I‘ve been feeling guilty. Last year, back in November, I saw THE GOLDEN MEAN (LIVE) (yeah, I don’t like things that are all in capital letters either… But that’s how she spells it) one of the newer creations by Marie Chouinard. I wanted to write about it, but then got hung up in the humorous verse cycle I wrote about the Quebec Triennial. By the time I had finished that, it was the beginning of January 2012, and the absolute need to write about a performance I had seen almost three months prior was more like a theoretical and potential concept than a valid reality.
But then on Friday I had a Marie Chouinard day. I first saw her at the DHC Art Foundation’s exhibit Chronicles of a Disappearance (more on that in a separate article, in short go hang out on the fourth floor for at least 30 minutes, Ms. Chouinard didn’t) in the afternoon. And then saw her at the performance of “Je” by Dominique Porte (also more on that in a separate article) that night. But this time, Ms. Chouinard had to stick around for the entire performance because Dena Davida sat down right next to her and it would have been kind of awkward to leave in the middle of the performance – this is not to imply that the only reason Ms. Chouinard stuck around was because of Ms. Davida, because Je is pretty gosh darn good, but every other time that I have been in a black box with Ms. Chouinard watching something artistic, she has bolted long before the performance was over, unless it was one of her’s. But I digress.
Then I kept thinking about her participation in The Big Bang at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and figure now is as good of a time as any to spill what’s been inside of me on and about The Golden Mean (Live).
So before I forget how, first a bit of humorous verse about
Marie Chouinard’s The Golden Mean (Live)
Marie Chouinard’s The Golden Mean (Live)
Might have been better if done as a shuck and jive.
Real Pixar lamps, some video screens and masked dancers
Lead to more questions than answers.
Zombies stretching” is how I described the dancers movements
There are numerous things that I can think of that would make for improvements.
The only thing I really liked was the woman with the four sided mask
It was almost as good as the art of Karen Trask.
I‘ll have more to say, not in rhyme, but in prose
Somehow rhyming is difficult when holding your nose.
It actually wasn’t that horrible. It’s just that when writing in rhyming couplets I tend to make everything black or white. No shades of gray, whatsoever. It isn’t like I walked out in the middle of the performance or anything.
But getting to the meat of the matter, I imagine that somewhere Ms. Chouinard believes in her heart that The Golden Mean (Live) is truly saying something. Unfortunately it is in a language that I have an extremely hard time understanding.
Also in perusing the press kit, while the piece itself may be named after a mathematical principle (A+B is to A, as A is to B) the piece itself doesn’t seem to be as rigorous. I read reviews where it was danced by 10 dancers in one place and 11 dancers in another and in Montreal there were a total of 14 dancers on stage. And as long as I’m going on about the press kit, there were nine photocopied articles in Spanish, Italian, German and Dutch. I’m not entirely certain what the point was. While I’d like to think of myself as a polyglot, in fact I am really just an old and fat opinionated American, commonly referred to as a Tête carrée here in Quebec. The idea that I can really understand four other languages, when I have a hard enough time wrapping my tongue around la langue de Moliere is just kind of silly and a waste of paper.
As long as I am nitpicking, according to Ms. Chouinard the dancers put on masks of the head of state of whatever country they are performing in. But it seems that when they were in Amsterdam last summer someone forgot to tell them that Jan Peter Balkenende had been defeated and resigned, and while technically still Prime Minister, was not the man in charge. It also might account for why it wasn’t performed in Brussels.
And while the catwalk is integral to the performance, in order to, as she told Catherine Lalonde of Le Devoir, get the dancers as close as possible to the audience, to literally penetrate the theatre. [J'avais envie de voir les danseurs au plus pres du public, de faire pénétrer dans l'espace de la salle.] But when it was preformed in Venice there was no catwalk, and it is because of that performance that Tanz magazine named Carole Prieur dancer of the year.
So obviously when you (or I) go to see The Golden Mean (Live), what you see and what I see are not going to be the same thing. I’m still trying to figure out if that’s a good or a bad thing.
But enough about the background and the nitpicking over details gleaned from the press kit. What about the dance itself? And the even more importantly the dancers? I’d love to be able to tell you what Mark Eden-Towle, Eve Garnier, Benjamin Kamino, Leon Kuperschmid, Lucy M. May, Lucie Mongrain, Mariusz Ostrowski, Carol Prieur, Gérard Reyes, Dorotea Saykaly and James Viveiros did and how they moved. But unfortunately since they were all masked, I have no freaking clue as to who did what. Although after the fact I did realize that it was Carol Prieur who did the unmasked solo.
Depending on where we are in the performance, the dancers are either all wearing some moth-eaten blonde wig with a kind of plastic face shield, occasionally with some hipster glass frames. Or they are wearing photographs of people that have been glued to something like foamcore to keep it rigid. There’s one set that was all Stephen Harper, another set that was a bunch of “old people,” and a third that was all of infants.
It was the infants that I particularly didn’t like, as when the dancers were wearing those masks, they were completely naked. My first thought was did Ms. Chouinard get permission from the parents of the infants before slapping their faces on masks? My second thought was what’s the point? When they had the masks of the infants on, nobody did much of anything. If it was for shock value, it didn’t work at the performance I was at. If it was to make the audience uncomfortable, I’m fairly certain that there were some people in the audience who were made uncomfortable, but it wasn’t a majority, and most people were very polite about it.
Then much later, I went to see The Big Bang at the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal (I told you that I’d get around to it) in which Ms. Chouinard had some work. That work was four photographs of her dancers with the infant masks on. Apparently she was influenced by an incense burner which she likened to developing genitalia of fetuses. One of the many problems with it was that the crotches of the dancers were very much obscured. Using the lingo of the day, it was a #totalfail. It was made even curiouser because there is a dancer in The Golden Mean (Live) who imitates Marc Quinn’s sculpture Sphinx (Road to Enlightenment) which is at the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal.
Marc Quinn's Sphinx (Road to Enlightenment)
Then at another point, some of them suck in their stomachs just like the statue by Mr. Quinn, and it isn’t pretty. So while the museum asked her to be influenced by a piece that they have (I think it’s a loan, and not part of the permanent collection) she just got confused or something. Another thing that struck me about the masks that were pictures of faces, was that for whatever reason, she had not chosen the picture of anyone who wasn’t Caucasian.
As I mentioned in the verse, an awful lot of the dancing was what I would liken to zombie stretching. Sometimes there was some undulating and Carole Prieur’s solo was what I called “tribal” or “voodoo.” There were a couple of times when two dancers would do something that suggested sex, but was more violent than erotic.
No matter how hard I tried, I really couldn’t put a finger on anything that would unify the whole piece. It didn’t come across as movement for movement’s sake. It sure as shooting didn’t have a plot. There weren’t any incredibly breathtakingly beautiful moments (or movements). In writing this, I am struck how it seems to me as a disparate collection of things that Ms. Chouinard wanted to copy. From the Pixar lamps, to the Quinn statue, I can easily see how each scene could have been copped from some image that she had taken, and then most fruit these days, grafted on to the performance.
It would be an interesting exercise to go through Ms. Chouinard’s sketch book (or the equivalent) while watching The Golden Mean (Live), it would kind of like this:
So there you have it. The Golden Mean (Live) isn’t a bad piece, it’s more of a blah piece. Nothing remarkable, good or bad. it sort of sits in my memory taking up space, and with a little luck that memory will inform future stuff better and worse.
Who would’ve thunk? I kind of like it… OK, let me back track slightly. On January 27th, I went to see Vertical Road by the Akram Khan Company at Theatre Maisonneuve. The company was brought into town as part of the Danse Danse series (who also somehow forgot to give me a press kit, but I digress). In short they were pretty gosh darn amazing. In my notes I wrote “very cool,” “wicked cool!” “I’m riveted,” “Wow!!” and “She’s Amazing!” You get the idea.
