Local Gestures
because the personal is cultural
In 1970, Joann Kealiinohomoku (who just passed away in December) caused somewhat of a stir when she published her seminal essay “An Anthropologist Looks at Ballet as a Form of Ethnic Dance.” Hopefully, that ballet is a form of ethnic dance is now more obvious than it is controversial.
As such, we could say that with her version of Swan Lake, South African choreographer Dada Masilo is making two ethnic dances – ballet and African dance – meet. (There is no such thing as “African dance”, Kealiinohomoku would say, rightfully.) Furthermore, Masilo queers ballet by having Siegfried fall for a male black swan rather than Odette, whom he is set to marry by his parents. As such, her Swan Lake is explicitly about the compulsory heterosexuality that permeates both ballet (countless gay dancers constantly having to act straight, except for that bisexual orgy in Kader Belarbi’s La Bête et la Belle) and life in general. After having a quick run-through of your typical ballet (like Dave St-Pierre running through the whole of La Pornographie des Âmes in the first tableau of the show), a dozen dancers plunge into their own version of Swan Lake; for they do not dance like they did in the summary. Thanks to African dance, the women are more vivacious, shaking their hips and stomping their feet; and, thanks to queering, the men are lighter. When they dance together, their movements are the same, ungendered. Similarly, all dancers sport white tutus. By toying with the conventions of classical dance, Swan Lake plays like a parody of ballet. Despite these subversions, the show otherwise remains quite conventional. All of its politics are in its content and none are in its form. We are inevitably reminded of the poverty of dance as a medium for storytelling. What storytelling and ballet have in common is that they are mere rearrangements of the same elements. Since we already know this story, as we do all stories, we are free to wander off and come back to it without ever having missed anything. As a light nerd, I was also disappointed with Suzette Le Sueur’s permanent blanket lighting provided by twelve equally distant spots at the front of the stage. The ballet ends with a collective suicide (the result of the toxicity of homophobia, I assume), which I presume is meant to be emotional since it is set to Arvo Pärt’s “Spiegel im Spiegel.” There’s no reason to dance to Arvo Pärt. What more could there possibly be to add? What remains is the stellar performance of the dancers of the Dance Factory Johannesburg. January 14-16 at 8pm www.dansedanse.ca 514.842.2112 / 1.866.842.2112 Tickets: 34-63$
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It’s not often we get to see intergenerational friendships dealt with such directness and subtlety as in Brooklyn Touring Outfit’s Co. Venture, presented at Centaur Theatre’s Wildside Festival. There is David Vaughan: 91 years old, British, dancer, singer, actor, choreographer, and archivist of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. And there is Pepper Fajans: 31 years old, American, designer, builder, performer, carpenter, and personal assistant to Merce Cunningham.
Neither of them appears onstage at first. It is rather a large wooden board that slides out from backstage, moving across the floor – part of the set, surely – but that then disappears through another door… before coming back onstage. As it slides away, it reveals Vaughan, sitting on a chair. When the board falls down, we think of the huge wall that comes tumbling down with a powerful gust of wind in Sasha Waltz’s Körper, though that’s not what happens here; the board turns out to be so light it barely makes a sound. Vaughan speaks and we listen. That accent. That deep voice. When Fajans joins him onstage, they begin to reminisce about the past, about how they met working for Cunningham. We can see Fajans’s eyes looking inside his own head, trying to remember his lines (successfully). It’s endearing. It almost looks like he’s trying to remember the actual events. Plus it was the first show of the run; the text is bound to come back to him. Fajans periodically returns to the board. As he handles it, it inevitably shapes his body, flattening it, making it more angular, reminding us of Cunningham’s geometric choreography. Vaughan remains in his seat. “I can’t stand on one leg anymore,” he will later tell us. Co. Venture is also about dis/ability. Fajans sits next to his friend and together they dance with great economy, gently tapping their feet and waving their arms before them. It’s so small, yet there’s an undeniable magic. It’s amazing what can happen when you meet people on their own turf, like choreographer Maïgwenn Desbois does. “Use your body,” Fajans says, as he dances vigorously. That sentence means different things to different people. There is an awkwardness to his own movement, like it’s too big for