Local Gestures
because the personal is cultural
I must admit that the heaviness of the footwork caused me to experience a bit of anxiety. (I was sitting in the first row.) Particularly striking is the floor work sequence where, down on her knees, Murugesan moves around the stage without ever using her hands as they are busy holding flowers and a plate. Rather, she spins using her toes and knees as pivots and slides across the floor on her shin.
In the final section, she drops handfuls of nickels on herself, which roll across the floor and end up covering the stage in a way that might recall the walnuts scattered by Maria Kefirova in the very same space for The Nutcracker. A different register awaits us for Débile Métal. When we enter the room, a heavy metal song with especially dickish guitar riffs is playing while an image of a thorn-crowned Jesus is projected onto a black curtain at the back of the stage. As soon as the song ends, the image fades and a dancer comes out onstage wearing grey dress pants and shirt, as well as suspenders. So are the four other men joining him (some minus the suspenders), while the sole woman sports a grey dress. It is at first sweeping the floor from left to right and back again that they perform their jig, before crossing each other’s paths in a way that hints at randomness as the dancers look at each other to only nearly avoid collision. Eventually, they do not only run into each other but also push each other, messing up their footwork. They play with the fact that their jig shoes enable or cause them to slide across the floor. They find their rhythm again as they move towards centre stage, falling back into synchronicity with the others. Gloutnez is playing with the usual cleanness of the synchronized jig step, expertly juggling the orchestrated and the chaotic. One by one, the performers take off one shoe and then the other as they keep dancing. The sharp note of the jig shoe becomes layered with the deeper tone of the bare foot before the dancers effectively perform their own fade out as their step becomes lighter and lighter. Her work being as intelligent as it is satisfying for the senses, Gloutnez is undoubtedly the contemporary jig choreographer that deserves crossover success. November 9 at 4pm Monument-National www.tangente.qc.ca 514.871.2224 Tickets: 23$ / Students: 19$
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
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
|