Handel Variations
This architectural work shows the beginnings of my interest in contrasting formal ideas with gestural ambiguity. It also features more partnering than any other piece I've made.
Premiered Toronto, 1987
Created with and first performed by Silvie Bouchard, Monica Burr, Karen Duplisea, William Elias, Merle Holloman, Christopher House, Rosemary James, Ron Ladd, Laurence Lemieux, Michael Sean Marye, Learie McNicolls, Suzette Sherman and Almond Small
Music
Johannes Brahms, Variations on a Theme by Handel, from Op. 24
Lighting
Roelof Peter Snippe
Costumes
Denis Joffre
"HANDEL VARIATIONS is a breathtaking and inventive piece of choreography that captured the mood and thrust of the baroque music in a relentlessly modern style."
Dance in Canada
"Christopher House's Handel Variations, a joyous, rhapsodic work that soars with the invention of Johannes Brahms's magnificent music."
Hamilton Spectator
"Handel Variations shows an instinct for form and proportion...House has the markings of a craftsman, which this piece, with its embroidered lines of intricate detail and its sharp shifts in speed and tone sharply illustrates. The dancing is marked by a sense of gleeful abandon while the choreography sparkles with exuberance."
Globe and Mail
"...even in a work as formally structured as Handel Variations, surprise follows surprise in happy profusion."
Toronto Star
Photo of Laurence Lemieux, Susanna Hood, Kate Alton and Naoko Murakoshi by unknown / photo of Christopher House, Michael Sean Marye and Suzette Sherman by Cylla von Tiedemann