Local Gestures
because the personal is cultural
Comment malaxer? On commence avec le poing droit près de la hanche gauche, et la jambe droite – genou à peine plié – pivote un peu plus de 90 degrés, suivie de la gauche, tout en relâchant le poing. C’est du moins ce que Katya Montaignac, dramaturge du projet 4quART de La 2e Porte à Gauche, m’a enseigné avant le spectacle. Elle a aussi capté mon move sur vidéo. 4quART pour quatre chorégraphes (Marie Béland, Alain Francoeur, Frédérick Gravel, Catherine Tardif) et quatre danseurs (Sophie Corriveau, Manuel Roque, Peter Trosztmer, Lucie Vigneault). Leurs hoodies annoncent l’aspect ludique du spectacle avec leurs couleurs LEGO : rouge, jaune, bleu, vert. On dirait des participants à un game show pour enfants. Le but du jeu : articuler en mouvement différents verbes reliés à la cuisine, comme « malaxer. » La gestuelle est alors pop, voire enfantine. Ces exercices révèlent parfois l’incapacité de la danse à traduire le littéraire… littéralement. On peut bien dire à Trosztmer « More hands, » n’empêche que son oiseau ne peut décoller du sol peu importe la vélocité de ses ailes improvisées. On peut dire à Roque « More Dead, » mais à part demeurer étendu immobile sur le sol, il ne peut que crier à ses interlocuteurs « I’m not dead! » Dans l’une des sections les plus réussies, Corriveau parvient à déshabiller Trosztmer tout en demeurant suspendue à son corps, sans jamais toucher le sol. Et il réussit à la dévêtir à son tour tout en la gardant dans ses bras. C’est une contrainte qui engendre un exercice impressionnant sur le plan physique. D’ailleurs et comme à l’habitude, Trosztmer se démarque de par son intensité. On fait souvent dans la violence, même si elle aussi se veut parfois infantile. Les trois camarades de Trosztmer s’amusent à le frapper tels des lutteurs de la WWE. Roque épouse des positions de combat, les muscles tendus, les poings levés. Trosztmer tient Vigneault par ses longs cheveux, la traîne, soulève, lance au sol. Elle facilite évidemment le mouvement, mais l’illusion est convaincante. Ils se jettent sur le dos les uns des autres et dansent ensemble que pour se laisser tomber. C’est sûrement à cause de cette violence qu’on croit surtout reconnaître la signature chorégraphique de Gravel. Ce n’est que vers la fin que l’espace est utilisé d’une façon qui satisfait pleinement l’aspect déambulatoire de la pièce. Car, oui, il n’y a pas de position fixe pour le spectateur, un point qui se veut crucial mais dont mon omission jusqu’à maintenant devrait indiquer le manque d’importance. Toutefois, lorsque les danseurs sont répartis aux quatre coins du deuxième étage du Studio Hydro-Québec du Monument-National et qu’au premier on retrouve une projection vidéo sur un grand écran courbé, on approche enfin un univers assez riche pour justifier le déambulatoire. (On pense entre autre à Corps intérieur de David Pressault, un autre spectacle de Danse-Cité, qui avait relevé ce défi l’an dernier.) Je demeure similairement peu convaincu par presque tous les éléments de 4quART. L’inclusion du spectateur (par la vidéo captée avant le spectacle et ensuite diffusée dans la salle) et l’interaction avec lui (en lui offrant des POGOs, entre autres) ne peuvent être que superficielles. S’il est difficile d’intégrer les éléments de quatre chorégraphes lors d’un travail qui s’étale sur plusieurs mois, comment y parvenir avec des spectateurs rencontrés moins de cinq minutes avant le spectacle? La vidéo ne fait la plupart du temps que charger l’espace plutôt que l’enrichir. La longueur du spectacle ne semble elle non plus justifiée. Quinze minutes devraient être coupées. La 2e Porte à Gauche se donne comme mission de « rendre la danse contemporaine appétissante. » Un but admirable, sans doute, mais c’est une ligne mince entre populaire et populiste. Je dois avouer que, dans ce cas-ci, j’avais l’impression qu’on m’adressait comme si j’étais un enfant. 4quART 24-26 mars et 29 mars-2 avril à 20h30 Monument-National www.danse-cite.org 514.871.2224 Billets : 26$ / Étudiants : 20$