In mulling things over, I wasn’t quite certain how or what I was going to write. It’s always easier to write something sarcastic and negative than it is to write something that praises. But then I started to do some cursory research, and one thing that stuck out like a sore thumb to me was how the whole shebang was sponsored by Colas. In the program they had even gone so far as to give some guy named Hervé Le Bouc a full page to explain how his company ended up being partnered with the Akram Khan Company.
I only had one small question. Who, or what was Colas? As it turns out, they are a French company that builds roads (or as they write in the program: Roads). As I wrote up above, “I kind of like it.” It being the idea that some industrial engineering company is paying some kind of coin (and I would imagine and hope that it is some serious coin if they are getting a full page in the program) so that contemporary British dance can be seen.
So it now becomes self-evident here the name of the dance comes from. Unfortunately I wasn’t invited to the dinner with M. Le Bouc and Mr. Khan so I can’t comment on whether M. Le Bouc had any other input into how the dance was created, or if he participated in any other way. Personally, I’d like to think that M. Le Bouc was a big dance fan going way back, and that over dinner he and Mr. Khan hit it off like a house on fire, brainstorming ideas ’till the cows came home. Then after they had become BFF, Akram (after all they gotta be on a first name basis by now) blurts out to Hervé “I know I’ll make a dance for your company!”
I also think it would be great if some of our local engineering firms that built roads (or other things) started sponsoring localdancecompanies. But somehow, I don’t see that happening for a while. Pity.
Despite not getting a press kit (me, obsessive? nah.) I was able to suss out that Vertical Road is supposed to be some kind of spiritual dance. Mr. Khan is quoted in the program as saying it is “the journey from gravity to grace.” But I’m not entirely clear on what that means, exactly. Is he referring to the force of attraction? Heaviness or weight? Seriousness or importance? Or something else. And grace has equally many definitions, none of which are exactly antonyms of gravity. In fact, riffing off of the seriousness definition you could almost make a point that gravity and grace were synonymous. Almost.
But back to the point at hand, the performance. In reading about it (after the fact) just about everyone seems to talk about Vertical Road as a journey by one person. That did not come across as strongly as you would think during the performance. Salah El Brogy definitely was the “lead.” But there was enough other stuff happening that the idea of a journey really only occurred to me after I read about it and then kinda nodded my head and said to myself (quietly) “yeah, I can see that…”
To me it was much more of a group piece done in about eight separate scenes, beginning and ending quite dramatically with a scrim. At the beginning, I couldn’t quite tell if there was one or two people behind it, and then I figured out that it was only one person, Mr. El Brogy – who I referred to as “the hairy dude” in my notes – because he placed various body bits on it in a kind of shadow play. But what was most impressive to me was how he banged it, like a gong or something, with his hand and it rippled like a vertical lake. At the end he goes back to the shadow play and when the scrim drops the show is over.
For the six other scenes, there is lots of running, jumping, spinning and the like. While I was watching I thought there were some similarities to various martial arts like kung-fu. But while doing some cursory research I came across this article from The Guardian that informed me that
Khan’s dance roots are in kathak – and it shows. It’s a style characterised by mathematically complex rhythmic footwork, spins, fluid arm and hand gestures, as well as dynamic contrasts between speed and stillness.
I also saw some similarities to the Dhikr performed by the Mevlevi Order (as I wrote that I was sticking out my chest proudly, showing off my madd wikipedia skillz!). In plainer language there were some bits that reminded me of Whirling Dervishes.
And if I remember correctly, I read someplace that Mr. Khan is a Sufi, and the whirling dervishes are also Sufi.
But then my theory starts to fall apart when I also noted that certain bits of the show reminded me of Loie Fuuller.
And no matter how hard I try I can’t make any connections between a 19th century American vaudeville performer and Mr. Khan. Other strange visions that jumped onto my head during the performance were of American football referees.
Touchdown!!
And Chinese terracotta warriors (mainly due to the incredible amount of talcum powder that was on their costumes and how solidly they stood at in the second and third scenes). In what I’m calling the third scene there’s a wicked cool back and forth that I would call a duet except that all eight dancers are on stage doing stuff. Where the shortest woman in the company (sorry but my memory is not good to begin with and since I didn’t get a press kit, trying to figure out if it was Eulalia Ayguade Farro, Konstandina Efthymiadou or Yen-Ching Lin is beyond my abilities – suffice it to say that they all are pretty gosh darn amazing dancers) does a kind of puppet and puppet master dance with Mr. El Brogy (aka the Hairy Dude) made even more spectacular because at various points they trade positions and that who was the puppet becomes the puppet master and vice versa.
It because of things like that, where Mr. Khan plays fast and loose with whatever plot there is, in order to wow and impress the audience with movement that caused me to that there wasn’t much of a path happening.
Some other brief thoughts I had were that while I have never been to Burning Man, the performance was very Burning Man-esque. Sort of like a 21st century version of transcendental meditation done while throwing bodies through space. And while looking up the dancers on the internet I discovered that Ms. Ayguade Farro also danced in the Hofesh Schecter company and immediately recognized the similarities in style between the two.
I should also mention Ahmed Khemis, Yen-Ching Lin, Andrej Petrovic and Elias Lazaridis. Just because they didn’t get anything that I would call a solo does not in anyway mean that they were anything less than kick-ass and amazing dancers. They were and are, and I can only hope that when I grow up that I can dance half as well as they can.
Dancers explaining
At which point I’ve gone way over any reasonable word count and should probably attempt to wrap this up somehow. An easy way? Next time the Akram Khan company shows up in your town, go buy tickets.
I’m not certain I’m any closer to understanding Les Angèles ces derniers bleus (loosely translated to The Angels’ Latest Blues) but it somehow makes me smile and think that everything is linked. I went in thinking it was going to be some sort of dance performance. I came out realizing it was something much more than that. Basically, a collection of things “Angel.” With a heavy emphasis on a certain American television show from the 1970s.
I wasn’t keeping track of how many angel references they actually used, but the ones that I did catch were Bobby Helms‘ (the voice behind Jingle Bell Rock) You are My Precious Angel.
Doreen Virtue’s Angel Therapy [no video, click on the link to hear her radio show] and most obviously (although, believe it or not, it took me about 20 minutes into the performance to realize it) Charlie’s Angels
.
I’m not much into angels, but some that they missed were AngeNeige, the angel store run by my friend Franceen, up the street from La Chapelle (the theater where they performed it). The Blue Angels, the United States’ Navy’s flying aerobatic team. And The Blue Angel, the Marlene Dietrich film, directed by Josef von Sternberg.
I’m certain I missed scads upon scads. Both in the performance and not in the performance. Feel free to let me know what I’ve missed (and bonus points for doing it in rhyme). But you get the idea.
Initially and for a good half to three-quarters of the performance I was trying really really hard to figure out (or perhaps impose) a plot on it. I’m not entirely certain why. Possibly due to some outdated belief that if there are characters, there must be some sort of narrative. Kind of like still arguing for the Ptolemaic system, old habits die hard. It was only when I realized that there wasn’t any real plot, that I was able to realize that it was a pretty gosh darn good performance.
To get the easy stuff out of the way first, it was a minimalist set. Two table lamps (one with what looked like goldfish embedded in the base), three manequin heads, a TV and a phone. There might have been some other things as well, but the action started and I got distracted while I was writing things down, so I don’t know if my list is a complete or incomplete inventory.
Pierre-Marc Ouellette came on stage first in a red suit and started doing some kind of disco dancing that veered towards Elvis
then towards a more freer hippy style, before going all YMCA, but spelling A-N-G-E-L-E-S instead.
The three other members of the C’est Juste Lundi collective come on stage, Hinda Essadiqi, Karina Champoux and Emmanuelle Bourassa Beaudoin. They shake, they emote and then they start doing some rather complicated and fast moves. Up and down, kind of dog-like but I was very impressed with how tight they were, Anne Thériault their rehearsal director did a mighty fine job. Their timing was impeccable and incredible.
They do some more emoting, use some finger guns, run around and then bring out a TV which shows an edited version of the opening sequence from Charlie’s Angels (and at the same time allows everyone to catch their breath and change costume). Then M. Oulette and Ms. Champoux do a duet that involves some blue clothes. Ms. Bourassa Beaudoin comes on stage and uses one of the mannequin heads as some sort of appendage to her body. Ms. Essadiqi then gets a solo that has something to do with an address book and a pen, and then Ms. Bourassa Beaudoin brings a cassette player out and sticks her head above a fan so her hair can billow. Everyone starts go-go dancing and finally Ms. Champoux starts playing a ukelele and whistling while the others are doing bird calls and the lights fades.
While I generally prefer not to single out specific dancers, Ms. Essadiqi definitely got the lion’s share of my notes and attention. In retrospect I found it a tad strange, because as an adolescent I definitely preferred Sabrina Duncan and Jill Munroe to Kelly Garrett. And Ms. Essadiqi was playing the Jaclyn Smith character.
I should also make mention of Denis Lemieux who helped with the costumes (I’m not sure exactly how or what he did to help, but that’s what it says in the program) and the costumes were pretty darn good as well.
In the program and the press kit and the website, they emphasize the word ludique, which because I’m a bloke with a bad vocabulary, thought had some connection to being a Luddite, and not the notion of playing. After looking it up in numerous dictionaries (just to be certain) it made perfect sense.
I’ve said this before (and I’ll probably repeat myself again) but I absolutely love the fact that Montreal, and by extension Quebec, is a place where artists are allowed to play and experiment with form and content. Les Angèles ces derniers bleus effectively is just that. But unlike an awful lot of other performances I have seen, it also manages to be entertaining for the audience (or at least this audience member) at the same time. It bodes well for future projects by the C’est Juste Lundi folk.
Yes, there are things that didn’t quite work, or could have worked better – but unless you’re Robert Lepage or Marie Chouinard you’re never going to get absolutely everything right all the time. And that’s my point exactly. Having the ability to try out things in a trusting and comfortable environment is a good thing.
I was somewhat at odds over, or maybe just confused by, the choice of angels as the overriding theme. I’ve never been religious, and have actually been accused of being an anti-spritualist (whatever that is). I’m certain if I sat down with Ms. Bourassa Beaudoin (who gets credit as the artistic director of C’est Juste Lundi) she would be able to explain in plain language how and why angels were chosen. But it was not immediately self-evident. Nor did it make itself known in the 72 hours following.
Playfulness is not normally something that is immediately associated with a strong sense of spirituality, although there are some paintings I can think of where the cherubim aren’t exactly moping around. Towards the end with the ukelele and the bird sounds, someone probably could point out some sense of spirituality, but it still would be a stretch.
However, since Les Angèles ces derniers bleus is definitely absurdist (in the best sense of the word) choosing to use angels as the main characters could be considered an absolutely brilliant choice just because of its oppositional quality. The performance is not something that is easily digested and sometimes in situations like that it’s best just to swallow it whole without chewing.
I wouldn’t (ok, maybe I would) try to figure out where Les Angèles ces derniers bleus and C’est Juste Lundi fit in in the grand scheme of things performance in Quebec. But they (and it) definitely belong. I haven’t looked all that hard, but I didn’t see them on the cover of Voir, nor did I hear anything about them on Radio-Canada, which is kind of a pity, because many other less deserving projects have gotten both.
And then finally (‘cuz I definitely have rambled on for far too long) after some reflection; Les Angèles ces derniers bleus by the Collectif C’est Juste Lundi, is trying to incarnate some kind of mythical childhood. None of the performers is old enough to have even been thought of by their parents when Charlie’s Angel’s first aired, and as it was most definitely an American (as opposed to Quebecois) television show, they all are starting out with two strikes against them. So the entire production must be based on some sort of concept that never existed in anything except their minds. And I like that.
About two weeks ago I saw José Navas’ Personae. Since I’ve been on a poetry jag for a while, I wasn’t quite certain how I would write about it in humorous verse. But then it occurred to me, instead of humorous verse, I could write a sonnet.
Sonnets are not easy.
And this isn’t a sonnet either. It’s got four too many lines, the meter is all over the place. It also probably could be helped with some judicious editing. But instead of having it hanging over my head, like so many other things, I made the executive decision to get it out.
José Navas sits quietly before
Dancing solo in his piece personae.
It is constructed in six parts not four.
Saw it at Cinquieme Salle not Corona.
The first image to try and remember
Are the amazing muscles on his back.
After watching I hope it will recur
A great way to start, we’re on the right track.
Arms waving, arms moving, return to start.
Next part is a divinely danced salsa.
Channeling Merce is deep in his heart.
The next one borders on erotica.
Some swaying and impressive pirouettes
Wolf’s head and noises like a panting dog
Water over rocks as good as it gets.
His moves a triumph of the analog.
Small vignettes, tiny, precious, intimate.
Danced with grace, I’d call them/him passionate.
So I went to see the second of Shantala Shivalingappa’s performances last Friday. This one was all-contemporary all-the-time and as a consequence was not as mystifying to me as her kuchipudi performance a week earlier. This one was a little shorter, about an hour in length, and was made of only four different dances. All with extremely evocative names; Ibuki (breath of life), Solo, Shift and Samarana. Also instead of highly elaborate and fancy saris, Ms. Shivalingappa wore very plain monochromatic costumes that seemed to be made more for comfort than for anything else. Although she was using the same pink toenail polish as she had for the kuchipudi. I presume that she, like Gene Kelly, is a firm believer in the idea of high contrast on and around the feet so as to better direct your eye.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tciT9bmCMq8
Despite it’s name, Ibuki (breath of life) the first dance had nothing to do with the character from the Street Fighter III video game series.
Ibuki from Street Fighter III by Stan Lau
And from my seat (actually the second one of the eve, we had accidentally sat in the wrong seats to start) I couldn’t make the connection to anything related to a set of lungs either, despite the fact that in Japanese, the word ibuki, translates into breath.
But neither point really matters, the title of an abstract dance piece isn’t quite exactly the most significant thing. The more I see them, the more I become convinced that whomever names them, for the most part might actually be in a bubble of their own creation, and have no real concept of the possible broader connotations. Ibuki (breath of life) starts and ends with Ms. Shivalingappa lounging on the stage, in something that looks like a sleeveless white pantsuit, almost as if she was posing for some sort clothing ad. In between those two fashion advertisements she does a lot of slow moving and some fast moving which initially I found very jarring. The music is something flutish by Yoichiro Yoshikawa. Not to belittle the music, but it’s fairly straightforward and typical world fusion. A day later I have some vague memories of something that would be played if I was in a movie and approaching a Buddhist temple. But then later in my notes I wrote “Generic World Fusion Music” which would make me believe that somewhere in the middle some other instruments and rhythms might have appeared. For what it’s worth I don’t remember, but I wasn’t there to hear the music.
I was there to see the dance. Or more precisely, how Ms. Shivalingappa moved. As I expected, she moved exquisitely. There were some points where it looked like she was swimming upstream, others where she imitated a rotating cell phone tower, and at some point I noted how she ran around the stage coquettishly. But all of those paled in comparison to what I duly noted on my pad as “THE HANDS!!!”
It was the same exact movement (or pretty gosh darn close) that she had done with her hands in the kuchipudi performance, last week. Since I’m not going to use as much video, let me see if I can describe it in writing: Take one part butterfly, a large dose of Archimedes’ screw, the perception of air blowing, one of those time lapse photography videos of a flower blooming and apply liberally to your imagine in order to visualize a movement involving both hands together, touching at the wrists and spinning that starts at about waist level and finishes above her head.
At one point my insides turned to jelly as Ms. Shivalingappa looked directly at me. Thankfully it was dark, so I think, despite the start that it caused me she was just looking out into the audience, without really focusing on me. She did this just before doing “THE HANDS!!!” a second time. If I were a 15 year-old boy, I would definitely swear up and down that there was a connection.
It’s a good thing, I’m not a 15 year-old boy.
After she returned to the fashion model pose for the second time, the lights went dark, she scurried offstage and this large blurry video of her in blue and orange sari doing what I presume was some kuchipudi dance was shown while she changed. If there would be anything negative about the performance I would say it was the video interludes (there were two others, of which I won’t write an awful lot). There’s gotta be some better way to pass the time while doing costume changes than making Ms. Shivalingappa’s movements the equivalent of moving wallpaper. Something like an animated graphical presentation of where the dances originated that used pretty colors, or whatever the Indian equivalent of the drive-in interstitial is, or in other words something that is instantaneously recognized as the wallpaper and time killer it is.
http://wwwv.youtube.com/watch?v=q8BHqQamnNM
As long as I’m embedding video, watch this
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSYCSxRvT0I
It was the second piece of the program. Called “Solo” and possibly choreographed with or by or under the supervision of Pina Bausch (the program reads “Choreography made during a residency at Tanztheater Wuppertal-Pina Bausch.” So it isn’t exactly clear, and if you read it fast, you definitely get the idea that some really influential but dead choreographer had a hand in it. (And now after seeing it for the third time, I finally read the title on the video to see that it was Ms. Shivalingappa who in fact did the choreography.)
Now if you watched really closely, you can skip over the next 500 or so words, because now that you’ve seen it, you don’t need to read my description of it. Or if you prefer to skip over the video, thanks tons and continue reading.
First off, the music is by Ferran Savall. If I hadn’t read it in the program I would have guessed José Feliciano. I should also mention that Mr. Savall’s mom died two days before the performance.
Second off, Ms. Shivalingappa kind of dances like the hippy older sister of a friend of mine. I’m certain there are a bunch of allusions in the dance to things that I am unaware of since I haven’t seen all that much dance. Her arm moving like a sweeping second hand and with her body following, the way that she holds her head from teh top while following her hand strike me as being just incongruous enough to the rest of her movements that I would think that they were placed there for slightly stronger reasons than “they flowed.”
At the risk of sounding clichéd “Solo” is dance for dance’s sake. Basic form making beauty, as done by Ms. Shivalingappa. No more, no less. Somehow it makes me think of a painting by Mark Rothko.
The third piece “Shift” was also choreographed by Ms. Shivalingappa – I gotta hand it to her, in this day and age when everything dance seems to be centered around the choreographer, Ms. Shivalingappa is successfully bucking the tide and bringing the focus back to the dancer – and this one says so in the program.
“Shift” starts with Ms. Shivalingappa in a classic ninja pose, you know the one, where they are jumping through the air, their trailing arm raised above their head, one foot fully extended, as if they just finished some humongous kick. Just like that, except she’s not flying through the air, she’s crouched on the ground. From that position she kind of walks/creep across the stage.
The main feature of “Shift” is the A-OK sign she makes with her fingers, her index finger and thumb are slightly pinched together instead of being in a circle.
A OK
She uses it a bunch of times during the dance. Unfortunately, I have no idea if it has the same cultural meaning in India as it has here. But I do know that in France it is used to signify zero, instead of everything being alright. And what in means in the context of her dance, I have no clue. It kept my attention focused on her hands for the most part of the performance, and while she did not make “THE HANDS!!!” her fingers wiggled a bunch and she made it obvious that she had mastered how to move each digit on its own (and I won’t get into the anatomy of the hand here, suffice it to say that it is complicated). I don’t know who composed or played the music, but for the most part it is just a bunch of hand drumming, although after a very intense period where she continues to move while there is no musical accompaniment towards the end the music starts up again and some steel pans get involved as well. In contrast to the rapid rhythm of the drum, her movements are slow and deliberate, during the show I wrote “zen moves,” “stylized martial arts.”
I think “Smarana,” the fourth and final dance, is a Sanskrit word meaning “the act of remembering.” Sadly, I have no idea if that is the idea that Ms. Shivalingappa is trying to give. My knowledge of Indian languages (besides Sanskrit there’s also Punjabi, Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and dozens of others). It was choreographed by Savitry Nair who also is Ms. Shivalingappa’s mother.
Most of it takes place while Ms. Shivalingappa is sitting (or kneeling) on the stage. There is a spotlight directly above her that causes some pretty cool shadows to be cast. During the performance I tried to write just her moves, almost like a play-by-play announcer during some sporting match. This is what appeared on my pad:
“Sitting middle stage, back to us leaning over, she rises on her knees and wiggles back and forth, One foot extended, and slowly turning, while holding ankle, cross over and turn, spin, fetal position, Roll over, Extend and cross feet, sit up startled, calm, turn around, sweep hand back and around, Upright fetal position, get up on toes, spin around 360, crouched over all still slow, Notice shadow, Back kneeling, arms doing a balancing scale side to side, Faster, then stop wiggle fingers, Raise hand, Kneel forward and reach around, arms akimbo, slowly raise her hand, Slow and fast, A-OK again, looking like a flower, and it slowly fades out”
It was an experiment, trust me the dance was much better and more interesting than my description.
At this point, I’m getting to the limit of even what I can concentrate on. I wanted to explain the choreography of Ushio Amagatsu, Pina Bausch, Savitry Nair, and explain how they are all fairly important, which would lead into a couple of paragraphs on the the similarities between kuchipudi, butoh, and some other dance styles. But I’m going to have to save that for another day.
In closing I can only express my disappointment that it took her so long to get to Montreal and that we got such old shows (both Namasya and Gamaka are more than four years old). She’s been touring internationally since 2005 and has many other performances that could be presented. it kind of makes me feel that Montreal has become some kind of dance backwater, instead of being the leader that it used to be.
I got kind of excited, as I imagine anyone holding tickets to a performance would feel after reading the review. And after seeing Ms. Shivalingappa I can kind of understand what Mr. Seibert saw and why he got so excited, although I think I need to develop some sort of deeper understanding of Kuchipudi before I end up going overboard like he did.
These are excerpts from the program I think that he saw. As far as my memory (which shouldn’t be trusted, and my notes which should) there were changes made to the program for the performance in Montreal.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDp5cDZzLpA
Since it is unlikely that I am going to instantaneously develop a deeper understanding of Kuchipudi (go on, say it outloud, it’s a great word, way better spoken than read) I’m going to have to rely on what I can find on the good old internet. Here, and here with video examples, unusually, the wikipedia page is useless.
In a nutshell, it’s old, very old. It got saved from obscurity by this dude Vempati Chinna Satyam, there are very specific movements that have lots of significance. And to my eyes it shares an awful lot with folk dancing.
I could probably spend the rest of my life studying Kuchipudi, but I think it would be better spent, at least in the near future, by actually trying to describe Ms. Shivalingappa’s movements and more importantly what her movements made me think and feel.
Because in doing the research, I realized that the way that I normally approach dance was completely bassackwards. Where I normally try to go in with absolutely no expectations, refusing to read the program or press releases until after the preformance, I should not have done that this time.
Each and every one of Ms. Shivalingappa’s dances told a story, but stupid me, didn’t pay attention while the story was being explained, so where she was trying to make it fairly simple for me to understand, I instead insisted on keeping my blinders on, being pigheaded and insisting that I knew best.
