Local Gestures
because the personal is cultural
Besides the two musicians, five performers occupy the stage with about just as many dummies. The action is so minimal that the difference between the two isn’t always obvious. The mannequins look like toys that are being neglected while a child is busy playing with as many live performers (no more than two seem to be moving at the same time) as his hands can hold. The result is intensely photographic, so it’s not surprising that I caught a few audience members taking pictures with their smartphones. The anemic narrative plays like what’s left of a memory that’s been repressed.
Not since the book of poetry I wrote during my teenage years (titled Love and Other Violent Things, thank you very much) have so few words been used to communicate so much angst. Example of dialogue: Jonathan I’m the coldest piece of shit in human history but your rotting, stinking corpse is so hot in theory I think it’ll melt me. Ghost I’ve tried to kill myself so many times since I met you that every time you hit me it’s like the ten thousandth car running over a dead dog. Sometimes the dialogue is less eloquent: “–Hey. –What. –This is how it’s going to happen. –What’s up. –Not much. I’m fucked up. –You into this?” Later: “–I don’t care. –You’re… It’s confusing me. –Jonathan. –What?” One of the things it does get right is the contemporary disillusionment and malaise with boredom: “I’m boring. You’re boring. Sex is boring. Being tortured is boring. Being killed is boring.” There is something potentially admirable about the fact that writer Dennis Cooper, far from being a teenager, is able to write as though he were one, without any perceivable distance or irony creeping in. While I was watching Kindertotenlieder, I experienced a similar feeling as I had a few nights before while at the Ben Frost concert. It felt like something magical was about to happen, but in the end not much did. (Frost cancelled the concert because he was “not willing to give [us] a half-assed show on a half-assed PA.”) It was like the earplugs that were given to us before the show and which turned out to be barely necessary: somewhat of a fake-out. As the show progressed, I saw no reason for the audience not to be onstage rather than simply watching the performance from afar. It’s all it might have taken to make it one of the most memorable experiences of the year. www.usine-c.com www.g-v.fr
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She then unzips the door of a black tent just big enough for one upright person and makes her way in, standing behind a podium that takes up most of the space. In a surprising display of thriftiness, she uses the clips from a hanger for pants to keep the door open. “Butter!” she blurts out into the microphone, apparently still on her dairy rant. Uncanny Valley Stuff becomes hilarious as stereotypes become confused, slide into each other, and such importance is unexpectedly bestowed upon something as trifling as butter. She takes it even further by sliding white gloves on and holding her hands up to the heavens, recalling a preacher and his faithful churchgoers as she implores, “Come, milkshake, come!”
Throughout the twenty-minute piece, Michel is making subtle but clever use of sound. When she is kneading dough, a microphone is lying by her side so that the unnecessarily heightened sound of a flour sifter becomes strangely funny in and of itself. By building on these images to the point where they bleed into one another, Michel reveals the absurdity of stereotypes as they coexist and contradict themselves, showing us that the lens through which we view the world is nothing more than a fun house mirror. October 24 & 25 at 7:30pm Usine C www.usine-c.com 514.521.4493 Tickets: 10$
The show consists of eleven songs based on as many poems by Canadian author P.K. Page, put into music by trombone player Scott Thomson and his band, The Disguises. For the most part, Hood sings while three dancers take the stage. All performers are given some leeway to improvise.
