November 13th, 2008: Boris Charmatz / Jeanne Balibar – la danseuse malade

@théatre de la ville

Boris Charmatz‘ performance with Médéric Collignon earlier this year had made me more interested in his work, but turned out to have a couple of negative side effects on my perception of this one, because as soon I saw that truck on stage, I was certain he would proceed the way he described the scene back then. And sure enough that’s what he did. That was strangely annoying to me, and this obvious link would have been just as grating the other way around. So much context around not much dance, and he’s just too good at this hype game. Also, the interactions with Collignon had me expecting more, and there was not much going on here, with the biggest part of the show having Balibar driving that truck around the stage while reciting what seemed to be the text of a conference by Tatsumi Hijikata.

Now that text was quite interesting for me, probably because I like Butoh. It made a lot of sense, even though the disconnect with what was going on on stage was pretty big. Unfortunately, the only effect of that contrast was to make me pretty much tune out the stage and focus on the words. And the final reappearance of Charmatz didn’t change that. Everything he did was so predictable. Maybe that was the point, but I think I just missed something. I’m not giving up on his work though, not yet, because there’s usually something I do like, even though it’s almost never the tiny dance element.