Diavolo

Today the entire school community where I teach took a field trip to see the Diavolo performance. It was awesome.

Diavolo is a company that incorporates modern dance with larger than life-size objects to educate audiences about teamwork, trust, dreams, and inspiration.

Diavolo was founded in 1992 in Los Angeles by Jacques Heim to create large-scale interdisciplinary performances which examine the funny and frightening ways individuals act with their environment. The craftiness and wit of Diavolo is captured by the stylized fox logo. Constantly changing the image presented to the audience, Diavolo has developed a movement vocabulary that creates an almost cinematic experience of powerful images that develop abstract narratives of the human condition.

The company is comprised of dancers, gymnasts and actors who create performances collaboratively under the guidance of Heim. The sets created are outrageous and surrealistic and form an intrinsic part of each piece of work. Everyday items such as doors, chairs and stairways provide the back-drop for dramatic movement – leaping, flying, twirling – that creates metaphors for the challenge of relationships, the absurdities of life and the struggle to maintain our humanity in an increasingly technological world.

Part of the show was getting students up on the stage to acutally do some performing. They had students totally trusting the dancers by having them fall into their arms from a platform.

Some of us travelled to the University on our “grease bus” – our bio-diesel school bus: