November 4th, 2009: Brice Leroux – Solo#2 – fréquences

@théatre de la ville

I guess this kind of minimalist mathematics are not for everybody, but Brice Leroux is now one of my favorite choreographers. Again, he blurred the lines around the performance itself. In earlier shows that could mean dancers starting before the audience was let in and going on after the end, here it was by letting people in one at time, going through a green outlined spiral onto the stage, in a circle around the metronomes. Yeah, Ligeti’s poem again, not that I’m complaining or anything, I just love seeing this, the twist this time was the greenish light moving on those and being shut down as each stopped. I like hearing this one, but it has a visual side to it that’s really important to me. The spiral in darkness was a nice way to lead into the performance, 50 people sitting around a rotating circular stage with 100 metronomes as an outer ring and a middle ring of slender bars of light.

At first that’s all there was, but then a single point of light started drawing eight figures from the center of the stage. That point was Brice Leroux’ hands, as his figure slowly emerged from the darkness. Not much, of course. Those “bars” were even better than that, able to emit light in varying intensities outward, inward or both. When those were turned inward and not outward, the effect was something to behold, and several times I had visions of black bars coming toward me. Frequency indeed, those two circles would have made the show a great piece of art on their own.

But there was someone dancing within, and that took it even further. As usual with him, it wasn’t dancing as emotional medium or athletic feat, but a systematic exhaustion of the possibilities of a simple pattern. Some people say it’s cold and boring, to me it’s mesmerizing and comes close to the core of why I like dance. The concept may be abstract, but there’s a physical element at work there too, with an actual person, actual movements making it all real and immediate. Most of why I loved this performance just isn’t translating to words — at least I can’t do that — it has to be experienced, and Leroux is doing all he can to help with the needed focus.

I felt he was moving the fastest, with the light ring going slower and the metronomes slowest. But I really can’t say whether that’s “true” or just one of the illusions he created. The darkness and lights were all intentional and made for a total immersion that was a big help to let go, which I think is just needed to get into this work. The dance pattern this time had him hold his arms in a circle and bend and turn with his legs still or compensating for the upper motion. I’m so annoyed at how these words — even his for that matter — come short of what this was all about. This was pure experience, the opposite of dry abstract musings about patterns, which I think is a common misunderstanding of what successful minimalism can be.

To go back to my inadequate rambling, the costume he was wearing played a part I can’t really measure, but it was important. The most obvious came at the end, when horizontal lines came on it, making the circle of his arms even brighter, and counterbalancing the vertical lines of the arc of vertical lights — this middle circle also went through variations of arcs/circle and in/out/both. I have no idea how they pulled that off but at some point his figure was in a kind of non-color I usually experience as an expanding blind spot that I’ve been told is a minor form of epilepsy. His ability to put that on stage alone would have blown my mind, but as it were it was just one of the many highlights.

There’s some more cogent stuff out there — not setting the bar high there — about this performance, but really it’s something that has to be experienced, no youtube stuff can ever do it justice. Brice Leroux just rules, and I hope he’ll keep coming around here. Again, I felt that most of the audience didn’t share my enthusiasm, which is worrying only insofar as it may drive him to stop coming here.

October 23rd, 2009: Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker – Rosas Danst Rosas

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Wow. That was such a great show. And I really lucked out on the lineup because of some personal memories. I had not seen Samantha Van Wissen in a while, but I remember clearly that she was part or Rosas during my first years of seeing dance. My memories of Sarah Ludi go back even longer, as she was part of Angelin Preljocaj’s company for one of the very first dance show I ever saw, back in 1992 or so. Then Cynthia Loemij, who is my favorite artist bar none and whose performances have been one of the main reasons I’ve seen so much dance over the past 17 years. And of course Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker herself.

The first part took place in silence, with the four of them lying down in the back at first, rolling and filling the silence with slaps, bumps and breathing. In a way, the repeated patterns made these sounds musical in the way the everyday gestures integrated in the movements turned abstract and geometrical through duplication and repetition. Then one after the other rose and moved to a diagonal, keeping the same prone patterns. Already a great start.