Yeah, right! Remind me next time.
Since I refused to follow the stories, all I had left was trying to understand the movements, which in and of themselves are incredibly simple. So simple, that I am convinced, 100% certain that my almost two year old nephew could do them. Just in case you missed it the first time around, go back and watch this video.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDp5cDZzLpA
You see? There isn’t anything terrible complex. Some moves like she’s telling me that she’ll call me, a couple of others like a football player blocking, or when she extends her arms from the blocking position, like a football cheerleader (minus the pom-poms).
But then if you compare it to another Kuchipudi performance
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MfR7LOxV-A
You can pretty much completely glom what makes Ms. Shivalingappa’s performance and by extension Ms. Shivalingappa special. I can talk all I want until I am blue in the face about execution, but unless you can see and compare for yourself, all I’m going to be, in the end, is blue in the face (although since I’ve stopped smoking, it takes a lot longer…)
Now to go back a little bit, there was one point in Out of White where Francine Liboiron did something incredible and amazing with her legs while lying on the floor. While I am incapable of describing what she did (somehow, “twisting and turning her legs” just doesn’t cut it) I can remember the sensation (sort of like a combination of my breath just stopping, my chin hitting the floor and wiping my eyes after it was done to make sure I was not seeing things).
httpv://youtu.be/tDp5cDZzLpA?t=5m28s
Well it happened again. And again, “twisting and turning her hands” just won’t cut it. But this time I found myself cursing the cameraman who just was too slow to catch the moment. Thankfully I got to see it in person, and it did take my breath away, I have the bruise on my chin and my eyes did get rubbed. If you have a chance run, don’t walk to see Ms. Shivalingappa do her Kuchipudi thing.
And while Kuchipudi, to my eye, doesn’t have or do anything terribly complex, as I said, it’s kind of like folk dancing. But after having spent weeks, days, hours, a little bit of time doing some research on the internet, I gotta admit the head, neck and eye moves involved in Kuchipudi really turn my crank.
I know how to shake my head from side to side, normally I do it about seventeen dozen times a day (despite being a positive person, historically my first response is always “no.”) but one thing I have never been able to figure out is that side to side head shake where your head doesn’t pivot on your neck, but more, slides along your shoulders. It is a stereotypical move for Indian Dance, although I have no freaking clue how it fits into the Kuchipudi tradition. Well, anytime, any y-chromosome challenged person does that head slide, I get all weak in the knees, my body pretty much turns to jelly and I will gladly follow she who can slide her head along her shoulders just about anywhere. That all being said, Ms. Shivalingappa’s head slides just about had me melting into my seat.
There are these videos of Ms. Shivalingappa from eight years ago
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SITnAVWw9uo
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0-OuF2u0Rw
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGIy6aYKiu4
I’m not certain where I was in 2003, but I wish I would have been there. As it is, I’m going to have to satisfy myself by wishing that I could write as well as Joan Acocella; not only does she know scads more about Kuchipudi and Ms. Shivalingappa, but I wish I could describe a sari half as well as she does.
And then finally, if you’d like some background on why Ms. Shivalingappa does what she does so spectacularly, there is this interview with her mom
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYYFIM99kk8
For what it is worth, I’ve got some expectations about her non-classical Indian dance performance coming up.
OK, let me backtrack a little bit. Last Wednesday I went to Usine C to see a performance by Angela Laurier. She’s a contortionist, who also used to be a child performer on TV in Canada
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0pY4hRLSOs
In between being a child performer on TV in Canada and mounting her second traveling contortionist stage show she worked for a bunch of different circuses (circii?), did some Shakespeare for Robert Lepage and a whack of other pretty impressive stuff that I did not know until after the show.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKQm-d_ps48
This was/is the third show (I think) that she has made having to deal with her family (I didn’t see Mon Grand Frère, but I did see Déversoir [spillway for the squareheads in the house] and there might be others that I am not aware of) but the first with her family. Besides Ms. Laurier, her brother Dominique acts in it, her sister Lucie directed it, and another sister, Charlotte did some filming for the show.
Apparently most of this is common knowledge to fans of Quebecois theatre. But as I am a bloke, it was all news to me. I’m not a big fan of theatre to begin with, and French theatre even less so. I’m not certain how to handle it. On one side, I’d like to think that each and every performance stands on its own merits and is independent of anything else, and as a consequence I’ve almost kind of been able to to train myself to to go into any performance without any expectations. On the other side, I’m kind of miffed, or maybe surprised, at myself. I would have figured that I would have been more aware of Ms. Laurier’s ranking within the galaxy of Quebecois vedettes. But obviously I don’t.
But enough of the backstory. What about the show itself?
I was surprised that it wasn’t a full house, I’ve kind of gotten used to the concept that opening nights for dance shows (of dance-like shows) have fannies in every seat. I’m not certain what to think. Is it a case where they couldn’t find people? Or did they decide that paying customers were more important? The stage was covered in some sort of white cloth with what looked like two skate ramps at either end. Which I promptly forgot when the lights went down. Because my notes read: “smoke machine, way cool.”
In retrospect the Laurier sisters had come up with a “way cool” effect. One of the “skate ramps” was something like in industrial fan, which then blew air underneath the white cloth, making it ripple quite fast, which in turn in the darkness made it look like smoke from dry ice streaming across the stage. I need to remember that for the next time I do something on stage.
I identified eight separate parts. I’m not certain if I would go so far as to classify them as scenes or acts. Perhaps if I wanted to get fancy, vignettes. But I think I’m most comfortable with “parts.”
In the first part, Angela Laurier is underneath the cloth on one of the things that I was calling a skate ramp. In this case it wasn’t a fan either, but a pedestal with a recessed spotlight, so the shadows cast as Ms. Laurier contorts underneath the cloth are not only quite dramatic, but also not that easy to decipher. Kind of like a living x-ray, if you get my drift.
Angela Laurier in J'aimerais pouvoir rire, phot by Gilles lefrancq
In the second part, she comes out from underneath the cloth and continues contorting. (Unlike dance, where I know the words like plié and pirouette but don’t quite know how to use them to describe the action on stage, I don’t even know a single contorting term, so you’re just going to have to bear with me on this.) For some reason or another, I thought she kind of looked like a young Elizabeth Taylor.
Elizabeth Taylor photo copped from toptenz.net
But now upon looking at pictures of Elizabeth Taylor, I think I should modify it slightly so that the word “glamorous” is involved as well.
She alternates between underneath the cloth and not underneath the cloth moving and contorting in ways that I would have never thought off. At one point she “walks” with her legs straight up in the air, kind of like you’d imagine a double amputee would “walk.” There’s another time where she balances on the edge of the pedestal upside down. In between there are moments where it looks like she might be masturbating, or posing like a bodybuilder.
While all of this is happening she’s dressed in a pair of skin colored shorts and the soundtrack is for the most part some sort of looped guitar.
Then she hops off the pedestal and rolls it off stage. A video that is some kind of family photo album (a sure sign that it is a new and different part) starts. Her brother (or what I presume is her brother as I have never spoken to him) talks over the video, explaining himself. There are some humorous moments (there are nine Laurier siblings) and an early ballet recital by Ms. Laurier. The video is projected on a scrim and as it finishes there are these large shadows projected on it just before it drops, and Ms. Laurier and her brother Dominique are seated and clothed. There’s a second scrim behind them where it becomes possible to see a band playing. And then it starts to get weird.
Ms. Laurier and Mr. Laurier start walking around in circles, sit back down, she moves the chairs loudly, and then starts spinning her hands around like a windmill. As she’s spinning her hands they begin to get very red. Unfortunately I can’t find any video to accurately give you an idea of what she does with her hands. And I have no idea if it is due to something having to do with all the blood in her arms moving to her hands because of the centrifugal force. Or if there is some sort of fancy lighting effect being used (Richard Croisé gets credit as the lighting director, and he is pretty gosh-darn good). She then continues in what I noted were probably extremely difficult movements.