him; he always seems to be overreaching, jumping just a bit too far. We can see the struggle, the trembling, just as we did when the Cunningham Company last passed through Montreal at Festival TransAmériques in 2010. I’d never made a link between Cunningham and Daniel Léveillé, though now it seems obvious. Fajans rests his arms on a lengthy stick, turning himself into a scarecrow-like cross. Then, it’s large skeletal puppets – flat heads resting on three long pieces of wood pivoting around the screws holding them together – that shape and replicate his body, awkward elongated limbs extending into space. It’s hard to do a show like Co. Venture justice. It’s so simple, yet so charming and touching. Too rarely are dis/ability and intergenerational friendships explored in contemporary North America. After Cunningham had a stroke, he lost control of one of his arms. Still, he kept finding ways to move. “He found more and more ways to do less and less,” says Vaughan. It reconciles one with life and ageing. January 7-16 www.centaurtheatre.com 514.288.3161 Tickets: 16$ / Students or under 30 years old: 13$ Avec Au sein des plus raides vertus, la chorégraphe Catherine Gaudet continue de résister à une représentation simpliste de l’humain, le pendule oscillant entre le divin et le monstrueux. À notre entrée en salle, les quatre interprètes (Dany Desjardins, Francis Ducharme, Caroline Gravel, Annik Hamel) sont déjà sur scène, nous offrant la suggestion de leurs dos nus dans la pénombre. Une musique d’ambiance aux allures de trame sonore ralentie nous plonge dans un monde sous-marin. Les danseurs entament un chant choral.
Desjardins se pogne le paquet. La musique peut être aussi spirituelle que nous voulons, notre corps ne s’évapore pas pour autant. La beauté de leur chant contraste avec la déformation que les visages de Hamel et Ducharme subissent. L’extase crée la laideur. Ducharme s’assoit sur le sol, le bras tendu vers le haut, vers rien, vers la mort, comme s’il était le sujet d’une peinture classique implorant la clémence de Dieu. Les danseurs épousent souvent des poses dramatiques, comme s’ils étaient interrompus dans le mouvement. Les deux femmes se tapent à tour de rôle. La bassesse, la petitesse de l’humain commence à transparaître. Dans ces contrastes, Au sein n’est pas sans rappeler tauberbach d’Alain Platel, qui faisait aussi appel au chant choral. Toutefois, le portrait de l’humain que Gaudet propose nous paraît plus pessimiste. C’est que Platel illustre le côté sombre de l’humanité en situant ses personnages dans un dépotoir. La beauté de leur chant, provenant de l’intérieur, est contrastée avec la laideur de leur environnement. Dans Au sein, c’est l’inverse : la scène épurée consiste en un carré gris entouré de tubes de lumière blanche; c’est de l’intérieur que la noirceur émane. Cette petite scène carrée – nous nous remémorons celle vue une semaine plus tôt pour 4-OR de Manuel Roque – contribue à la dramatisation de l’espace. Les danseurs n’en sortent jamais, de sorte qu’ils demeurent constamment dans le centre de notre champ de vision, demandant toute notre attention. De chaque côté, quatre rideaux entrecoupent la scène, inutiles puisqu’il n’y a aucune entrée ou sortie de scène à dissimuler; ils ne servent qu’à signifier le théâtre. De plus, les spectateurs disparaissent dans le noir, l’éclairage ne tombant que sur les interprètes. Souvent, le regard de ces derniers se tourne vers le public. Chaque spectateur pourrait être convaincu que c’est lui qu’on regarde. « Qu’est-ce que ça te fait quand je fais ça? » Cette question revient, d’abord alors que les danseurs manipulent le corps les uns des autres. Lorsqu’ils continuent de la répéter alors qu’ils ne se touchent même pas, nous nous rendons compte qu’elle s’adresse plutôt aux spectateurs. Nous pourrions parler de l’effet de la danse, mais la question pourrait aussi paraître comme une préoccupation morale; sauf que les interprètes ne semblent pas particulièrement intéressés par notre réponse. « On regarde avec les yeux du cœur, » rappelle Desjardins, comme si cette phrase n’était pas un non-sens, à ses bêtes rampantes qui accablent des spectateurs imaginaires d’insultes sur leur apparence. La relation n’est pas autant entre les interprètes qu’avec le public. Nous pourrions déduire que les quatre danseurs ne représentent en fait les tensions au sein d’un seul et même être. Au sein des plus raides vertus représente pour Gaudet une grande avancée vers la maîtrise de la mise en scène. Nous attendons l’entrée des boxeurs. Nous sommes assis des quatre côtés d’une scène carrée surélevée d’une dizaine de centimètres à peine, un pâturage vert pomme étroit. C’est un à un que les quatre interprètes de 4-OR, nouvelle création du chorégraphe Manuel Roque, foulent la scène : Lucie Vigneault, Indiana Escach, Mark Eden-Towle, Sophie Corriveau, chacun portant des vêtements de sport rivalisant de mauvais goût.
