeb Proulx and Scott McCabe), each, individually, in the throes of some kinetic, probing episode. They are, at first, alienated and alienating.
As the piece progresses—under James Proudfoot’s monochrome lighting, an ebb and flow of warm, soft light that periodically throws the dancers’ bodies into chiaroscuro relief—we let our guard down. We acclimatize and accept the nudity as grounding the performers in a palpable vulnerability. It never becomes mundane though; in fact, it creates a frisson, especially as bodies come together. That gradual process begins with just a hand reaching out towards another.
From this point onward, connections form. The figures break off into various pairings and the interactions become increasingly erotic. The animalistic sniffing does something pretty special—to me, at least. Their bodies create the soundtrack with laboured and heavy stomps. Sweat, too, is a key feature of the performance, especially notable as patches of human moisture appear on the stage floor and allow a performer to, for instance, glide across on their back!
There is curiosity and tension, never overstated, with the subtlest whiff competition—so low-key, it perhaps only existed in my own highly charged, interpretive imagination. They fall into sensual rhythms which have a pretty intense, internally logical, culmination—not perfectly harmonious, any of it, but passionate and exploratory.
It would be a shame to give away too much, but I’d like to acknowledge that, structurally, the piece feels properly bookended. And the very final beat is ever so slightly startling. A lovely work I’d love to revisit someday.
Heaven
September 29 to October 3, 2026
The Theatre Centre, Franco Boni Theatre
(1115 Queen St. W)
60 minutes
Scott McCabe, Sully Malaeb Proulx & Jessie Garon in Heaven | Photo by Kendra Epik Photography