There’s a duet of sorts between Ms. Laurier and Mr. Laurier, which strangely enough got applause from the audience. And then another video, this time not some family slide show, but of Ms. Laurier heavily oiled up and contorting. It’s a very disorienting video, where I found myself not always certain of what body part I was looking at. Some more people walked out at this point (I didn’t note down when the first couple left, sorry).
And then it goes over the top. As I wrote, Ms. Laurier is “in a sheet with dramatic lighting and a reverse shadow time lapse something or other.” No, even now I have no clue what it was that I actually saw. I’m convinced that it was interesting and well done. I just for the life of me can’t figure out what exactly was happening as it was happening. (I told you Richard Croisé was pretty gosh darn good at what he did.) There’s something where Mr. Laurier is drawing on something where Ms. Laurier is moving, but you can see something else that might be Ms. Laurier, or might be something else. Suffice it to say, I was both very impressed and very confused. And then it’s over.
I’m not quite certain what J’aimerais pouvoir rire is exactly about, other than family is complicated. (And sorry, for the squareheads reading, I should have translated the title much earlier; it means “I’d like to be able to laugh.”) I’m always transfixed by Ms. Laurier’s productions for a variety of reasons. One is the extremely simple fact that contortionists are like the proverbial three-headed goat. You gotta look. The second is that for the most part I’ve been brought up to view contortionists as part of the “freak side show.” This is due to the three-headed goat effect, and because there hasn’t been any tradition of using contortion to tell a story. Much like a statue, contortionists are there to be looked at. However, Ms. Laurier’s productions are not “freak side shows.” They definitely have a story to tell, it’s just that I haven’t quite figured out how to interpret the method that she is using to tell the story. Almost like listening to someone read a poem out loud in a foreign language, or using your hands to understand a sculpture.
Last Friday I finally got around to seeing Fragments – Volume 1 choreographed by Sylvain Emard and danced by Monique Miller, Laurence Ramsay, Manuel Roque and Catherine Viau. I’m kind of glad I did, not because the dance was mind blowingly phenomenal (it wasn’t, although there were parts that kicked-ass) but because it kind of gave me some insight (or what I think is some sort of insight) into the inner workings of quote; high Quebecois Culture, unquote.
But first things first, the dances. In short, it’s fragmented, as you might suspect. If you don’t know the dancers personally, you gotta take the press release at face value (always a dangerous proposition) that it was inspired by the personalities and concerns of the performers. Catherine Viau one of the dancers (and to quote from my notes: “she is very very good”) kept some of her own notes as to how things went during practices (one, two, three and four) with nary a word about how it connects to her personally, which is not to say that it doesn’t, ‘cuz I don’t know her at all, just traded emails a couple of years ago, but you figure… although now that I’m going down this tangent, it also could be that I don’t have the vocabulary or knowledge to recognize certain movements that are based on emotions or thoughts, and what I call a “cheerleading kind of move” or “marching band” is in fact coming directly from some history that I am completely unaware of. Continuing to quote from my notes “I could watch her all night.” But I digress.
Catherine Viau dans Fragments - Volume 1 par Sylvain Émard. Photo: Robert Etcheverry. Source: Sylvain Émard Danse.
Ms. Viau’s piece was the second of the night, called Émoi, émoi, which according to my handy-dandy French/English dictionary could mean “emotion, emotion” or “stir, stir” or “commotion, commotion” or “agitation, agitation” or “flutter, flutter.” (Obviously, I’m not as bilingual as I thought) Personally, I’d go for stir x2 or flutter x2, but mostly because of the way the words can be repeated (it isn’t real common to write “agitation, agitation”) than for anything specific to the dance that she did. It began with her waving or possibly fanning herself and ended with some high stepping and spinning all to some sort of mechanical / industrial kind of soundtrack by Michel F. Côté.
And no matter how hard I try I can’t figure out any connection between Ms. Viau and the movements she made other than she and the moves she makes really really good.
But, instead of doing the whole in media res thing (I don’t know what’s up with this recent fascination with Latin, paenitet) I should just start from the beginning.
It got off on the wrong foot. The very first thing that we saw was this blinding strobe light. Which is all fine and dandy, if you’re 18 years-old and at some discotheque. But isn’t so hot if you’re middle-aged and sitting with someone who has epilepsy. Once the strobe stops you can see Manuel Roque sitting on a chair, upsidedown. Kind of like a you’d imagine a how it would look if you were choreographing a car crash. As all the car crashes I have been in made time seem to move incredibly slow, it only makes sense that Mr. Roque also moves in slow motion. How this car wreck relates to “his garden” I have no clue, but the piece is called “dans mon jardin…” although as far as I know it has nothing to do with the song by Manu Chao.
He returns to a normal speed with a bunch of jumping around and shaking. And then my notes mention that he has swallows and butterflies in his garden, but I have no recollection as to why I suddenly decided to note down the wildlife. Judging from the way it was written and its placement on the page, I would have guessed that it was some sort of lyric, but last I heard Michel F. Côté only writes instrumental music. So I am back at square one. Obviously I need to take much better notes next time.
Anyhows, after the jumping and the shaking, Mr. Roque returns to the chair, upsidedown, and then the piece ends.
The third piece is the one that’s been getting the mostnotice, mostly because M. Émard chose to use a septuagenarian non-dancer as a dancer. Monique Miller is an actress (now a dancer) who has been performing since the early 1950s.
She wore a kick-ass knit pant suit that had almost looked like a skirt (I think the technical term is elephant leg pants, but I am not certain, I have even less of a vocabulary in fashion than I do in dance) although from where I was sitting it also looked liked she was covered in Saran Wrap underneath the pant suit. Also from where I was sitting I never would have guessed that she was pushing 80 years-old. Forty, maybe fifty, just before I changed the prescription on my glasses, but never 78.
There was some sort of wind-chimey, dangly things suspended from the ceiling that was extremely annoying because of the reflections of the spotlights back into the audience that made it extrmely difficult to concentrate on what Mme. Miller was doing. What she was doing looked an awful lot like emoting and mime. Now, I’m not going to go and complain because a septuagenarian actress can’t dance. But I will question the necessity of putting a non-dance performance in the middle of a dance performance.
It’d be kind of like if I started singing right here, right now
Confusing, right? And then right in the middle of Mme. Miller’s performance someone starts plainchanting a personal ad, not exactly the New York Review of Books quality, but easily worthy of Craigslist. Initially this confused me, as Michel F. Côté only writes instrumental music. But then with a little bit of research, I discovered that M. Émard and M. Côté chose to insert some sort of excerpt from eL/Aficionado a very obscure opera by Robert Ashley. And no, I’d never heard of it either, prior to this. And I would hate to think that it was used as part of the soundtrack because Mme. Miller was looking for a date (remember way back at the top, how M. Émard said that the dances were inspired by the personalities and concerns of the performers… Things that make you go hmmmm.
The last piece, Bicéphale which was the duet of the evening, danced by Laurence Ramsay and Manuel Roque is about as cliched as it’s name. It starts off slow in front of a seam of light, again making it difficult to see. Their movements become quicker and seemed to me to be slightly like something Bob Fosse would have done.
Unfortunately the music by Jan Jelinek had way too much throbbing, buzzing and skreetching for my tastes. And even more unfortunately, it wasn’t anything like what Bob Fosse would have done.
I haven’t seen the other “latest and greatest” creation by M. Émard, The Continentalline-dancing thing (it comes in various shapes, sizes and flavors). But, if it does come back this summer, I think I’m going to have to make a point to see it, just because it strikes me as being the complete opposite of Fragments – Volume 1. Either that or wait for Fragments – Volume 2 and see if things then fit together.
