Toronto's outasight singer Holly Cole has always thought of herself as an outsider, apart.
She should fit right in with our far-out Desrosiers Dance Theatre when they make their O'Keefe Centre debut March 15 and 16.
Quite apart from their mutual admiration.
As a '60s teenager Robert Desrosiers was electrified by Hendrix and Joplin, but he was a Montrealer in Toronto, a promising misfit painting and sculpting and studying classical guitar and, oh yes, dancing at the National Ballet School.
He says he could see sounds, hear colors. To this day, he says, "I'm very careful how they come together."
And Holly? "Someone asked me what's your favorite color, and I said: 'Dark.'"
Growing up in Fredericton, N.B., "I was a sponge for all the culture I could soak up, but I was a tomboy, I always felt like a girl in a boy's world."
When she moved to Toronto and was hailed as a 'Queen Street diva,' she knew herself to be a Maritimer. But back in the Maritimes, she knew herself to be 'big-city Holly.'
And musically, "In the jazz world I'm a pop artist, and in the pop world I'm a jazz artist. I'm always somehow displaced.
"But a lot of my favorite artists defy category also. Tom Waits. K.D. Lang. Mary Margaret O'Hara. Lyle Lovett. They're all in the same boat as me, which is what-boat-is-it?
"Robert shares a similar vision of freedom in his medium."
They also share with each other a desire to be more broadly entertaining than many of their respective peers.
Says Robert: "In modern dance, things became so intellectual at one point that it almost didn't matter that there was an audience out there."
Holly feels the same thing happened to jazz. "When it started it was fun. There was a lot more humor. When the challenge became to figure it out, the music had become elitist."
She wants to, brace yourself, be utterly clear.
"I'm so connected to the words in songs -- it's a part of me that comes from my love and experience of theatre. So I really want people to understand the story or the character."
But her astonishing fame in Japan has been instructive.
"I realize when I sing there how much the visual is important, not just the sound." While she does provide verbal cues in Japanese, as she does elsewhere in French, Spanish or German, in some real sense, "It is possible to understand a song without understanding the words."
Robert too seeks clarity: "I take criticism most seriously from people who are not 'dance lovers.' It's very direct, and very real, and I listen. Dance and music are things we all have in common."
His goal is to make the communication as personal as possible.
Which is where Holly comes in, he says. "Her voice is so in-your-ear. Even on a huge stage, Holly will make sure the performance has the intimacy that is part of any meaningful entertainment. I want her to be almost a sculptor, to be very much with the dancers ... those silent bodies who are creating emotion through shape."
Holly's goal, meanwhile, is greater range, greater reach. And with Robert, "Things are integrated. I'm part ... connected ..." When she received his invitation, "My immediate reaction was not, 'Oh no, something different.' It was, 'Great! Something different.'
"I was actually supposed to go on vacation -- a real vacation, sun and fun and everything -- to Mexico with my boyfriend. But I knew I would feel bad for the rest of my life ..."
Things come up quickly in her life. A couple of weekends ago she was off to New York to do a CD-ROM for kids. "There's a song, but it's mostly talk, 20 minutes of dialogue, which I absolutely love. Acting is my second passion."
A few weeks earlier she was voicing a recurring character called Venus in a Canadian cartoon, Family Channel's The Adventures Of Nilus The Sandman. "Venus is a planet who always wanted to be a star, and the cartoonist said he modeled the character after me. It's a planet with long black gloves, and false eyelashes, and big red lips ... perfect, and so much fun."
Upcoming is an American tribute album to Laura Nyro with Jane Siberry and Suzanne Vega and maybe more, and a Japan-only tribute to the post-Revolver Beatles. "It's nice to have these windows of opportunity. You go back to your own projects with real renewed enthusiasm."
And then there's touring. Back to Europe in April and May, July in Japan, some Canadian cities in August ...
"And we've already booked a bunch of Christmas dates with symphonies again." Last year's sold-out tour was "the highlight of my year. Once again, being an outsider was fun for me.
"The polite and regal world of the symphony isn't part of my world at all. But juxtaposing my world, which is all about ripping up decorum, was great ... It's all about magic anyway ...
"That's why I love to get dressed up. The grunge look is maybe my look around the house, but the unreality of the long velvet gown and perfect make-up is great for me on stage. "You can say f--- and no one will mind because you've got a long dress on."
For Holly Cole, to be an audiovisual component of a modern dance-theatre experience is just a natural extension.
The Holly Cole File
1990: Girl Talk, her album debut, became one of Canada's biggest ever jazz releases at home.
1991: Blame It On My Youth became one of Canada's best-selling jazz albums ever in Japan; the Holly Cole Trio did the first of six Japanese tours.
1993: Don't Smoke In Bed brought recognition in the States.
1995: Temptation, the songs of Tom Waits, made her a star in Europe.
1996: New media beckon. Next: Live with the Desrosiers Dance Theatre, March 15 & 16 at the O'Keefe Centre.