In the beginning, the dance is just as jazzy as the music that accompanies it; in these small circle walks executed by the dancers, as well as in the partner work, with its musical comedy airs, though with the messiness of contemporary dance and the hesitations of improvisation. The dancers’ footsteps, heavy, vibrate all the way to the first row. They keep an eye on each other. The other’s movement can’t be counted on, but the other can. In improvised dance, it is the physical interaction between the performers, with its risk factor, that is most compelling. However, in most instances I’ve witnessed, dancers tend to fall back on the safety of solo work (except in contact improvisation, obviously). After the opening section, such is the case here. One can also notice the movements that dancers tend to fall back on. When they do reach out for the other, it is often more an interruption of their movement through the space as their arm prevents them from moving forward. Just as they brush aside the partner work, so they do with the more jazzy dancing. That is until the solo by Alanna Kraaijeveld in the middle section of the garden poems, “Picking Daffodils,” when she executes small steps while remaining in the same spot, spins, and moves her arms about excessively. Like in musicals, this solo looks like a duo with a missing or imagined partner; or, where the audience is the partner in what is the antipode of the private dance, a dance that only exists to be seen. With a sing-songy voice that effectively masks Page’s poetry, Hood offers a show that often feels like a jazz version of R. Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet. October 2-4 at 7:30pm & October 5 at 4pm Monument-National www.tangente.qc.ca 514.871.2224 Tickets: 23$ / Students: 19$
LOVE, by Loïc Touzé and Latifa Laâbissi, is a clearly delimited series of a dozen tableaux that can be narrowed down to a single action, each lasting about five minutes. In what becomes a ritual, the dancers enter the stage from the side and turn their head to the audience as they do so. They stand still with a neutral facial expression before performing their action and then returning to a still position before exiting.
Onstage, they fake boxing with their eyes closed, they walk on all fours like animals, the pretend to tap dance while barefoot… We are in a world of imaginary play, where the performers are devoid of emotional complexity, dehumanized, as clowns always are. In Dance and the Lived Body: A Descriptive Aesthetics, Sondra Horton Fraleigh writes, “The audience perceives [the dancer’s] dance through her movement as it conveys her intentions. In short, they see what she does and see the thought in it – not behind it or before it. If she moves softly, they see softness; if she moves sharply, that is what they see.” In light of this, it is interesting that LOVE is framed as a dance show since this conjunction is never present. Instead, everything the dancers do is fake. Even when they hit each other, it is never enough to actually hurt. When a woman pretends to run away from someone, she remains in the same spot. Given this constant artificiality, LOVE is more intellectual than emotional. One can only assume that the title is ironic. For the final scene, the picture of trees is lowered until it becomes the backdrop. It is only a signifier for the end since the conclusion is never earned. Each of the tableaux, essentially the same, could be interchanged without affecting the work in any way whatsoever. As such, it is reminiscent of Chris Haring’s Running Sushi, seen last year at Usine C. As I’m writing this, I come across another quote, this one by Oscar Wilde: “There are two ways of disliking art. One is to dislike it and the other is to like it rationally.” September 10 & 11 at 8pm Agora de la danse www.escalesimprobables.com 514.525.1500 Tickets: 28$ / Students or 30 years old and under: 20$ “Shake that ass” began my review of Ann Van den Broek’s Co(te)lette, and so could begin my review of Marlene Monteiro Freitas’s Paraíso – Colecção privada. Except there is a notable difference between the two works: in Co(te)lette, it was three women shaking their ass; in Paraíso, it’s three men. Also, while the gaze of men could be felt everywhere in Co(te)lette, they were nowhere to be found onstage. In Paraíso, the opposite gender finds embodiment in Freitas herself, who appears as a gothic mistress of ceremony with organ music at her disposal. She wears a black cactus-like helmet that is potentially inspired by spiders and her top comes with matador-like shoulder pads. For their part, the four men that join her are shirtless. Otherwise, some show the physical characteristics of particularly virile animals, like the tail of a horse or the horns of a ram. However, wild they are not. They are her beasts and they are most well trained, doing whatever she demands on command. Movements of her arms are scored by little bells, turning her creatures into Pavlov’s dogs. While their shell is butch, their behaviour