Across Oceans – Maxine Heppner’s KRIMA!…what a shame

reviewed by Paula Citron
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KRIMA!…what a shame
Across Oceans
Choreographed by Maxine Heppner
Performed by a cast of 100 dance volunteers
Young Centre
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Maxine Heppner is an audacious choreographer. The title of her piece KRIMA! in Greek roughly translates as the French satiric “quel dommage” or “what a shame”. The work featured over 100 volunteer dancers crammed into the Atrium at the Young Centre.

In order to give audiences an empathetic experience with the sorrows of the world, Heppner literally created a mass disaster. Andrea Nann began the dance as she enacted both victim and assailant, miming different methods of death, whether self-induced or from outside sources. Hanging, electrocution, stabbing, gun shot and ritual Japanese suicide were all there in a repeating pattern that was picked up by waves of others.

Heppner also included two elderly men who ignored the disasters, two mothers with infants who passed through the mob, and veteran dancers Pia Bouman and Mi-Young Kim who performed a duet of nurture and survival amid the chaos.

By the end, the audience had experienced a close encounter with calamity. It was headlines writ large.