0 Comments
Je viens du Musée d’Art Contemporain où j’ai visionné une vidéo d’un escargot se déplaçant d’un côté du cadre à l’autre, un processus qui lui prend plus de six minutes. Il s’agit de Scenes from Ordinary Life de l’artiste torontois Euan Macdonald. Il est possible que ce visionnement ait coloré mon expérience subséquente de CINQ HUMEURS, la nouvelle pièce de groupe d’Emmanuel Jouthe présentée cette semaine à l’Agora de la danse. Il demeure que des liens entre les deux œuvres se sont dessinés sous mes yeux au courant de la soirée. Ce que je remarque en premier dans CINQ HUMEURS est la juxtaposition des vitesses, dans le même corps et à travers les corps. Comme si le chorégraphe détenait une télécommande : slow motion, fast forward. Souvent, les mouvements les plus originaux apparaissent lorsque les contraintes sont les plus claires. Dans CINQ HUMEURS, par contre, il est plus approprié de parler de complications que de contraintes. Deux femmes courent à toute vitesse, mais elles sont couchées sur le sol, de sorte que leur déplacement est quasi inexistant. Une autre femme marche d’un côté à l’autre de la scène, les yeux fermés. D’autres se déplacent à haute vitesse, mais leur tête descend de plus en plus bas, jusqu’à ce que leurs bras rejoignent le sol. Ces complications éliminent la distance entre l’humain et l’animal, et révèle la futilité du mouvement de ces créatures qui se démènent. Alors pourquoi se démener? Un homme se laisse tomber, droit comme une planche. À la dernière seconde, un autre l’attrape par le cou. Pour un instant, on se retrouve dans l’univers de Staccato Rivière, une pièce de Jouthe datant de 2007. Une vision de l’humain comme statue, soumis comme tout autre objet à la gravité, plongeant inévitablement vers sa propre fragilité. Tout n’est pas si fataliste, par contre. Dans les sections les plus vigoureuses, brèves, les bras deviennent des catapultes qui font pivoter le corps et les jambes sont propulsées hors du tronc telles des armes. Jouthe réussit malgré tout à résister une structure dramatique. La chorégraphie qui accompagne la section la plus intense des Quatre Saisons de Vivaldi, la musique qui inspire le spectacle, consiste en deux ou trois femmes qui marchent en cercle, à reculons. Je prends par cette occasion l’opportunité de souligner la performance de Marilyne St-Sauveur, dont le talent n’est pas limité à sa performance comique. Elle possède une aura de mystique qui attire le regard, et ce même lorsqu’elle partage la scène avec neuf autres interprètes. La section finale menace de défaire cette anti-pièce lorsque les dix danseurs se pointent sur scène et attaquent le mouvement, mais le tout est coupé court. Éjaculation prématurée. Ne reste qu’une seule danseuse qui se tient immobile, à cheval entre scène et coulisses, avant de disparaître à son tour. Une fin qui a du culot. Et je repense à cet escargot qui avance lentement. Son mouvement n’est pas moins signifiant que ces humains qui se démènent. Tous deux se réalisent de par leur mouvement, de par leur vie. Alors pourquoi se démener? CINQ HUMEURS 16-18 mars à 20H, 19 mars à 16H Agora de la danse www.agoradanse.com 514.525.1500 Billets : 20$ / Étudiants et moins de 30 ans : 14$ There’s a knife on my desk, next to my computer. When I’m done writing this review, I’ll take the knife and stab myself repeatedly. Don’t worry. It’s a retractable blade, a plastic knife.