is otherwise. Their dance is spastic, nervous. They look like battery-operated toy dogs, their movement jerky, like they’ve been emptied out of their soul and are now more akin to robots. When in a particularly S&M section Freitas jams a harmonica in one man’s mouth, the other’s wide doe eyes reveal that each fears the same fate. The horse-like man uses his hands to mimic wings on his back and a horn in the middle of his forehead, turning himself into a cross between a unicorn and a Pegasus. To satisfy their mistress’s desires, they must be able to change on a dime. There is something clown-like in the way all the performers act, if clowns weren’t the worst thing in the world. One man moves his pecs to the music. She rewards her pets with food (peanuts?)… though not always. When they take a break, Freitas feasts on a chicken and even offers some to a few audience members, but none to her male dancers. Her power extends beyond the stage as she orders the sound person to raise the volume or stop the music. She even targets coughing audience members by turning her hand into a fist. Paraíso is a sexist fantasy turned on its head. The question is whose paradise, of course, since (as the subtitle implies) the concept is necessarily private, personal. It’s only ever paradise for who is in power. The show might be a bit one-note, but it’s a pretty good fucking note. The movement vocabulary is singular and the dancers' commitment to it brings an equally unique world into being. The four men leave the stage shortly before the end, leaving Freitas to hog the spotlight. I wish the choreographer had carried her premise to its ultimate end by being the only one to come back out to take a bow. June 4-6 at 9pm Agora de la danse www.fta.qc.ca 514.844.3822 / 514.842.2112 Tickets: 38$ / 30 years old and under: 33$ From March 25 to 27, dancer Anne Thériault will fill Ashlea Watkin’s shoes (and mask?) in Nicolas Cantin’s Klumzy. Here is what I had to say about the show when I saw it at Festival TransAmériques back in June. Spectacle. “Spectacle,” Ashlea Watkin repeats throughout Klumzy, as if to remind us that nothing should be taken at face value specifically because everything is face value. Or maybe it’s the opposite. Maybe it’s ironic since, as usual, show producer Nicolas Cantin does as little as he needs, giving us the opposite of the spectacle, antitheater. By saying the word, Watkin is transforming the context into content. The same could be said of Cantin’s presence onstage in this mostly-solo quasi-duo. It is as if he does not want us to forget that, while the show might be biographically about Watkin, it is his show and therefore is just as much about him. Maybe even more so. Watkin tells us that she used to be into Aerosmith, but that’s not the music Cantin plays on his laptop. When he plays punk rock, he’s the one dancing along to it, not her. By being onstage, Cantin is refusing the purity of biography. “It’s an image,” Watkin says. On a small square screen, a picture of her is projected. “It’s an image of me.” She might be talking about the picture, but she could also be talking about her live body, also mediated. “It’s me.” It is while wearing a mask of an old bald man that she is looking at her picture, creating a distance between the self and its representation at the same as she blurs the line between them. The recording of her voice has been manipulated, possibly speeded up, has a higher pitch certainly, has been chipmunked, rendered childlike. There is again a distance created between Watkin now and as a child – introducing the idea that maybe our memory should not be fully trusted – as well as a blurring between the two. That we dialogue with our selves only proves the inconsistency of said self; otherwise it would speak with a single voice. There is always something off in Cantin’s world, courtesy of aforementioned antitheater. Watkin speaks into a microphone, but she’s whispering. She’s doing so at the back of the stage, her back turned to the audience. Her microphone is on a stand, but she’s holding the stand sideways, so that it’s not resting on its legs. Wearing her mask – deceptively realistic, especially in soft light – she keeps opening her mouth slightly, as though chewing. The effect is unsettling. We know it’s a mask, and yet our mind constantly lapses into viewing it as a real face. To qualify as realistic, something has to be fake. At the end, Atkin pulls on a string to make the front legs of a chair hover slightly above the floor. This is as much magic as Cantin is willing to give us. March 25-27 at 8pm Usine C www.usine-c.com 514.521.4493 Tickets: 32$ / Students or 30 years old and under: 24$ D’après une histoire vraie, by French choreographer Christian Rizzo, is two drummers and eight dancers, a total of ten men including five with long hair and half a dozen with beards. I’m saying this because it’s the casting of my wet dreams. I’m saying this because I should have loved it. I did like it though. The show certainly has a lot