Nine Points to Navigate: A Sentimental Journey

Nine Points to Navigate is a tribute to fathers of the old school variety – the kind that provide for their families, served their country in war, and don’t like queers.

You know, the strong and silent type that have their plaid-upholstered chair in the living room in which they quietly get drunk and fall asleep to distant memories. I’ll leave it to you to insert drool into that image if you so choose.

Drool aside, these are the fathers of Brian Webb and Sheri Somerville, two artists from Edmonton, Alberta. Webb fills many roles in the Edmonton and national dance community – in addition to producing his own work, he presents dance from across Canada in Edmonton and is also the Artistic Director of the Canada Dance Festival. Somerville, although previously unknown to me, is a well-known Edmonton-based soprano who has worked in both music and theatre. Nine Points to Navigate is the first collaboration between these two artists, and the piece was commissioned through Dancing on the Edge’s 10 for 20 project.

As the audience gradually streams in, Webb (looking dapper in a three piece suit), Somerville and a four-piece band are casually chatting on stage. The theatre is bathed in the strong, unnatural glow of high-key fluorescent lighting reminiscent of any Legion Hall anywhere in Canada, sans smell of stale draught beer. The lighting remains as such until mid way through the piece, at which point it changes over to more traditional theatre lighting.

Throughout Nine Points to Navigate, baby boomers Webb and Somerville tell stories about growing up in small towns in the prairies with their incomprehensible, unaffectionate and silent war-era fathers. These narratives are mixed in with contemporary dance performed by Webb and simple theatre staging for Somerville. Sprinkled amongst the movement and text are Bruce Springsteen-esque guitar stylings, a Johnny Cash rendition of Nine Inch Nails’ Hurt, Bach (for good measure), and Leonard Cohen, amongst other songs performed by a quartet led by pianist Haley Simons and guitarist and singer Howard Fix. Many of the songs were also sung by Somerville and, occasionally, Webb. The stories range from Somerville’s tale of being a terrified seven year-old stuck in a dinghy with her sister and drunk dad to Webb’s account of getting busted skipping school and smoking dope with friends by a father who was never at home until that moment.

Somerville and Webb are trying to understand and come to terms with these stoic men who ruled their lives. This is a particularly difficult task for Somerville, whose father died when she was twelve, whereas Webb feels he can share in his sentimentality with his father as they both progress towards old age.

Sentimentality is the key word here. There is an interesting story to be had in the question of gender, and how the role of men has changed over the course of the past century. There is also an appealing narrative in the memories of those growing up in small towns across Canada - Gail Anderson-Dargatz wrote about it wonderfully in her novel The Cure for Death by Lightning, for example. Unfortunately, Nine Points to Navigate comes across as a completely schmaltzy narrative that is not only self-indulgent but overwhelmingly dull. A quick glance around the theatre assured me that I was not the only person checking the time after the 30 minute grace period.

Nine Points to Navigate is supposed to be an experimental work, blending text, music, and contemporary dance. At its core, however, it is a very traditional piece about the strong, silent father just being a misunderstood softie, with a sugar-coated covering of “back in the old days” narrative. Interspersed throughout are a few theory-laden devices such as the aforementioned lighting that dominated the first half of the piece, to Webb inexplicably changing clothes, centre stage, from a three-piece suit to a cotton t-shirt and shorts, and back again. Although these devices might aid the creators’ goal of making an experimental piece, they fail to translate into anything meaningful for the viewer.

There must be an audience for this type of work – it’s all over the CBC in blissfully Can-Con regulated Made-for-TV movies. If that audience exists, I’m pretty sure that I’m not it. Am I simply too young and cynical to enjoy this piece? The thought certainly crossed my mind.

Nine Points to Navigate (Brian Webb Dance Company, Edmonton), July 5 and 6 at the Scotiabank Dance Centre. A Dancing on the Edge Festival presentation.
Choreographers: Sheri Somerville and Brian Webb
Performers: Sheri Somerville and Brian Webb
Music Collaborators: Haley Simons and Howard Fix
Rhythm Section: Thom Bennett and Marc Beaudin