Clare Barron’s Dance Nation is a grimly hilarious examination of how cut-throat competition culture affects the lives of children in small town America.  It’s currently playing at Coal Mine Theatre in an Outside the March production directed by Diana Bentley.

LBW is a dance team from Liverpool, Ohio that competes on a circuit that leads from local to regional to national competition.  It consists of a bunch of thirteen year old girls, one boy (Luke) and a manipulative, obsessive dance teacher, Pat (Salvatore Antonio).  Plus, of course, the moms who are at least as driven as the girls and who are all convinced their daughter will become a star (where being a “star” mean dancing in the chorus of a Broadway show).  It’s all highly sexualized of course and I can imagine Ghislaine Maxwell as a regular attendee at these competitions.

The dance itself is hilarious.  It’s hard to characterize.  We open with a number where the girls dance in sexy sailor suits while Luke plays an enormous lobster.  It’s bizarre but wins the local competition.  For the next level Pat wants a number about Gandhi which involves two solos; one for the Mahatma and one for his Spirit.

The play’s schtick is that the dancers are played by adult women of various ages and body types.  A bunch of actual thirteen year olds in various states of undress would be too creepy even for Toronto!  So the girls (and occasionally Luke, the guy) talk about the stuff (I imagine) thirteen year old girls talk about; their bodies, puberty, sex, penises, circumcision and pussy.  They talk a lot about pussy.  And practice obsessively.

But all of this is in an atmosphere of extreme competitiveness where no-one is good enough, believes in themself enough, works hard enough, wants it enough.  Or at least that’s how Pat manipulates them.  So the big thing becomes who will play the star role of Gandhi.  The competition is between Zuzu; played by Annie Luján, and Amina, played by Beck Lloyd.  Now Amina is the acknowledged star but Pat takes a big chance on Zuzu.  This is where the schtick comes in (and where I talk about women’s bodies in a way that’s taboo in opera reviews!) for Annie Luján is a brilliant physical comic actor but sylph like she is not (Those who saw Monks will remember her as, inter alia, the back half of the ass) while Beck Lloyd could pass for a ballerina; slim, graceful and a great mover.  It asks lots of questions about how body type works in the dance world.  All this comes to a head at the regionals where the rivalry between the two boils over in the heat of competition and leads to all sorts of questions about individual vs. team, how “success” can lead to social exclusion and so on.

There’s lots more along the way.  There’s a weird dance number where a fanged Zuzu leads a feral pack (of wolves?) in a sort of mobbing of Dance Teacher Pat.  Ashlee (Amy Keating) makes sure that sex is kept front and centre both verbally and physically while Sofia (Jean Yoon) is convincingly and touchingly naive about sex. Oliver Dennis is splendidly dorky as Luke (and I do know how dorky teenage boys can be!).  Katherine Cullen and Zorana Sadiq round out the team and are as effective as the others in getting across the idea of the girls; not quite children, not quite adult, wrestling with biological and social forces they don’t fully understand.

As for the adults, Amy Matysio plays a selection of moms ranging from the reasonable to the one from the Donizetti opera.  Antonio’s Dance Teacher Pat is a masterclass in dodgy restraint.  There is, unsurprisingly, a suggestion of more than a parental relationship between him and Amina but it’s handled with considerable subtlety.  All in all, it’s a very convincing ensemble.

Portraying this world of highly sexualized dance extravaganzas puts design and choreography front and centre and there is real skill here.  Kathleen Black’s costumes are just glittery and just revealing enough, Miquelon Rodriguez’ sound design pulses with energy and Nick Blais’ sets and lighting are quite stunning.  Alyssa Martin leads the movement direction team (from Rock Bottom Movement) and strikes a great balance between showy/glitzy and not-too-professional.  Visually this show is a lot of fun.

Dance Nation strikes a nice balance between humour and a critique of placing kids under excessive social and sexual pressure when they are least able to cope with it.  It’s well worth seeing.  It’s playing at Coal Mine Theatre until May 10th.

Photo credits: Elana Emer Photography