of qualities going for it, most of which come from the fact that it is inspired by folk dance. As a result, D’après… avoids a lot of contemporary dance clichés. First, let’s mention how rare it is for a choreographer to know how to make men dance together. Often, contemporary dance will go straight for antagonism – drama is always the easy answer – as though it is the only way men can interact. That’s right… Even in contemporary dance we have to put up with this macho bullshit. However, here we witness interactions that are refreshingly different. Men put their arms on each other’s shoulders, hold hands, support each other, lean on each other, and invite each other to dance. The feeling of fraternity, of inclusiveness that emerges as a result makes the show most endearing. Indeed, there is something soft about D’après…, like the middle grey floor where the dance takes place or the low-key lighting that gently reveals it. There is a balance between the moments when the dancers are physically linked and the ones when they dance on their own. Both appear to be grounding experiences. The performer finds his footing as he sways from foot to foot on the beat, holding his hands behind his back, before joining his comrades. Since folk dance is usually practiced by non-professionals, there is also a switch of importance between the limbs. Édouard Lock has said that the difference between a dancer and a non-dancer is in the legs. Here, it is obvious. The steps executed by the dancers are simple and it is in their arms that most of the movement occurs. There is no showing off. Gone is the ego of the performer. This is about the pleasure of being together. Also gone is the existential crisis from contemporary dance. Folk dance is life affirming. As one dancer walks around the grey floor, standing on the outside looking in, we can feel his admiration before these dancing bodies, his desire to join them. Where Rizzo has more trouble is in the tricky transition that a community dance must undergo to become a theatrical dance. The choreographer does what he can by introducing elements of contemporary dance, like the modern set design or the variations in numbers of performers and speed of the dance, yet there is something that prevents the dance from imposing itself in our eye or in our mind. Still, let’s mention that Rizzo does a better job of it than Hofesh Shechter had with Political Mother. In the end, the best thing about the show for me was the drummers. Then again I always feel that way. May 30 & 31 at 8pm Théâtre Jean-Duceppe www.fta.qc.ca 514.844.3822 / 514.842.2112 Tickets: 48-58$ / 30 years old and under: 43-48$ I didn’t watch Eurovision this weekend but I did go to Tangente to see Dance Roads, so let’s pretend that it’s the dance equivalent of Eurovision. In competition: Wales, the Netherlands, Canada, Italy, and France. Representing Wales, Jo Fong with Dialogue - A Double Act A video projection where the public sees itself in real-time, as in a mirror, which reminds me of the Belgian theatre company Ontroerend Goed’s Audience (and this even though I haven’t seen it). On stage, six chairs, two of which will find seaters, the female performers of Dialogue - A Double Act. They provide the suggestion of a performance, a sort of low-energy runthrough, like Michèle Febvre in Nicolas Cantin’s CHEESE. They often explain the performance instead of or just before actually doing it, like Andrew Turner had in Duet for One Plus Digressions. All this to say that it’s as charming as the performers are, but leaves us with a feeling of déjà-vu. Representing the Netherlands, Jasper van Luijk with Quite Discontinuous An athletic duo for two men with lots of floor work, which could make us think of breaking, but the moves are decidedly contemporary. The dancers are agile and the partner work is inventive. The relationship between the performers remains ambiguous. There seems to be a desire for connection, but both are on their own trajectory so that there is a difficulty in connecting. It might even be impossible. After one lies on the ground as though dead, the other shines spotlights on him, as an homage to the other and the desire for connection with him in spite of its unfeasibility. Representing Canada, Sarah Bronsard with Ce qui émerge après (4kg) A strange creature appears in obscurity at the back of the stage. We imagine there’s a dancer under there, though we can’t even figure out in what position they are. Soon we are able to make it out: it is her dress worn upside down, hanging off her body. She drops it on the floor, leaving her with a black pant-and-shirt combo. This is significant because Bronsard dances the flamenco but, like she leaves the typical dress behind, so she does with other elements of the dance. For example, she performs to ambient music and a dozen percussive contraptions with Mason jar lids for drums. As such, it’s hard to anticipate where the piece will go at any given moment, casting flamenco in a new light. Representing Italy, Andrea Gallo