Leur danse se déploie dans une dizaine de positions répétées en canon, comme si la Levée des conflits de Boris Charmatz (FTA, 2013) se frottait au minimalisme de Nicolas Cantin. (Peter James, collaborateur de Cantin, signe d’ailleurs la dramaturgie de 4-OR.) La séquence initiale se reconstruit au gré des interprètes par la suite, conservant parfois le décalage du début, tombant par autres moments dans une synchronisation accidentelle ou voulue. Notre attention délaisse le spectacle pour un instant et, à notre retour quelques secondes plus tard, force est de constater que nous ne retrouvons pas ce que nous avons quitté. Confrontés à l’illusion que nous sommes toujours en train de regarder la même chose, nous sommes toujours en train de rater quelque chose. Les mouvements sont toujours les mêmes mais la chorégraphie n’est jamais pareille. Comme c’était le cas avec Charmatz, nous pensons à Wavelength, le film expérimental pseudo-minimaliste du cinéaste canadien Michael Snow. L’association est d’autant plus appropriée ici : comme trame sonore, Roque nous offre des enregistrements sur le terrain – souffles dans le micro inclus – dont un de vagues. Assistons-nous au spectacle le plus exigeant de Roque? Puis, de nulle part, la musique de la chanteuse d’origine cubaine Celia Cruz, tellement en décalé avec ce que nous regardons que certains spectateurs éclatent de rire. À peine deux semaines plus tôt, les chorégraphes Hanako Hoshimi-Caines et Maria Kefirova utilisaient la même technique pour The Paradise, proposition tout aussi minimaliste. Noir. Un nouvel éclairage offert par une seule ampoule suspendue au-dessus de la scène révèle de la fumée. Contraste avec l’univers précédent. Exit la danse, entre le théâtre. Corriveau, maintenant accoutrée d’un chandail angora rose, joue avec une vache et un dinosaure en plastique. Escach se dandine sous le tapis vert. Eden-Towle apparaît en caleçon et en veston. Portant un collant vert, torse nu, Vigneault applaudit au ralenti avec ses gigantesques gants de Mickey Mouse. De façon surprenante, Escach émerge de sous le tapis, arborant une robe qui reflète la lumière en pépites d’arcs-en-ciel. Dans une danse aguicheuse, son bassin décrit des cercles alors qu’il n’y a rien de séduisant à ce qui se passe autour d’elle. Nous sommes dans un monde d’apparence. La juxtaposition inexplicable d’éléments hétéroclites se manifeste telle une fracture psychique. Le moment qu’il nous séduit avec un brin de magie inattendu, Roque nous plonge dans le noir final. Le vilain. Je l’aime. 3-6 décembre www.tangente.qc.ca 514.871.2224 Billets : 23$ / Étudiants : 19$
Here, the performers still create characters, but the world never follows suit. Instead, as can be seen in their insistence on facing the audience, they are merely performing for us. With the loud buzzer that periodically interrupts their performance, they appear like contestants on a reality TV show pathetically vying for our attention.
