Tono mesmerizes Arden crowd

Anyone who saw Tono at the Arden Theatre on Feb. 2 or 3 was privy to one of the most astounding indigenous shows of this decade. It was extraordinarily beautiful with dynamic dance and acrobatics, amazing music and mesmerizing imagery.

In Tono, Red Sky Performance, a Toronto-based company dedicated to furthering world indigenous cultures, refined a spectacular theatrical style that glowed with a grand and sweeping feel.

Red Sky artistic director Sandra Laronde’s vision connects the cultures of Mongolia and First Nations, both a prairie living people that adhered closely to the age-old shamanic traditions and relied heavily on the majestic horse for their existence.

Throughout the show a symbolic wheel-like ton hung from the fly and tied the two cultures together. Similar to a medicine wheel, a ton is a smoke-hole that sits on top of a Mongolian tent-like house and loosely translated means ‘gateway to the above.’

But above all else, Tono celebrates the indigenous horse culture. The ensemble’s six athletic dancers don the character of noble steeds as they gallop wildly across the prairies, joust with man for freedom and nuzzle each other with affection.

In this 55-minute collision between east and west, co-choreographer Roger Sindha adopts a bold blend of traditional East Indian mudras (expressive hand gestures) and rhythmic Indian footwork threaded with contemporary dance moves, contorting acrobatics and martial arts. It completely hypnotizes.

Wearing warrior-like black makeup and simple buckskins, the six dancers jump, leap, twirl, twist and contort their bodies in front of a silhouetted mountainous Mongolian landscape.

Towards the back, the mystical rumbling chants of three visible Mongolian throat singers and long song singers create the eloquent pulse of nature. Using resonating vocal techniques, the three musicians — Batmend Baasankhuu, Bat-Orshikh Bazarvaani and Tuvshinjargal Damdinjav — give life to the bare landscape with coyote calls, bird whistles and cantering horses.

Composer Rick Sacks’ score mixes both live music and tapes. As Sacks, also visible on stage, plays the malletKat, an electronic marimba, Bazarvaani draws his bow across the morin khuur (horsehead fiddle), a two-string instrument with a long neck and square sound box, resulting in haunting, warm tones that envelope the hall.

Opening with a lone call of bird, a shaman awakens under a spotlight and reverentially lifts a horse skull to the sky. As the shaman, Jinny Jessica Jacinto — a former Cirque du Soleil contortionist — prostrates and twists her body into a pretzel.

A pack of nomads walk by followed by four galloping horses thundering across the plains. As the mystical horses gallop, prance and lope, the dancers stomp, creating accelerating percussive rhythms. And with gymnastic-like precision, they balance themselves at odd angles and leap into the air.

In one vignette, two dancers strut onto the stage puffing out their chest. Locked in combat they kick, leap, twist and flip each other in slow motion ending only when one man subdues the untamed spirit of a wild horse.

In another sequence, a pack of nomads drop a birthing bag where two figures fight for life inside. One dies. The other pushes out, shreds the bag and survives, a reminder that life and death are two sides of the same coin.

Tono was ultimately breathtaking. But most importantly it bridged cultures in a unique way and expressed important themes — love, life, death, freedom, humour and respect for those in our midst.