Theatre review: Dance Nation taps into the innocence, understanding, and comedy of young stage ambitions

The offbeat logic of being a kid gets tangled up with adult social dynamics in Clare Barron’s acclaimed play

By Angie Rico

Dance Nation. Photo by Emily Cooper

The Cultch presents the Search Party’s production of Dance Nation at the York Theatre to May 11

PERFORMING ARTS KIDS get a bad rap. Maybe it’s because they take themselves, and everything they do, so seriously. Not the slouchy seriousness of teenage nihilism, but something people find even more grating: teenage narcissism. That unfiltered passion, the gnawing belief that everything you do matters too much, that a single performance could change the trajectory of your life. Adults like to look back and laugh about how, in adolescence, everything feels world-shattering. In the world Dance Nation throws us into, maybe that’s not so far from the truth.

Clare Barron’s play follows a group of competitive preteen dancers, ages 11 to 13, as they fight for a shot at the national championships in Tampa, Florida. Under the half-inspirational, half-terrifying eye of their coach (played entertainingly by Todd Thomson as somewhere between Glee’s Sue Sylvester and a stern Jiminy Cricket), they pirouette and fall their way through routines with names like “World on Fire”, an acro-lyrical number about Gandhi’s legacy, because of course it is.

The show opens with seven girls and one boy in sailor costumes, feet tapping and arms swinging enthusiastically. When the music ends and the lights dim, one of the girls is down with a comically graphic compound fracture. Her teammates circle her for a second, worried, then scurry offstage at the sight of her injury, leaving her alone. Right from the start, we know what we’re stepping into has some darker edges, no matter how upbeat the dance routines are.

Another thing we notice early: all the dancers are played by adults. The success of this talented and fully game intergenerational cast is how well they play the ridiculousness for laughs without losing the vulnerability underneath. At the centre of that is the friendship between Zuzu (a generously vulnerable Amanda Sum) and Amina (Nyiri Karakas, who plays the character with the right amount of unsure restraint), two girls who love each other but are stuck competing against each other. Amina’s talent is obvious. Zuzu’s slow realization of the gap between them is painful to watch.

All those realizations break through for the young dancers. Some characters carry the weight of the stakes more heavily, while others are mostly just happy to be there, or to be near their crush, like Nathan Kay’s endearing Luke.

What they all care about, equally, lives in the group huddles backstage—the way they hype each other up to the point of screaming, but not before kissing a lucky toy horse or spiralling because the other team has more boys. “Dancing boys are unbeatable,” panics the precocious and unfiltered Sofia (hilariously played by Tess Degenstein). It’s in the way one of them falls apart after a rough performance, feeling the weight of her mother’s expectations, and is comforted by her teammates even as she’s trying to play it cool.

The moments this show mines often feel like listening in on a sleepover conversation where the seeds of adult social dynamics are already there, tangled up with the offbeat logic of being a kid, and where confidence and self-doubt live side by side. Under Mindy Parfitt’s direction, the play lets these moments play naturally, while working with some of the more surreal shades of the script. Some scenes blur at the edges; there’s darker, moodier lighting during monologues, when characters step out and speak to us as their future selves. The way the play jumps from one dancer’s inner world to another adds to that feeling of flickering in and out of time, of memories that embarrassingly remind us of our own experiences growing up.

Amir Ofek’s set design keeps things moving between mirrored studios, cramped locker rooms, rehearsal halls, and low-rent stages. There are barely any props, just enough to sketch the world and let the actors fill it in. Peppy little musical cues kick in between scenes and make everything feel a little bigger.

Dance Nation lands best in its more casual moments, like in the locker room scenes, where the easy physical closeness of sweaty hugs and back pats gives way to talk about masturbation, changing bodies, and what female power might mean. It feels grounded in the way real kids drift between innocence and understanding without noticing it.

Other times, the show leans fully into its offbeat humour—like a group chant about the “power of pussy”. The pace stays steady, the tone consistent, but maybe because of its short length, you’re left wanting more of a throughline in these moments, or more time with certain characters (like Liza Huget’s standout Ashlee).

Even when it loses its footing, Dance Nation lands somewhere weird, specific, and dead-on about what it feels like to be a teenager, wanting everything, not knowing why, and fully committing anyway.

Todd Thomson with the cast of Dance Nation. Photo by Emily Cooper

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