Review: HEAR THE DANCE: Signature Programme 3 (Fall for Dance North)

You hear just as much as you watch in HEAR THE DANCE: Signature Programme 3, presented by Fall for Dance North. Curated by Robert Binet, the programme brings together three works that give equal weight to sound and dance, each finding a unique and playful way to work with the two together. The programme features  Justin Peck’s Partita, a sneaker ballet set to Caroline Shaw’s a cappella composition; Carmen Romero’s Divine Retribution, which places flamenco in conversation with Bach; and Binet and Devon Healey’s Newborn Giants, which incorporates immersive descriptive audio into the work itself.

That relationship between sound and movement is immediately apparent in Justin Peck’s Partita. Set to Caroline Shaw’s Partita for 8 Voices, the a cappella work that won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2013, the piece uses eight dancers to respond to Shaw’s unusual vocal score. Shaw’s score is really neat, layering spoken words, humming, breathing, whispers, grunts, vocal effects and harmonies in a way that feels very physical. Peck leans into that quality, with the dancers often seeming to embody the different voices and sounds they are hearing.

The result has all the familiar markers of a Peck work: sneakers, colourful but relatively simple costumes, and his sharp technical movement language, which is ballet-based but a little looser and very athletic. It is a neat pairing of choreography and music, and a fitting way to begin a programme so focused on the relationship between sound and movement. Although a fun work overall, Partita isn’t my favourite of Peck’s choreography. I found myself wishing the choreography played a little more with the wonderfully strange qualities of Shaw’s score. The work also seemed to lose some momentum, partly because its structure never felt particularly clear. There wasn’t a strong sense of a beginning, middle and end. Overall, it’s a fun work and a fitting opener, even if it wasn’t my favourite piece on the bill.

Following intermission, Carmen Romero’s Divine Retribution brings a playful take on the seriousness and drama of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, channelling all of that grandeur through an equally dramatic flamenco performance. The music is immediately recognizable, with those ominous opening notes that have become almost synonymous with gothic drama, and Romero leans all the way into that theatricality. She begins almost completely hidden beneath her long skirt, the fabric pulled over her head like a cloak, creating a wonderfully dramatic and slightly spooky image before she suddenly emerges as the flamenco queen she is. 

From there, the skirt becomes almost another character, as she kicks it around, manipulates it and exaggerates its movement, while her castanets add another layer of rhythm to Bach’s already intricate score. The live musician, Frederick Zi Tian Huang, a third-year undergraduate at The Glenn Gould School of The Royal Conservatory of Music, is also very much part of the performance rather than simply accompanying it, and Romero even mimes playing the piano over him at one point. There is something wonderfully over-the-top about the whole thing. 

Last but certainly not least was the absolutely gorgeous Newborn Giants, by choreographer Robert Binet and blind theatre artist and disability scholar Dr. Devon Healey, FFDN’s Scholar-in-Residence from 2025–2027. Before the dancing even begins, Healey’s voice asks us to think about our bodies and what we can feel, immediately shifting our attention away from simply looking at the stage and towards our own physical experience. Sitting in the dark and listening to her voice, I became much more aware of my own breathing, my body in my seat and the sounds around me, creating a quiet but compelling way into the work. 

Then the curtains open. The stage is dim with dancers in nude costumes, some seated and facing away from the audience so that we see only their backs. When the dancers begin to move, duets unfold beneath a few hanging microphones, picking up the sounds of touching, partnering, lifting and breathing and amplifying and repeating them back into the space. Even the sound of a kiss becomes part of the score, while the loudest sound comes from pointe shoes striking the floor. The dancers are essentially dancing to the sounds created by their own bodies and efforts, creating a fascinating soundscape that becomes part of the choreography itself. I could have watched this section for hours. The movement is gorgeous contemporary ballet, with dancers on pointe moving through daring lifts, huge backbends and beautifully controlled partnering, all against the alluring soundscape and gorgeous lighting.

As the work continues, Healey’s Immersive Descriptive Audio (IDA) is woven into Max Richter’s score through her own voice. The narration moves between descriptions of what the dancers are doing, physical sensations and more poetic reflections, creating another way into the work without simply explaining what we are seeing. There is a recurring sense of what has been here before: the stage, the bodies that have occupied it, and the histories carried into the space, which added another layer to the experience that I really loved. 

More than anything, Newborn Giants is a beautiful sensory experience, with Binet’s choreography, Healey’s audio and the lighting working together to make us pay closer attention to what we hear, feel and notice in our own bodies. It was undoubtedly my highlight of the bill.

Taken together, the three works made for a thoughtful and beautifully constructed evening, with each offering a different way of considering how we experience dance beyond simply watching it. Fall for Dance North is now nearing the end of its run, but there are still a few opportunities to see what remains of this year’s festival.

HEAR THE DANCE: Signature Programme 3, presented by Fall for Dance North, runs until October 24th, 2026, at the Bluma Appel Theatre (27 Front St E, Toronto, ON). Single tickets are $25, and ticket packages for all three signature programmes are $65. The festival also offers a variety of free and ticketed dance events continuing through October 25th. Tickets can be purchased online here.

For more information, check out: FFDnorth.com
Facebook: @fallfordancenorth and Instagram and Twitter: @ffdnorth

Written by Deanne Kearney
DeanneKearney.com @deannekearney