The show relies on excess (seven performers are onstage for the entire eighty minutes) but, rather than helping in making a particular environment emerge, this merely leads to distraction. Our eyes travel from one to another, noticing that some are merely moving not to be still during the main action and that the three cymbal players look the way I do when I hang out at a bar just hoping someone will take me home so I can get the fuck out of there. These musicians become a too easily accessible exit. At the FTA back in 2008, I’d accused Marie Chouinard’s obnoxious Orphée et Eurydice of suffering from Middle Child Syndrome. I could say the same of De marfim e carne, which is funny because Freitas cites the myth of Orpheus as an inspiration in the program. Perhaps the artistically gifted Orpheus is ironically performance kryptonite. Maybe those who killed him could hear his so-called divine music after all. During the show, I also thought about Nicolas Cantin. Last week, I saw his Philippines at the OFFTA. Cantin is definitely not for everyone, but artistically I admire his work, which seems perpetually concerned with figuring out what’s the least that one can do on a stage. I sometimes find myself wishing some shows, De marfim e carne being a perfect example, were doing less. With its constant “let me entertain you” attitude, it sometimes seems like the show is striving to be a critique of the vacuity of entertainment culture. 1) Yes. 2) And…? 3) Where’s the critique? Because, with its lack of bite, De marfim e carne doesn’t seem to critique so much as to be complacent about the vapidity of entertainment. If anything, it capitalizes on it. It is the artistic equivalent of overconsumption. Yet, when the dancers come back for an encore, i.e. the worst concert ritual, it seems like they must know they’re acting like the worst. In the words of Kurt Vonnegut, “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” June 3 & 4 at 8pm Place des Arts – Cinquième Salle www.fta.qc.ca 514.844.3822 Tickets: 39$ / 30 years old and under: 33$
Once they have completed their task, Gayer takes his position behind the console and Lourdais molds the wires left in the corner with his feet. There, he gathers himself, first resting his hands on his ribs, then on his pelvis. When he is ready, he walks backwards to the opposite corner, so slowly that I have time to notice an insect also walking on the stage in the distance. From my perspective, Lourdais is facing me and moving away; to the other half of the audience across the room, he has his back to them and he is getting closer. When the sound becomes so loud that it begins to be painful, Lourdais shakes while I use the ear plugs that were given to us upon entrance. We come to expect the same sluggish pace as in Milieu de nulle part, Lourdais’s last show.
But no. Once Lourdais has crossed the stage, he switches gears, goes back to the regular speed of a task-based approach as he slides all the wires across the floor with one push – he just laid them down! – and Gayer takes his shirt off before lying down on the ground in their place, a microphone by his face. Lourdais takes the nest of wires and buries Gayer under it. This tableau takes place in relative silence, but I don’t remove my earplugs. I can hear my tinnitus and my breathing, like I’m wearing a diving suit. It seems appropriate for Lourdais’s work. I can also hear Gayer’s amplified breathing. It sounds as loud as mine. Once Gayer has rolled out of his hiding place, Lourdais pulls on one of the wires until it snaps and he falls back with a scream as the lights go out. He taps his shoes against the floor so forcefully it almost looks like flamenco. His arms sway by his side as he walks in a style that’s reminiscent of Broadway. And then there’s something of Flashdance in the way he displays his body as he flies past the audience on both sides of the room. “Want some ‘real’ dance?” Lourdais seems to say. “Well, here it is!” With each section of La chambre anéchoïque, Lourdais metaphorically lays down his wires before yanking them out from under us, requiring the audience to constantly get used to a new register. Whether these breaks strengthen the work or weaken it is a question each audience member can only answer for themselves. June 2-4 at 9pm Usine C www.fta.qc.ca 514.844.3822 Tickets: 34$ / 30 years old and under: 28$
In this colourful dump, performers can disappear without leaving the stage or fall from considerable heights without hurting themselves. It is a post-apocalyptic world of overconsumption that lies before us and they are doomed to live in it. They may be able to choose from thousands of articles of clothing, but the choice is unappealing; it’s the only one they have. Their movement translates as play that spurs from idleness, which even comes across as the source of their masturbation and dry humping. They don’t even have the internet.
Every once in a while, unexpectedly, the performers cease their dicking around and break into beautiful song. In juxtaposing the music of Bach with a garbage dump, a thematic kinship emerges with Meg Stuart’s Built to Last (FTA, 2014): how is it possible that the species responsible for this post-apocalyptic mess also created such divine music? As the performers live out the last moments of life on earth in slow motion, we think there might be something redeeming about these creatures after all. May 29-June 1 Monument-National – Salle Ludger-Duvernay www.fta.qc.ca 514.844.3822 Tickets: 40-60$ |
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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