On Wednesday night I got to see Helge Letonja’s Steptext Dance Project perform The Bog Forest at Agora de la Danse. If memory serves it is playing tonight as well and tickets are cheap. According to the press fodder it’s about immigration. I’m not so certain I would believe that, but despite me not being able to see how it is about immigration I was pleasantly surprised with the performance. One reason I might not have been able to see how it is about immigration is quite literally because it is very dark. Both on a physical level and an emotional level.
Let’s start with the physical first. According to (again) the press fodder Laurent Schneegans is the person responsible for the lighting. Personally I would have given him the title of person responsible for the darkness. The piece is roughly comprised of three (or maybe four) sections and the first one and the last one take place in pretty much an unlighted black box. Now normally I’m not a big fan of not being able to see the dancers, but in this case it wasn’t that bad; a) there wasn’t that much dancing going on (to be more precise, a lot of moving, but not a lot of dancing) and b) given the name of the piece it was obvious that the lack of light was in order to add to the atmosphere.
At the beginning everybody pretty much had their face covered by something or other, whether it was an actual mask, or just a very large hood that then caused shadows, it was difficult at the beginning to figure out who was who. Although after the fact (and with judicious use of the press fodder, I can confidently state that) Christian Wolz starts out with some kind of chanting and Konan Dayot does some staggering around like a busted marionette. I wrote in my notes “a bunch of staged abstract tableaus in the dark.” And more than 24 hours after the fact, I still stand by that statement.
As an introduction to the performance it is effective. Very spooky. They use lighters, have flashlights aimed towards the audience and in general do just about everything you can think of to make you think that you’re in some kind of bog (or for the North American’s in the house a swamp – or if you want to get technical, both are wetlands although swamps tend to have trees, and bogs veer towards treelessness) you know the kind of place you imagine while you’re listening to Dale Hawkins or Lighting Hopkins. But the beginning of the performance as a means to understand that The Bog Forest is a “crossroads for six individual destinies…” I’m, not so certain.
The second part starts with a bang – well not actually a bang, but the aftermath of a bang with a humongous cloud of smoke hanging over the stage. It takes a while to dissipate but continues to add to the swamp-like atmosphere despite the lights actually being turned up and being bright enough so that I could see the dancing. Quite a cool effect, especially since the Agora de la danse is such a small space. At some point I’m going to have to bone up on my “how-to-make-a-large-cloud-of-smoke-in-the-dark-without-any-light-or-sound” notes because I sure as shootin’ had not clue how that cloud of smoke was able to get there.
With the aid of the light it actually became possible to not only identify the dancers (who were generally quite accomplished, if not really really good) but also since they were identifiable; recognize them as individuals. According to my notes there was the “Chinese Couple,” “Blondie,” the “Other Woman,” “The Turkish Guy” and “The Rabbit Guy” (who to be honest, wasn’t a dancer, but was the singer, Christian Wolz). Writing while they are performing doesn’t leave me an awful lot of time to think about suitable titles. Although in the case of “The Rabbit Guy” I could have gone with “The Singing Guy.” But since he carried around a rabbit for the better part of the first part and then that very same rabbit gave “The Other Woman” some sort of epileptic/hysterical fit. I went for the slightly more descriptive title.
The Chinese Couple were I-Fen Lin and Wei Meng Poon. They did a kick-ass duet that started with each of them on a separate square of straw (one stage front and left, the other stage back right) which went through a progression where Mr. Meng Poon removed Ms. Lin’s shirt and did what I called a “dance of tension.” (At some point I’m going to have to do my darnedest to memorize “Technical Manual and Dictionary of Classical Ballet,” my vocabulary sucks the big one when it comes to describing how people move). But this one was where it appeared that there was an equal amount of pulling by both of them so as to keep everything in an equilibrium, more based around brief poses rather than a continuous series of movements.
Not quite the Ab Lounge, or i-Shape but close, and now that I think about it more, I’m certain that there is probably some yoga involved as well. Anyhows, after he takes her shirt they talk in what I presume is Chinese, which turns into an argument, at which point Mr. Meng Poon returns Ms. Lin’s shirt, they reconcile and then she starts coughing while he starts either crying or laughing.
Even with identifiable characters, I’m still not certain what it has to do with immigration…
Prior to the argument over the shirt Ms. Lin and the “Other Woman,” Emilia Giudicelli, have a very graceful, extremely well done, but unfortunately all too short duet. While watching it I was struck by how well they performed together. I’m not certain, but I don’t think they could have been more synchronized had they been doing it together nightly for the past 5 years. There were also two quartets where everything seems right with the world, not quite line dancing, not quite Jazz Dance, not quite Modern Dance either, but very very satisfying. If I remember correctly “The Turkish Guy” (who is actually Brazilian) Leonardo Rodrigues is not quite dancing in counterpoint to the other four, but is dancing on his own in opposition to the other four.
The three other tableaus that were notable were when The Rabbit Guy, Mr. Wolz, hummed around The Turkish Guy, Mr. Rodrigues, in effect making him move as a consequence of the; quote, sound waves; unquote, emanating from his mouth. Think of a leaf on the wind or a piece of cloth in a pool or a river. In retrospect it could be considered a variation on a theme that was started with the “dance of tension” and is continued towards the end when all five dancers join in a game of “keep aloft.”
Lipstick Forest / Nature Légère by Claude Cormier at the Palais des congrès de Montréal
The set is mainly made up on one side (actually one third) what looks very similar to a miniaturized version of “Lipstick Forest / Nature Légère” by Claude Cormier at the Palais des congrès de Montréal. Branches and twigs instead of trunks, orange instead of pink and suspended curtain-like one on top of another instead of planted on the floor like a fence. But close enough. The other two thirds is made up of some sort of net that has a lot of plastic bags attached to it. Depending on the light, or the lack of light, the plastic bags can kind of look like leaves, handkerchiefs, plastic bags or just something sort of spooky. Or maybe that was just me anticipating Halloween. But, one of the plastic bags becomes the object of the game of “keep aloft,” whereby the dancers try to keep the bag in the air by blowing on it.
The third notable tableau was when “The Rabbit Guy,” Mr. Wolz starts to draw on “Blondie,” Mr. Dayot’s back. It’s notable in that everyone is on stage and no one stops moving, but my eye was riveted on Mr. Dayot’s back, ignoring everything else. Which leads me to believe that whatever dancing was being done wasn’t particularly compelling, because the drawing itself wasn’t all that hot – but the process of drawing was extremely compelling.
Overall, I was impressed, not so much by the narrative or the theme, but by the movement. Mr. Letonja does have a very specific dance vocabulary (which I’m not certain I would be able to learn at this late stage) rooted in movements from nature, like the wind or water and he does translate it extremely well for humans. I’m certain it makes complete sense in his head how it relates to immigration and immigrants, but that didn’t translate to me sitting in the audience, maybe next time I need to go to the performance that has the talk afterwards where they explain everything, although to be honest, all I really would want to know is how they got they cloud of smoke up there, but I’m rambling now, so let me stop.
At the risk of repeating myself, it is the movements taken from nature and reproduced by Mr. Meng Poon, Ms. Lin, Mr. Dayot, Mr. Rodrigues and Ms. Giudicelli that truly make The Bog Forest something wicked-cool.
1 And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. 2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. 3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. 4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. 5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children built. 6 And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. 7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. 8 So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. 9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
For better or worse, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Damien Jalet and Antony Gormley didn’t quite follow that script. Instead they kind of use it as a launching pad for their production.
Mostly dance, but not all dance, it comes across as a highly charged and extremely political piece of performance art. Personally, I’m not so certain that the politics and the non-dance parts needed so much time, but as you might have expected, no one asked me.
