Deirdre Kelly, Critics at Large
Rea tumbles but does not fall as she tosses herself headlong into the unknown. Guided by the sure hand of her choreographer, she allows herself to become exposed, literally stripped bare, as she peels off layers of clothing to reveal herself almost naked before the eyes of her audience. It’s often said that flesh is weak. But here, dancing in only her panties, Rea looks anything but fragile. She’s a super-charged woman, a wife, and a mother with stretch marks to prove it. As a self-portrait, even one painted by another’s hand, it’s nothing short of bold.
Arts and Culture Maven
The title for the piece comes from a near-death experience of Rea's. She felt like she was floating outside of her own body, with five angels in attendance... In the performance, the angels are ever present in the form of five large cylinders, yellow and red. It's part of a simple set, but one that the performance uses to its full extent. She uses both the cylinders and Skelly, one of those plastic teaching skeletons, to good effect as props, set pieces, and pseudo-dance partners... The overall effect is alternately weird and wonderful, poignant and dignified, unsettling and obscure. What unites it is Rea's deeply considered performance. She conveys pure emotions and complex movement with equal facility.
Bateman Reviews
... elegant and diverse approach to aural and visual narrative that employs both movement and voice. The two performers rise to the challenge with relentless energy and beautifully executed choreography - ranging from the elegant intermingling of bodies under duress, accompanied by beautifully arranged classical and choral sections, to the almost disco-like, pom-pom inflected movement of two women dancing through the high-energy, joy, and tribulations of complex lives
Bateman Reviews
...nothing can prepare the viewer for the gradual elegance and intense poignancy that evolves over the course of this unique ninety-minute arrangement of dance, theatre, and music... Being a man, in a men’s group therapy session, in the midst of strangers, all tangled up within their complex notions of masculinity, or lack thereof can be a very daunting, awkward encounter... Kathleen Rea’s remarkable career as a dancer, choreographer, and psychotherapist has given her the ability to bring many disciplines together and meld them into a seamless act of physical and emotional courage on her part and the part of the dancers involved... The vulnerability we are often taught to erase in men is fully realized throughout the piece in a variety of gorgeous choreographed modes... subtle and explosively 'out there' melange of effective textual accompaniment, nuanced with that delicate mixture of the frequently comic and tragic expressions of emotional turbulence and distress.
Art & Culture Maven
Unraveling the Tight Weave is a fascinating tableau of dance theatre that explores the ties that bind us or not- the complex and ever-weaving interconnections between people and fate. The twelve dancers... embrace, entanglement, hold, lie on and run with balls of twine and threads from a scarf. The strings tie them together or separate them from each other. The choreographic language is expressive and emotional and the dancers assume a range of dramatic roles quite convincingly.
Paula Citron - Classical 96.3 FM
... a very strong show indeed... Rea’s Ire, for six formidable female dancers, deals with intimacy and aggression in the lives of women, set to cellist/singer Anne Bourne’s compelling original score interwoven with Bach suites. Birch’s duet sympathetic nerve uses the metaphor of a male/female relationship to explore the nature between soul and body. Both are very satisfying pieces. Ire portrays many relationships in a woman’s life – with her friends, and her children – and we see both nurture and anger. The choreography is beautifully rich, poignant, and lyrical.
Sarah Snowdon - Contemporary Dance Suite
....exciting contemporary dance pieces... Frames, first performed in August 1996, opens the evening beautifully with choreographer & dancer Kathleen Rea. A very personal and reflective piece based on Rea's battle with an eating disorder, the frame Rea uses as a prop seems symbolic of the structures within a society that promotes body image issues. Rea's strength, both physical and emotional, is demonstrated through intense, athletic-style movement and by delicate yet protected gestures. The music, ARVO PART (Fratre), evokes the sadness of feeling entrapped within an imposed social framework.
Paula Citron - The Globe and Mail
Rea's new solo, flux ... Symbols abound in the piece. Rea is garbed in a skirt of Newspaper pages and the incessant rustle is also part of the dance, particularly when she takes off the skirt and wears it like fragile wings. Gravity is more than being rooted to the ground. It also involves rolling around the floor, on, we discover later, a hidden blue beach ball -- and this bizarre movement heightens the chains that bind her on earth, despite the straining and yearning of the intense motion of her upper body. The ball, in fact, becomes a character in the fable, a voiceless companion that epitomizes her loneliness anchored in the horrors of today's headlines. Her clumsy attempts to fly with a rope also convey bondage, even conjuring up a noose that is a symbol of death, as if finally achieving what she wants is another form of imprisonment. It is the dark undercurrents of flux that continue to haunt the viewer long after.
Glenn Sumi - Now Magazine
Now Magazine's top ten dance of the year Kathleen Rea's imaginative, richly theatrical 1996 piece Frames - performed in and around a frame - explored the limits we set for ourselves, while her new work, flux, examined the need to lift off with a clown inspired whimsy. A delight"