The second part is my favorite of the show, and one of my favorite dance performances ever. I’d say it tops Fase and ranks up there with Rain at the top. They were sitting on chairs and again turned mundane gestures into something else, with a nod or letting one’s hand fall on their side taking on an intense charge. I loved the music too, it’s percussive quality a good complement to this fast sequence. What made it so special to me was the way they would repeat those movements with an additional dimension brought by the phasing between them. Less tense than Come Out, but with four dancers instead of two this side of the sequence got overwhelming in the best possible way, without the group pattern ever blurring the individual dancers and the specific take of each. It not just the same movements at different times, each was bringing her own way of performing those.

The third part had dancers in a line in the back — a little some parts of Piano Phase in their way of turning — while occasionally one or two would move closer to the stage standing almost still and baring one then two shoulders, with also some taking up of the turning movements. The most striking part for me in that sequence was when Sarah Ludi did just that and what a difference her hands made to the whole effect. A closed hand in contrast to the open hands of the others in the back when turning made a big impression on me.

The fourth part had a physical quality, relentlessly going in lines and especially a big circle toward exhaustion. There were more different movements there, and less of the phasing effect as many ways to pair and combine lines and circles. Again, some specific movements reminded me of other of Anne Terese De Keersmaeker’s shows, but most of all it was some more abstract elements that I think have been often present over the years. Group, sub-groups and individuals interacting without erasing the latter. Her balancing the mundane and the abstract. And her ability to reach an almost pure geometry while embracing the physical side of dance, and putting the effort and rest on display.

The latter was a part of my fondness for the final short sequence, each resting after the demanding run of the fourth, but each also echoing a part of the show. Samantha Van Wissen lying with an extended arm, Cynthia Loemij on a chair in the back, Sarah Ludi standing facing the audience, and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker briefly bending her arms in front and back in a familiar gesture. I might be wrong, but I think a saw the last two nodding at each other as in the second part. Here it was really a part of the choreography, but one thing I like about her shows is that dancers usually don’t leave the stage when they’re not dancing, they stand or sit on the side. That’s important to me in the way that it breaks the illusion of ease and blurs the line around dancing proper, temporally but not only that way.

Of course a lot in that show is what she was doing then, and she has changed since. But it’s still current and I’m very happy she brings back those earlier works. I think seeing both an old and a new show in a short time increases my appreciation of both. And even though I think I was lucky to see these dancers, I’d love to see Elizaveta Penkova performing this.

October 20th, 2009: Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker – Zeitung

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I’m really glad I gave this one another try. I thought that having seen and loved The Song last year gave me a clue or two about what to look at in Zeitung. That proved roughly correct, with the added benefit of seeing how some elements in the group parts in the second half of Zeitung were also in The Song, but also different, more assertive and expansive somehow.

I think I was overly fixated on the first half the first time I saw the show, because those new movements were clearly different. But this time I both appreciated these better and saw the rest. I still think a lot of these bent limbs and awkward postures are a break with pure lines and prettiness, but they’re also exploring balance, support and momentum. And even if the geometric patterns are not as clear, there is still of lot of that, especially when they’re not made as obvious as during the sequence involving strings. And the running arcs are familiar. So these innovations are pretty much grounded in what she did before, and having seen what came later helped me a lot in making sense of that. It’s not even a break in that she has been doing this building and changing for a long time, so I should have done a better job of figuring it out the first time. The experience also gives me yet another reason to want to see more of the earlier shows, including those I have seen. Seeing her work live and evolve is highly rewarding.

For a work for nine dancers, I thought this one was quite individualistic, in that there were a lot of section with one or a few dancers on stage, and each of them had a specific character. This has always been something I love about her work, but here it went further than usual. Which made the few group sequences stand out, especially the one with them standing in a tight shifting group.

There was another element I loved, but I don’t think it was intentional: Igor Shyshko looked hurt and didn’t seem able to bend much, so another dancer took over most of his part. But instead of having him sit out the show, he was shadowing his replacement in the slower sequences, sometimes skipping a few movements, sometimes standing or sitting on the side before going back in. This doubling was very nice, and another thing I have often seen and loved in Rosas shows: the ability to make the most out of problems or mistakes.

