While the COVID-19 lockdown has allowed some of us to discover our inner artist and thus alleviate the suffering from no human contact (within two metres), creators–performers in particular–are sufferers in quarantine because they can’t engage with a live audience. But CORPUS, the company of dancers and actors best known for shows such as A Flock of Flyers and Les Moutons (The Sheep), has found a way to deliver a live performance online: Sheep in Quarantine.

Sunday’s Zoom performance, shot in bedrooms and living-rooms in Vienna, Ottawa, Montreal, London and Toronto and in a French field in Bournazel, went off without a hitch – a real feat, as any non-professional who’s tried to sing or talk along with others on teleconferencing applications will know.

As it turns out, computer technology gives this company scope for even more fun in the production of its precise, surreal theatrical tableaux. Artistic director David Danzon, who co-founded CORPUS in 1997 with Sylvie Bouchard, is the shepherd in surgical mask who dozes off, half-eaten baguette beside him, on the hill overlooking his grazing sheep. Cud-chewing performers Michael Caldwell, Robert Feetham, Anika Johnson, Indrit Kasapi, Jolyane Langlois, Matthew O’Connor, Emily Poirier, Takako Segawa, Carla Soto and Kaitlin Torrance – all of them accomplished dancer/actors with more than a dash of clown technique – are first seen getting into their bulbous sheep costumes and warming up with pliés and stretches in their urban abodes.

To the strains of Tchaikovsky’s “Waltz of the Flowers,” the shepherd’s dream proceeds. Fat-thighed, floppy-eared sheep twirl in delicate pirouettes and execute graceful, hoof-handed portes-au-bras in their rooms on two continents. The point where they all approach their webcams for simultaneous face and bum close-ups is hilarious. Then comes the wolf, appearing in what was a Zoom frame of grass and is suddenly a room featuring a grey sofa. Our shepherd awakes, of course, for the sheep count (teeth-clicking their names) and all’s well that ends well. CORPUS isn’t the first or the only group to deliver a synchronized live performance on Zoom, but like everything else this troupe does, Sheep in Quarantine is a stellar, one-of-a-kind event. A recording of the show will be posted on http://www.corpus.ca.

Sheep in Quarantine, A Live Zoom Performance for Strange Times

Directed by David Danzon

Produced by the CORPUS production team of Janin Goldman, Carolin Lindner and Paulina Speltz

Costumes by Joanne Leblanc

Photo of Anika Johnson by Brandon Brackenbury