Rosso with I Meet You… If You Want Another duo for two men, which begins with them pushing each other’s back repeatedly, a rather lazy display of antagonism that unfortunately ends as soon as it gets more creative. In the second section, they evolve independently before falling into partner work for the third act. They end with the choreographic find of the piece as the two men, standing back to back, slide against each other to embrace on one side before sliding against each other’s back and embracing on the other side in a loop. Still, the piece lacks clarity. Representing France, Teilo Troncy with . je ne suis pas permanent . It begins quietly, with but a bit of a light on a sole woman. Soon, we hear music, but as though it is coming from a great distance. The dancer seems happy about it. The music comes in full force and she can finally do her jazzy dance with great energy. When the soundtrack disappears, she is left alone, humming as if trying to remember what she must do, psyching herself up. However, the grandeur of her movements danced to silence makes her look as though she’s having a meltdown. Things don’t seem to be going wrong technically as much as mentally. And the winner is… The Netherlands! Because it’s refreshing to see a contemporary dance piece that actually has dance in it. The Netherlands might seem like the obvious choice as it is the crowd-pleaser of the bunch. One might say that it’s not a particularly daring choice from the judges, but then again none of the pieces were especially daring either, so it might be fitting. www.danceroads.eu www.tangente.qc.ca I email Nancy who emails Adam who emails me. In between, who knows what happens? I’m not sure if Nancy’s words are her own or if Adam has tampered with them. I might have modified what Adam sent me. Here is an interview where none of us should be held accountable for what we might or might not have said. Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2014 14:32:09 -0400 From: Sylvain Verstricht To: Nancy Gloutnez Hi Nancy, I'm so sorry I dropped the ball on this interview. Sometimes I just feel so overwhelmed with all these things I love but that I do for free, and I don't even have a job! How do you manage doing what you love and making a living? Date: Wed, Apr 9, 2014 at 8:46 PM From: Nancy Gloutnez To: Adam Kinner Salut Adam, Je me demande souvent si la bergère en moi aurait fini par faire une chorale de ses moutons ou juste une grande mozaïque de balles de laine. Toi, qu'aurais-tu fait? Date: Thu, Apr 10, 2014 at 6:29 PM From: Adam Kinner To: Sylvain Verstricht Nancy seems to think that simultaneously doing what she loves and making a living has to do with being a shepherdess of sheep. I am sympathetic to this idea. I often think that the job of the choreographer is to be some kind of shepherd, giving some direction, some discipline, some organization, some structure to the chaotic ideas, bodies, trainings, materials that performers (myself included) bring to the process. How to turn that stuff into money is a whole other problem, but the image of shaving seems apt. The shepherd captures and capitalizes the excess, but not the essence of the animal. For choreographers, I think we (they) are more needy. For Nancy, the question is whether to make a choir of the sheep or to display them as balls of yarn. For me, the question seems to be whether the sheep need to know that they are the dancers, and then further, if the presenters of dance need to know. What do you think? Can the dance of the sheep go unnoticed or does it need to be presented in a black box in order for it to register as the art-work it is? Also, is this how the interview is supposed to go? Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2014 19:48:36 -0400 From: Sylvain Verstricht To: Nancy Gloutnez I've always thought that human beings were excessively androcentric when it came to (well, everything) the parameters of art. It's like these studies that have been coming out that established that, besides humans, only parrots and Asian elephants can dance because they're on the beat about 25% of the time. The ability to pick out a beat seems as arbitrary a way to define what constitutes dance as any. Also, it seems that the more freedom one is given, the more one feels anxiety about what is expected of them (re: Adam's question about how this interview is supposed to go). Yet, that's (what comes before) the starting point of any art project, which – to be fair – can come with its own share of anxiety. Nancy, does it help you that you studied music and that you work with jig? Is the sound of the steps always your starting point? Or do you sometimes begin with visual ideas? Date: Thu, Apr 10, 2014 at 9:53 PM From: Nancy Gloutnez To: Adam Kinner I always start with the idea of an energy I want to portrait. I find that music gives me more freedom to do that than any other form of art. Through formal organization of musical ideas, and having people step dancing them, other images stand out and that's when