Ashlea Watkin (sublime, as always) is quite poised when she walks onstage for Nicolas Cantin’s Belle manière. She is wearing a nice black dress. But something’s off. She steps into black shoes, men’s shoes, but doesn’t even bother putting them on correctly. She simply lets her heel come down on the back of the shoe. She picks up two plastic objects: little, round, white. She shakes her head from side to side, brings her hands to her face: squeak! It’s tragic, it’s comic, it’s a farce. She hugs the air, but having no one there to stop her arms, the embrace sends her stumbling across the floor. There is someone else there – Normand Marcy – but he simply stands there and looks on, comatose. Watkin attempts to make him sing, but to no avail. No sound out of him, ever. He refuses to play her games. So Watkin extends her fist in front of an audience member, asking them to sing instead. The awkwardness is transferred from the couple’s relationship onto the audience. Watkin’s upper body collapses, her head crashing down to her stomach. Marcy remains still. Once again, we find the same characters as in Cantin’s previous piece, Grand singe, even though they are played by different performers. The man is passive, the woman relatively more hysterical. A relationship looked at under unflattering neon lights. Cantin does introduce a new element into this work: a few magic tricks of which the performers barely attempt to mask the inner workings. They look cheap, a bit like how one sometimes feels when looking back at love. Why did it look so magical back then? Or like this red balloon tied to Marcy’s body that follows him along, trailing on the ground: whimsical at first, then fragile, and ultimately just ridiculous. These are sad clowns. Marcy might look like a victim, but he is only a willing one, more a victim of his own passivity than of Watkin. The egg, the cream pie, the shaken soda bottle, he sees it all coming, but he has no will of his own. We feel better about not being in such a relationship. We feel better that we’re not the only ones who’ve been in such a relationship. Cantin is still working out his issues with women, but he undeniably does it in a theatrically compelling way. No other artist manages to get so much out of so little. You’ll be just as shaken up as that soda bottle by the time you get out of there. And maybe love is like that soda bottle; you think you’re going to get something sweet, but it’s really just an explosion waiting to happen, leaving you with nothing but a sticky mess. Belle manière March 3-5 at 7:30pm, March 6 at 4pm Tangente www.tangente.qc.ca 514.525.1500 Tickets: 18$ / Students: 14$ Stéphane Guignard's Songs, photo by Frédéric Desmesure Three women. A koto player, a singer, a dancer. East meets West. Music meets dance. Voice meets bodies. At the back of the stage, a single passage of light. The dancer travels through the light; the light travels through the dancer. The voice: a woman from another time, from another planet. A woman from another world. The otherworldliness of her appearance: crimson red hair, a futuristic high-collared burgundy dress made from a quilted material akin to that of a bed cover, blue eye shadow popping out. The otherworldliness of her voice: sometimes manipulated digitally, echoed, reverberated, amplified. Static noise for applause. The koto player: comically intense, as she violently shakes her head from side to side while playing her instrument. Hard to resist Songs’ charm, at first. Unfortunately, it loses much of its magic as it progresses. It would help if the entrances and exits were better dissimulated, by shifting our attention from performer to performer and by dimming the lights. The latter technique is better carried out in the second half of the show. And what of the dancer? Let’s speak of the dance itself: anaemic. One could say that that’s okay given that Songs is more a concert than a dance show, but the truth is that even the musical element suffers from the same problem. Not the music itself, nor the talent of the three performers, which remains undeniable. However, none of them are used to their full capacity. Director Stéphane Guignard claims to be inspired by John Cage, but even after reading all the material in the press package, how exactly that is remains obscure. With the American artist’s philosophy, using him as an inspiration is not unlike using life itself. As all the elements are only partially made use of, questions begin to emerge. What justifies the form of the show? What is its guiding principle? What is at its