October 14th, 2009: François Verret – Do You Remember, No I Don’t

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I’m not all that keen about François Verret’s work, there a deep relationship to written word that makes it very hard for me to relate. But on the other hand he pulls out some really strong images that make his work interesting to me.

This one was another case in point, talkative to distraction but with compelling bits. The whole show was more like snapshots put together, but in a way that made sense. Those felt like fragments, but they were also a glimpse of a shredded whole, so that the disparate segments built up a coherent whole.

Still, the separateness felt taxing. The sequence with a fake-stumbling dancer in front of images of rooms a dilapidated building was my favorite because the dance and video fed off each other. A pendulum/lights contraption in another sequence wasn’t working as well for me because it dominated the dancer into making him a mere operator. Then again, that might have been intentional.

Anyway, Verret’s work got intriguing again, and I have to grant brownie points for pulling in Ani Kuni. Jokes aside, there were a bunch of striking images, and the overall (un)-structure of the work was great. This remains a bit too intellectual for me, but the “air” sequences were very nice again, one with fan/light coming together to both pin and liberate a dancer and another with wormish flexible pipes, one of which held a dancer who turned it into a dress.

I’ve been left baffled by his work before, but this time as the previous one, the difference was all about those fans and air generally. He has a strong relationship with words and gravity — this time it was coal and a pendulum, but his earlier integration of acrobats were more of the same to me. I can’t relate much to that. But over the last few years I’ve been seeing other things going on underneath, and those have shown me a way in. I’ve been painfully slow in going through, but I think I’m starting to get it a little more. Which is rewarding, because there’s a lot in there.

September 25th, 2009: Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui – Apocrifu

@cité de la musique

I really like the last of Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s shows I saw, but I was wary of this one because of the religious theme and the bigger stage. I really like him better in less ambitious pieces. But this one turned out OK. Not great, but I liked enough of it, maybe because having only three dancers kept him from going on too long.

I did have a hard time at the beginning though. Yasuyuki Shuto’s coming down those huge stairs was a little too fluttery and ostensibly graceful for me. Then the ground-hugging solo by Dimitri Jourde was just too in contrast with the opening, and by the time Cherkaoui got into his own solo I was fearing the style would be kept too separate. But his solo was really nice, mixing a bunch of small things that didn’t fit that well into this grid. And even though their ankle bells struck me as odd at first, they did fit in with the Corsican singers somehow.

And then their first lining with books in their — they would do that later with swordish props — made for a nice break. They would mix up their arms and hands keeping the books open and moving them around, with heads sometimes jutting out as a multi-armed and headed creature. Maybe a little long and possibly easy on some level, but very well done, with made it work.

I still think there was a bit too much soloing, but there were also times with two of them supporting/confronting each other and a later even sequences with all three in sync. The message wasn’t exactly subtle — all three people of the books being blinded by those before being even more alike in their sword wielding — but that’s a minor detail to me. Even though I don’t think it was an unqualified success on that front, he did manage to bring those different styles into a dialogue of sorts, and that’s interesting.

In another case of evolution for the better along the way, the initial puppet handling wasn’t my thing, and seeing them mime pulling their own string to move their legs looked just too obvious at first, but the final twist made me appreciate that much more. Cherkaoui’s steps got more like a ponderous stomping, and his climbing the stairs a last time was golemish as he got to the top and jumped off as the lights went out. Maybe not the subtlest thing either, but there was a definite dramatic buildup to that finale in a short time, and that was a nice trick.

September 14th, 2009: Angelin Preljocaj – Le Funambule

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Early kickoff to the dance season, with a solo from a choreographer I’ve seen regularly for as long as I’ve been interested in dance. Even though it had all the markings of the kind of  “event” that usually falls short of the hype, I wanted to see this. I think he avoided that particular pitfall, maybe because the text meant enough to him.

He was saying that Genet “letter” through the show, sometimes dancing along, sometimes reading only, sometimes dancing only. I have to say I don’t care for Genet, and this one was as grating as it gets for me, so it got in the way as the show progressed. I couldn’t block it out, because it was important to what was going on. I do think it took its toll on my appreciation of the show.