the fun begins... Jig for me is a medium to grow closer to music. As a step dancer, I find that putting more attention to the sound (in the way a musician would) substantiates jig. In Les Mioles, I like that the body performs with the same simplicity and sobriety as a musician. I like to think it gives space for the audience to hear and hopefully feel jig differently. Also, I love grey zones, ambiguity, searching for the thin line... I have a very hard time finding that with concrete visual elements at the start, for now anyway. I'm far more anxious about making sure I articulate my thoughts properly when it comes to talking about my work to anyone uninvolved in it. Even though I'm well aware of the importance of that part in my role as a choreographer, a part of me strongly resists intellectualization. Adam, what's that like for you? Date: 1:13 PM (1 hour ago) From: Adam Kinner To: Sylvain Verstricht I always start with an idea. I'm also a context junkie. So, I always start with an idea and a context. Sometimes the context is not fully formed and has to be invented. Sometimes the idea is not fully formed and has to be invented. But the work always comes from some conceptual place (the idea) and that conceptual place is always related to the context. So with the remix it’s very clear: the idea is to rework someone else's material and the context is a 10-minute piece that follows the original, to be presented in a dance studio. For me, the work comes out of finding a way of approaching these elements ethically. Yes, ethics. Something about the way that bodies are used, the way that people are organized, the notion of "working" in dance. These are ethical issues more than artistic ones, somehow. So for some reason the work follows the ethics. After that it's just trying to take some kind of pleasure with the material. But I'm with Nancy in that I never start with concrete visual elements. But, differently from Nancy, I like to intellectualize the work, and I feel committed to exploring work both from a kind of aesthetic perspective and from an intellectual one. Sylvain, do you make work? If so, where do you start? I do make work. I write. Often, something internal is preventing me from writing. More and more, the only way for me to start is by writing about why I can’t write. I’d say that’s the thread that goes through all my most recent work. REMIX April 12 at 6pm & April 13 at 4pm Studio 303 www.studio303.ca 514.393.3771 Tickets: 10-20$ “It’s like being in a choose-your-own-adventure book,” I tell her. “You notice everything, every detail, so someone’s chest can become an entire world rather than an element in the world. So, at any given moment, you’re conscious that you could go right or left, and even if you just move one foot in either direction, you will then be in a different world.” It’s Moving in this World that director Marie Brassard and dancer-choreographer Sarah Williams encourage us to do. The first of Sabrina Ratté’s video images that hit us are of Williams hovering between windows, between doors, between portals, like so many options that could be explored: right or left? Her sequin dress leaves her arms and legs exposed. At the back of the stage, behind a translucent curtain, the light only alternatively hits one of her arms or one of her legs, as if her body could materialize in one world or another. As she spins in the light, her reflecting dress turns her into a disco ball. She absorbs and becomes her environment. The edge of her body fades. A rotating cube with luminous borders appears on the curtain. From behind, Williams interacts with the virtual element, seemingly shrinking it with her hands, spinning it, enlarging it. At what point is the illusion so perfect that it becomes real? “Something must be real, somewhere, I guess.” Could the only thing that is real be our brain? (See John Mighton’s Possible Worlds.) If drugs can affect my brain so that I perceive everything differently, how do I know what is real? The only thing that exists without chemicals is nothing. Maybe nonexistent nothingness is the only thing that is real. Maybe the only thing that is real doesn’t exist. The curtain is lifted. She is still playing with something, but it is invisible to us. Moving in this World constantly shifts between us being on the outside soberly looking in at Williams and on the inside sharing her sensory experience. Not surprisingly, the latter is more satisfying. None of this sobriety bullshit. Moving in this World plays like a live version of Roger Corman’s The Trip, penned by none other than Jack Nicholson, a film that is admirable in its nonjudgmental representation of the experience of drugs. If the show capitalized on its strengths and stuck with the sensory experience, it could become as great as the movie. April 8-10 at 9:30pm Usine C www.usine-c.com 514.521.4493 Tickets: 28$ / Students or 30 years old and under: 22$ |
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
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