core? These questions remain unanswered. The show ends with the nine tubes of coloured light at the back of the stage. As their colours change, they begin to flash on and off alternately, one light going off each time until we are down to none. The effect is hypnotic. It is the most compelling part of the show. A solution emerges: cut all the performers, turn Songs into a light show. Songs February 25 & 26 at 7pm Agora de la danse www.agoradanse.com 514.525.1500 Tickets: 20$ / Students and those under 30: 14$ C’est le souvenir le plus marquant de tout mon temps au primaire. Elle était venue dans chacune de nos classes en début d’année scolaire pour se présenter. J’oublie aujourd’hui son nom et la nature exacte de son rôle pédagogique. Ce qui ressortait à mes yeux d’enfant était ses béquilles : une à chaque main. C’était la vraie raison de sa visite, pour démystifier ça, question de mettre la chose de côté pour faciliter son travail. Un manque d’oxygène à la naissance. C’est tout ce dont je me souviens. Un jour, pendant l’heure du dîner, deux élèves courraient dans le corridor. Ils ne faisaient rien de mal. Ils ne faisaient qu’être des enfants. Tout de même, il demeure qu’en tournant un coin, ils n’ont vu que beaucoup trop tard l’éducatrice qui avançait tranquillement de l’autre côté. Le gamin qui tentait de filer entre les doigts de son copain heurta la femme, ses béquilles glissant contre le plancher jusqu’à ne plus le toucher. Avant qu’on ait compris quoi que ce soit, elle était étalée contre le sol. Les deux garçons étaient maintenant complètement immobiles, la bouche ouverte et muette, un regard horrifié sur le visage. Il était de même pour nous tous. Nous étions figés, comprenant avant même d’avoir essayé que nos petits corps d’enfant étaient impuissants devant ce corps trop grand pour recevoir notre aide. La femme tentait tant bien que mal de se relever par elle-même à l’aide de ses bras, mais c’était peine perdue. Ses efforts ne se traduisaient qu’en tremblements, des tremblements dans lesquels on ressentait sa panique. Ce ne fut qu’une question de secondes, sûrement, mais le mot qui nous vint quand un adulte est apparu : enfin. Il l’aida à se relever tout en lui tendant ses béquilles. Nos yeux étaient rivés sur elle. Dans les siens : des larmes qu’elle tentait tant bien que mal de refouler. Encore aujourd’hui, quand je repense à ce moment, la douleur m’envahit. Cet incident est si marquant pour moi parce que c’est dans ces quelques secondes que le sens de plusieurs mots s’est révélé à moi : l’horreur, l’impuissance, la panique, la douleur, l’humiliation, l’humilité. Pas étonnant que la différence entre ces deux derniers mots ne se révèlent qu’à la septième lettre. Et, tout à coup, tout ça me revient. Dès que la lumière frappe le corps nu de la danseuse Holly Bright, elle s’écroule. Elle tente de se relever mais ses membres, recroquevillés, ne coopèrent pas. Ses tentatives se transforment en reptation le long de ce chemin lumineux, vers la lumière duquel il émane. Enfin, elle parvient à se relever. Aidée de ses mains, elle balance sa tête d’avant en arrière. Au départ, le mouvement est lent. Sa tête se repose brièvement dans le creux de ses mains. La vitesse devient toutefois de plus en plus accrue. Les mains sont des catapultes. Le confort n’y est plus. Son bras droit, tendu, descend vers le sol avant de remonter tel un pendule. Ses bras s’étendent, s’ouvrent vers l’avant. « Yes… Teeth… » Pendule. Ouverture. « Yes… Lips… » Pendule, ouverture. « Yes… Kiss… » Ouverture. « Yes… Sing… Yes… Joy… Yes… Love… Yes… Fear… Yes… Blood… » Et puis peu importe les mots qu’elle dit puisqu’à n’importe quel elle répondrait « Yes, » puisque tout est dans la vie, tout est par la vie, et c’est à elle, chaque fois, qu’elle dit « Oui » alors que le rouge envahit le haut de son corps. Elle regarde le public, sans peur, sans gêne, sans affront. Elle est notre égale, humaine. C’est une performance phénoménale de Bright dans un court solo chorégraphié par Susanna Hood. À voir absolument. Costing not less than everything fait partie d’un programme triple de Susanna Hood et Sarah Bild. Sarah Bild & Susanna Hood 18, 19, 23, 24, 25, 26 février à 19h30 20, 27 février à 16h00 Tangente www.tangente.qc.ca 514.525.1500 Tarif régulier : 18$ / Tarif réduit : 14$ A dog runs incessantly but forever remains in the same spot. It is Muybridge’s dog. It is a video loop. The dog can run without ever becoming tired, but also without ever getting anywhere. A movement emptied out of its functionality. A movement for study. A dance movement.