But let me back up a little. The show is performed by 12 dancers, one actor and five musicians (who also do some acting). They do about 30 separate vignettes that are held together by the five, large, box-like, aluminum, (or at least I presume that they are made out of aluminum, since they are moved around an awful lot) structures that are used as scenery and props during the show.
It starts off with everyone marking out their space, turns into a lecture about real estate, some people start manipulating others like puppets, they build a skyscraper, board a plane, get into arguments, and apologize among other things. This is the video that was published on YouTube last February as a promo for the show:
And this is the video that was published on YouTube last June as a promo for the show.
There are some bits in the February video that were not performed when I saw it on Friday, and everything I saw on Friday is not represented in the June video, but you get the picture. In short (and extremely simplistically as well) it’s a plea for us to all get along despite our differences. Kind of like the song by War from 1975.
The first thing that struck me about the dancers (Navala Chaudhari, Francis Ducharme, Darryl E. Woods, Damien Fournier, Ben Fury, Paea Leach, Christine Leboutte, Ulrika Kinn Svensson, Kazutomi Kozuki, Sandra Delgadillo Porcel, Leif Federico Firnhaber, Mohamed Toukabri and Paul Zivkovich) was how tight they were. Everyone hit their marks at the same time and in a troupe that large, mainly composed of independent performers, it is quite the feat.
Although I don’t know if in fact I saw Moya Michael, Helder Seabra, Jon Filip Fahlstrom and James O’Hara in place of, or as well as the fine folks above, because in my program their names only appear in parenthesis and there was no mention if they were only there as injury replacements (as you can see the piece is extremely physical) or if they were there as alternate performers. I’m not certain I like this move towards nameless performers where the directors, choreographers and all the other folk who do not appear on stage get the glory. Especially for a performance where there are very specific characters. But I digress.
The second thing that struck me was how painful and superfluous the lectures by Mr. Woods were in comparison. Not to slight his performance – in actual fact, his performance of them was spectacular. But if you stick the words “Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui” into Google, the first things that come up talk about dance and choreography. Not writing, not comedy, not theater. And while I do recognize that just because someone in very good in one thing does not preclude them from being very good at something else, M. Cherkaoui is most definitely not a comic, nor is he a comic writer. And I don’t think M. Jalet is either. So I don’t understand why they chose to stick in an attempt a comic theater in the middle of their very impressive dance performance. It just doesn’t make sense. And come to think of it, I doubt that either one of them spoke English as a mother-tongue, although that would not necessarily disqualify him (them?) from writing kick-ass stuff in English, just make it tougher. Heck there are some times I can’t write English to save my life.
However once you start to think about the concept and the ideas behind Babel (words), it strikes me (and perhaps you as well) that M. Cherkaoui and M. Jaret might have decided to sacrifice some dance in order to get their point across. But it’s just like like eating a whole big bag of potato chips before dinner. There’s only so much you can consume, and no matter what you think, the potato chips are not going to be as tasty and delicious as a good dinner. There’s only so much time for a performance at Place des Arts before the unions require time-and-a-half and that and the other costs end up making a ticket unaffordable. No matter what you think, the spoken word part of a dance show is not going to be as visually spectacular and breathtaking as the dance itself.
Because as M. Cherkaoui states on his website: “Equality between individuals, cultures, languages and means of expression” are something that is very important to him. And my guess is that despite the eclectic backgrounds of all the dancers, actually choreographing 12 different types of dance styles (one for each dancer) so that they can be identified by the way that they dance, isn’t quite as easy as it sounds. As a consequence, falling back on the actual languages and religions that the dancers know and either practice, or were born into is a nice and easy safety net to get the point across.
As you might guess, I wish that there had been more dance. By my notes there were four (maybe five) vignettes (tableaus, scenes, whatever) that absolutely made my head explode (in a good way). The opening with the hands, the fight right after that, the second hip hop solo (I unfortunately did not note when the first hip hop solo was, and it is quite possible that it impressed me as well, but that I just didn’t write it down) and what I called “the chainsaw” which was another group number towards the end, which started out with the dancers appearing to pretend to start a chainsaw. Beyond that there was an awful lot of chanting, some comic lectures, some comedic dance bits, and then the one bit that wasn’t dance, but was spectacular. The building of the skyscraper – which is movement, just movement of objects not of a body. But yes, it was quite cool seeing them build the structure. And movement in certain circumstances can be considered dance.
Speaking of bodies, using my best Google-Fu I was unable to come up with pictures or other things that would have enabled me to identify Damien Fournier, Sandra Delgadillo Porcel, Mohamed Toukabri, Paul Zivkovich, Moya Michael, Helder Seabra, Jon Filip Fahlstrom and James O’Hara. And while I could guess as to who did what, I am loathe to be wrong on something like that, because if I was it would undermine everything else I wrote. So I’ll leave it as a polite request to whomever creates the programs for Danse Danse; would it be possible to get pictures in future programs? Please and thanks.
But that does mean I was able to identify the nine other performers. Woo-Hoo! Paea Leach, despite not having a completely identifiable character, was very impressive as a dancer. You can get an idea of how she moves here (unfortunately, she won’t let me embed the video here, pity). I can’t quite put my thumb on the reason why, but she moved with a certain authority, and about halfway through the performance I realized that in the group pieces my eyes had been watching her more than not. So I can only presume that I was either completely and totally smitten with her like a 16 year-old schoolboy, or that she is a kick-ass dancer. Given that I have absolutely no desire to be, let alone act like a 16 year-old schoolboy, I go with the later.
Ulrika Kinn Svensson was at the opposite end of the spectrum. Her character was completely and thoroughly identifiable. Wearing what appeared to be at least eight inch platform shoes that made her tower over everyone. To which was added shiny black plastic (or patent leather) boots that came halfway up her thighs she was hard to miss. Depending on what “scene” you’re watching, she functions as a sex-kitten, narrator, tour guide or gate. But what left me slack-jawed was that even though she was in a pair of boots that would have made Kiss or Funkadelic proud she was able to dance as well.
Christine Leboutte also had an easily identifiable character, the washerwoman. Although I have no clue as to why there was a washerwoman. She’s got a great voice (if I remember correctly, when I was searching about for information about her, some website mentioned that she taught Damien Jalet how to sing).
One other thing that impressed me with the piece was how M. Cherkaoui and M. Jalet had choreographed what I call “girl lifts.” Or in other words women lifting other dancers. For most of time immemorial, the chicks have been lifted up and the guys have done the lifting. I think the first time I saw a woman lift another dancer it might have been Louise Lecavalier, but I don’t know for certain. Anyhows it has taken over 25 years for it to get closer to the mainstream, Navala Chaudhari did them on admirably on Friday night.
Which only leaves me Francis Ducharme and Kazutomi Kozuki as dancers who I was able to identify and therefore need to be mentioned. Unfortunately the things about their characters that stand out to me most are the comedic bits, that while memorable didn’t really strike me as particularly good. M. Ducharme, as the hometown boy, could do no wrong, and had everyone rolling in the aisles with laughter during his caveman routine. Kozuki-san also worked as a foil to Kazunari Abe (or Shogo Yoshii) in the parts that required some really fast Japanese to be spoken.
In the videos, I’m certain that you can catch more than glimpses of them and decide for yourself if you like the way that they dance.
Babel (words) is now the second piece I’ve seen that was choreographed by M. Cherkaoui and this one didn’t leave me as angry as the first one, and it is quite easy to see how and why everyone thinks he is such a wonderful and amazing choreographer. I only wish that he would stick to choreographing. Because his attempts at comedy and proselytizing fall incredibly short in comparison.
And then the final video version of Babel (words) from about July of this year…