Not surprisingly, overall I thought the most literally illustrative parts were the weakest, but with a few exceptions. Maybe that was because it was early, but the segue from the words about an anvil to Preljocaj engaging the long table stood out for me as a close link to the text that enhanced the dance. The knife slashing of paper rolls was at the opposite of the spectrum of both time and personal appreciation.

At its best, the dance brought an immediacy that countered what felt to me as an infuriating pose in the words, and there were visually compelling moments that stood out on their own. The best part for me was a sequence with a mirror and his arm movements reflected as if the mirror wasn’t there, until his left hand shot out and broke the illusion in a striking way. That part was just great, and for me was the apex of the show for several reasons: it was striking on its own as a play with light and vision, there was an economy of movement with greatest effect at play, and I thought it was a step away from the self-centeredness of the words, as if their target was staking his claim to reality beyond the prop he Genet’s words turned him into. The real hand moving out of the mirror frame was like a breath of fresh air to me, but that’s probably because Genet has always been boring for me. Maybe some feminist-induced impatience with objectifying was at work as well. Anyway, I loved this.

I also liked the way Preljocaj was working the limitations of his aging body into pauses that made sense. That wasn’t obvious most of the time, but the few places where that stood out made me eager to see how he will use that particular insight within his shows designed for and with younger dancers. He strikes me as the kind of guy who can turn this into something beautiful. I hope I get to see that come to fruit.

September 3rd, 2009: Josef Nadj – etc, etc / les corbeaux

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Familiar people on stage, a show I had been excited about for a while, but that wasn’t the best part.

I’ve been seeing Josef Nadj’s show for a long time now, and I’d been eager to see this etc, etc performance ever since I heard about it and its featuring Sophie Agnel, Roger Turner and Phil Minton. That looked so exciting I was bound to be let down, and I was. The music was nice, but unsurprisingly lacked something when it came to interactions. I like Sophie Agnel enough for that not to be a problem, but even though I loved her performance it was still a bit disappointing because the dance felt too separated. I liked what Roger Turner was doing most of the time, but after a while I felt it sounded more like a solo performance of his, which are not my favorites. I’m not a fan of Phil Minton to begin with, but somehow he seemed more connected to the dance. Which is the main reason why I was not sold of the whole. I quickly figured out the meeting I eagerly anticipated would either not take place or be beyond my ability to grasp it. So I tried to go along and pick out the individual performances. The dance was too obvious for my taste, but that’s definitely because of my familiarity with Josef Nadj’s work over the years. Those shuffling steps were familiar, as were those automaton moves, and even though there was another dancer mirroring his moves, it was far too predictable in my opinion. Unlike last year, those familiar elements didn’t go further. Either I whiffed completely, or maybe all of them were leaving too much space for the others, relying on familiar bases but this time I didn’t see the dancers go further. And the musicians’ performance were also too familiar. All were good enough, but I expected something more, and it just didn’t happen. Or I didn’t get it, which is more likely. Sophie Agnel’s performance was great on it own though, and is a big part of why that show was worth it for me.

But the second part more than made up for this disappointment. Of course Akosh Szelevényi is already a familiar element of Nadj’s world, and there’s something going on there that’s probably hard to reach for others. Here the dance and music were probably both satisfying on their own, but meshed together well enough that I don’t really know. Neither illustrative of the other, just fitting well. And the dance was just great. A lot of familiar elements again, and at first even the use of ink was reminiscent of previous shows, but there were telling differences, like those feathers Nadj strapped behind his ankles, a more direct departure from the usual black suit. It did help me get into the show, for personal reasons I’m not going into here, but this Raven element may have changed my vision about his immersion into a barrel of ink. His coming out of it ink-black in a literal sense meant much less to me than the dripping. And the show reached it’s apex for me when his moved were both familiar and hampered by the slipping on those puddles. There’s usually a lot of control in what he does, and this was both about this and about putting it in jeopardy. I just loved that part, suddenly it made my familiarity with his work pay off, because there are few things I like more than seeing an artist I know and like take a step further. Not tentative yet obviously taking a chance. Which calls to mind a fall/recovery that’s to this day my favorite dance moment ever.