British choreographer Wayne McGregor turns ten dancers into animals on display in Entity. The human body as machine. Ballet mécanique. Ballet animal. Introduction of the ten dancers. Dynamic, as entrances and exits multiply, sometimes no dancing executed in between. No physical contact, but fleeting synchronized movement. The chest: thrusting out. The torso: wriggling. The hands: shifting. The legs: extending. Ballet in the legs, animal in the upper body, bending as though the spinal column has been removed. Duets. Not the same ease at first, as limbs get stuck together, brief moments of struggle. The kinks quickly get worked out. Trios. Undeniably an enormous amount of work choreographically. Group. The animal is difficult to maintain in the multitude of interactions. The human is a social animal that can only interact through socialized behaviour. The ballet takes over. Couples form. A little gender inversion: in one of the couples, the woman is supporting the man while he executes his steps. Édouard Lock could learn something from this. Post-crescendo. The women. The arms are so expressive that they could be considered verbose, but they are in such symbiosis with the rest of the body that it doesn’t appear to be so. A body section might look isolated, but it influences the rest of the body so tangibly that it is no longer perceived as such. The human body as a whole, continuous. Men/Women. A man walks like one of our primate cousins. On a dime, he switches to a more human, but decidedly confident walk. Again, movement as social phenomenon. If we can move in a multitude of ways, why move only in a limited set of ways? A decision that is usually unconscious becomes conscious through dance. Animal or ballet? Dichotomy or symbiosis? The dancers are swift, dexterous, and precise. The work requires it. The set design is imposing yet simple and effective. The black and white video is tasteful and complements the action. Yet Entity lacks a certain punch. Its dynamism feels empty rather than energetic. A more drastic lighting design might help push it over the edge. So might a more complex structure. Bookends. A video loop of a dog running. But after what? Entity February 10-12 at 8pm Théâtre Maisonneuve, Place des Arts www.dansedanse.net / www.laplacedesarts.com 514.842.2112 / 1.866.842.2112 Tickets start at 24.80$ Four Quartets, photo by Chris Randle I’ve never been able to read with my ears. This tragedy has made it so that, despite my best and nerdiest intentions, I have failed to get into This American Life. So part of me feels that I’ve somewhat missed out on the experience that is Deborah Dunn’s Four Quartets. Not that the choreographer’s dance has anything to do with the popular radio show. As its title suggests, it is T.S. Eliot’s poetry that is centre stage here. And, of course, Dunn herself. She is the sole dancer of all four pieces that compose the show. Also not to be neglected is the voice of Sir Alec Guinness. A recording of his reading of Eliot is the inspiration for the project and is used for the first two pieces. At first, there appears to be a disjunction between the echoing voice of Guinness, mysterious, and the high-key lighting that reveals everything. However, as we get used to the juxtaposition, it comes to create a legitimate third entity: Dunn’s “Burnt Norton.” The first thing that grabs my attention in Dunn’s choreography is her hands. Who knew that contemporary dancers have hands, and that they can bend at the wrist? Only in butoh are the hands usually such a focal point, so thoroughly used. Her body consciousness goes all the way to the tip of her fingers, her hands as straight as an outstreched arm and as flat as a blade. With her angular arm shapes, Dunn looks like a series of Egyptian hieroglyphics. Her movement language is sometimes so interpretive that it also becomes a code, like these hand-birds that kiss in a charmingly playful manner. Sometimes her hands show the only visible skin on her body, like when one curved hand is covering her face and the other her crotch. Against the dark fabric of her tailor suit, it is the symmetrical positioning of her hands that hits us. This attention to details is Dunn’s strength. Not that everything is a matter of hands. As Dunn appears in one spot and then another and yet another, it becomes obvious that, while our attention is on her arms, her legs are traveling across the space to cover as much ground as she singlehandedly can. For short periods of time, the lighting changes. It becomes low-key, spotted, focused on Dunn’s immobile body. It highlights her pauses, moments of stillness that feel like spaces for breath before diving back underwater. Between sections, Dunn moves to the back of the stage where a lamp, table, and chair wait for her. These are brief moments of rest, for both dancer and audience. They are extremely similar to the device that José Navas used in his own solo show. It is also then that the title of each poem appears, rather unnecessarily so, especially since the video projector produces a significant humming noise and goes otherwise unused. Another disparity emerges in the second piece, “East Coker.” This time, the deep and reassuring voice of Guinness contrasts with Diane Labrosse’s electronic music, yet the two work together perfectly. Kudos to Labrosse for not taking the most obvious route and pulling it off admirably. The third