Marienbad
Jordan Tannahill and I became fast friends when we met in 2012. He created a solo performance piece for me, Rough House, that was performed in Toronto and at the National Arts Centre. In 2015 we decided to make a duet together. The process of what became Marienbad was very intuitive, supported by fortuitous accidents including the ability to perform the work on the risers at the Winchester St. Theatre with the audience on the stage. Simon Rossiter’s lighting design and the extraordinary music of Matt Smith helped us create a wayward landscape in which we remade the performance anew each night. Marienbad is one of my most meaningful experiences as a maker and as a performer.
Premiered Toronto, May 26, 2016
Marienbad was featured in an episode of In the Making directed by Michelle Mama for CBC television in 2019
Created and performed by Christopher House and Jordan Tannahill
Sound Design
Matt Smith
Lighting
Simon Rossiter
Costume + set design
Cheryl Lalonde
Outside eyes
Rosemary James and Tedd Robinson
"The fifty-minute work is fully choreographed yet retains a feeling of spontanety that suggests that anything might happen. Marienbad has universal resonances about the universal search for intimacy.
Toronto Star
"Christopher House and Jordan Tannahill's new duet is a strange and delicate expression of connection. Fraught with mysterious undercurrents and motivations, the 50-minute work juxtaposes antic movements with moments of tense repose. The orientation of the Winchester is cleverly flipped, with the audience seated in the usual performance area and the performers running rampant on the risers that usually support the seats... Both push their bodies hard– walking, running and tumbling up and down the risers. They dangle by their fingers from an architectural detail closer to the ceiling than to the floor.... they watch each other with what seems like approval or, on occasion, wariness. Of the many details, some are charming, some weird, but the otherworldly duet is grounded by these intricacies. They are the unpredictable yet very real stuff of human business."
NOW Toronto
Photos by Omer Yukseker