section, “The Dry Salvages,” appears as the most theatrical and the dance as the most interpretive, probably because Dunn herself is performing the poem live. The words begin to appear as prompts that directly spur the movement. My own anti-narrative inclinations made it so that it was my least favourite section, as I wondered if it were necessary for the words to be spoken out loud rather than just use them to inspire the choreography. Of course, there is no way to know for sure without seeing the different results. In the final section, “Little Gidding,” a rarity in dance shows: pink lighting. Less rare: a skin-coloured leotard (no joke), the kind of costume that, thank God, is never seen outside of a dance show. Fortunately, most of it soon gets covered up by a large red skirt with a silky texture. The third section still fresh in our mind, the movement continues to appear a tad too literal. However, Dunn compensates by sprinkling a few humorous touches along the way, like when she lifts up her skirt and walks in a deeply affected manner that looks more like a galloping horse than a display of femininity. After the year started with quite a few intense ensemble works (BJM Danse, The New Bourjoiesie, La pornographie des âmes, Junkyard/Paradis), the simplicity of Dunn’s Four Quartets comes like a breath of fresh air. The simplicity is not in the movement, which is quasi-constant and varied, but in the presentation. At her best, Dunn reminds us of Peggy Baker. As far as comparisons go, one could do much worse. Four Quartets February 3-5 at 7:30pm, February 6 at 4pm Tangente (presented by Agora de la danse) www.agoradanse.com / www.tangente.qc.ca 514.525.1500 Tickets: 20$/14$ for students and people under 30 It is with a feeling of dread that I write this review. The same feeling inhabited me last night when I was watching the triple program offered by BJM Danse. It is a feeling that I would rather shrug off, but that persists as I sit down to write. I am hoping that acknowledging it might lessen its hold on me to make the impending task less gruesome. Thirteen dancers from the company stand side by side for the opening of Mauro Bigonzetti’s Rossini Cards. One of the men slowly removes his jacket and gives it to the person standing next to him. He then takes off his pants and gives them to the dancer on the other side. In his skin-colored underwear, he takes a step forward… and falls offstage, out of sight. This humorous surprise is sadly the high point of the entire show.
Bigonzetti’s work is a series of tableaux that, by wanting to be everything, fail to be anything. The fragmented style reveals an inability to incorporate different elements into a cohesive whole, choreographically as well as thematically. So we look for the semblance of a thread… With its garish dinner table and conspicuous ballet exits, it might be a satire of bourgeois taste. Even if it is, it has so little bite that it ends up being all the more bourgeois. As a series of mostly solos and duets that remain disconnected, Bigonzetti also makes poor use of the thirteen dancers at his disposal. In the more theatrical sections, their acting skills prove to be weak. For a work that is meant to fill such a big stage as that of Théâtre Maisonneuve at Place des arts, Rossini Cards lacks punch. It is so bland, in fact, that you’d swear it were a Grands Ballets Canadiens show. The second piece, Cayetano Soto’s Zero In On, has the benefit of being clearer due to its brevity: a mere seven minutes. A strip of light hanging from the ceiling comes all the way down to the floor. It is an ingenious way of cutting the stage down by a third since there are but two dancers occupying it. Interestingly enough, their skin-tight costumes are also the colour of their flesh, a contemporary dance fad that clearly needs to be over. By wanting to be invisible, these costumes are only all the more distracting. Just when you think it can’t go downhill any more, it turns out that the worse has in fact been kept for last. Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s Zip Zap Zoom pertains to be inspired by video games, if only in a vain attempt to create a distinct personality for itself. A visually busy video projection at the back of the stage provides us with much of this context, taking our attention away from the dance itself. Flirting with urban dance somehow makes the dancers walk around like they’re grownups playing teenagers on Watatow. The soundtrack, trying to infuse the choreography with an energy it doesn’t possess, is as obnoxious as it is eclectic. The show might not have been a play, but it still turned out to be a three-act tragedy. BJM Danse Montréal January 20-22 at 8pm Théâtre Maisonneuve dansedanse.net / laplacedesarts.com 514.842.2112 / 1.866.842.2112 Tickets start at 21.37$ SPEAKING OF satire, emerging choreographer Patrick Lloyd Brennan is showing his latest creation, The New Bourjoiesie, in an intimate loft in Old Montreal this weekend. With a few dance sequences, the highly theatrical show plays like John Waters at his most inspired. For more information, visit the Facebook event page: http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=169566319752882 |
Sylvain Verstricht
has an MA in Film Studies and works in contemporary dance. His fiction has appeared in Headlight Anthology, Cactus Heart, and Birkensnake. s.verstricht [at] gmail [dot] com Categories
All
|