counterfnord

@theatre de la ville

As usual — but next year will be different — I mark the close of my dance season with a “new” Pina Bausch work. Quote-unquote new, because it’s been so similar over the year, with a series of solos that sometimes actually looked the same from year to year, and the token nod to the official country of reference relegated to props or costumes for a postcard effect that was getting on my nerves. Nonetheless, every single year there has been at least a couple of great moments that would make be come back, and very often some part of the soundtrack that would strike a chord — the shock I got from hearing les reines prochaines ’s take on Chris Isaak’s Wicked Game will be hard to top, as it’s my all-time favorite cover ever.

This year was different. In a good way. The theme was India, but the “local” moments were unobstrusive and left me with the impression that she did connect with that country on a deeper level, as if the influence was strong enough to be diffuse, and props and all were no longer needed. Any such props were seamlessly integrated into her own language, which is the best combination I’ve seen from her in a while.

I was still more of the same, but better. Dancers kept their personalities, but there that rehashed aftertaste was just gone. The dance was different yet still her own, the comedy bits were fewer, just enough to make the regulars comfortable — I guess this being at least my fifteenth means I’m one — but there was enough new twists to satisfy me without reservations. And of course the dance reached just as high a level, but more often; I even think most of it was great, as opposed to some of it. Not really business as usual, and it’s a great feeling to see such a seasoned choreographer pull this off when she could just settle in the surefire and familiar. OK, no revolution in her language, but being sensitive to such shifts is one of the benefits of familiarity.

One more thing: I think that anyone who still spouts the old saw about dance-theater hasn’t been paying attention, and this one makes it even more obvious. There was more theater in at least a dozen of the dance shows I attended this season. And if I wrote earlier than next year would be different, it’s because she comes earlier, because I’m definitely going to be there again.

Finally, this marks the end of the last season with Gérard Violette at the helm of that fine place. In the last sixteen years, that man has brought me an awful lot and I’m just grateful for that and glad I had the opportunity to tell him so in person this year. I wish him the best of luck in his well deserved retirement, and hope Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota will prove up to the task of going forward. I think Mr Violette would appreciate the way I put myself to task: I bought more tickets for next year than ever, adding music to dance, and the only dance show I didn’t book was because I have seen it this year, it will be sold out and I want someone else to get the opportunity to see it — that would be Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s Origine. Godspeed and, again, thanks a lot.

@abbesses

I know I usually name the choreographer alone in post titles, but that was the way it was listed on the posters, and it makes a lot of sense as the contributions were pretty much balanced. The stage setup featured a white incline in front of a white screen, and that would be the backdrop for Laurent Goldring’s live drawing; which was the main or only light, a fact driven home when the background went black and his white scribbling was the pool of light making the dancers visible. I really liked most of Hahn Rowe’s music; some of it was sample based and even featured beats, some was processed violin, and overall diverse and so compelling I sometimes got distracted from the dance itself. As for Louise Lecavalier and Benoît Lachambre, that was even better than their previous work together, and this time both were dancing.

The show opening with Louise Lecavalier lying on the incline and swaying from the right to the left of the stage. That extended pattern made me dread yet another overstretching of an idea, until Benoît Lachambre appeared in a corner, stone-faced and moving in those quick burst of motion than look like a strobe light is on, except that the smooth motion of the other dancer both dispelled the illusion and made it more arresting. That contrasting came up at times but it was not the only thing going on, thankfully proving my initial fear completely wrong.

That stop-and-go pattern lingered a while in a less extreme form, with not-quite-natural movements and angles, but even though each idea was given time to be explored quite in depth, it hardly overstayed its welcome, with diverse speeds as well, from slow sliding to hectic shaking. The dance in and of itself was probably not all that great, but it worked so well with the music and light that this show really has to be taken in as a whole, and I definitely think it’s a success in that respect.

My only moment I had to roll my eyes and sigh was when they pulled that trick with the torso of one and the legs of the other. I mean it’s a good thing the season comes to close, I just might run screaming the next time I see this. Or fall asleep. They went on with such tricks for a short while, and that was the weakest part in my opinion.

In another sign of the times, both wore hoodies throughout (black, white, green or yellow, but hoodies), and more were lying around. Seems like it was the Year of the Hoodie in contemporary dance too this season. No gray one with cut-off sleeves though, but then again the Pats did eventually lose, didn’t they?

@theatre de la ville

Another good one, make that a great one. As usual with Akram Khan, whose collaboration with Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui was the closest to a disappointment, and even then only because of my high expectation — and it was still definitely good. This time the outside influence was having three dancers from the national ballet of China. I was curious but it turned out that was pretty much besides the point, the mixed backgrounds and origins being almost a hallmark of his work, and I probably wouldn’t have been able to tell had I not read about it earlier. The classical training did show in the two female dancers, but that’s not a surprise as my memories of my — long gone — days of seeing classical ballet taught me that it tends to be mercilessly codified for the female parts. Male dancers enjoy a tiny little bit more variety. But it only showed at times, and there was even a comedy bit where both danced in the western ballet style. Great and diverse music, most of which was again by Nitin Sawhney, as well as a very nice sparse set with a single electronic board hanging in the middle and a few chairs, for a minimalist airport waiting room feel. Fabiana Piccioli’s lighting was excellent, playing with that board to partition the stage at times.

Overall the show interleaved short acting sequences with pure dance sequences. Of course the latter were what I loved, but the rest wasn’t bad either, and made the dance stand out even more. The storyline was mostly about waiting, with a thread about a woman who has forgotten where she’s from. Anyway, it should be seen to be made sense of, and the only important thing is that it worked for me at least. The dance was highly dynamic almost all the time — as usual — yet very diverse, athletic and controlled throughout but with many different movements and shifting emphasis. From close to the ground to whirling leaps, from circles to lines, with solo parts, duos and group sequences that could be perfectly synchronized or featuring subgroups.

My favorite part came close to the the end, when two dancers embraced, then were joined by the others, with one struggling to find room in that collective embrace, and finally climbing on top. Then one left the group to discard his cell phone and on his joining back the group it kind of exploded with a sudden shift to a harsher light and pounding, quickening music, and one of the most interesting group sequence I’ve seen in a while. There was a lot of moving back and forth with infectious head bobbing at first, but they spread out to occupy most of the stage and the group would splinter at times, individuals or subgroups moving to a different pattern only to join the others again. Preljocaj did something related recently, but here it was much clearer and the sharpness of Akram Khan’s choreography made it much better for me. Again, I’m amazed by the way he can write such decisive, fast and athletic movements that still manage to flow so smoothly.

This one stood out, but there was not one single dance sequence that bored me, and even the only I liked least — because it echoed things I’ve seen too often this year — was the best use of that pattern. Of course I’m curious about his work with Juliette Binoche, but I’m confident it’s at least worth a shot. He’s just good enough to make that work.

@theatre de la ville

I had heard high praise for this one, but I wasn’t expecting much because the praise focused on stuff I don’t like all that much — namely the theater/pantomime aspects — and because of my past experience with Sasha Waltz‘ work. My problem has been that I can intellectually appreciate what’s going on, but I fail to connect on a more emotional/physical level. Which is actually a cause for hope, I pretty much had the opposite problem with Meg Stuart for years, until Alibi bridged that gap. So I’m still going to try to break through, even though it was the same old story this time around, probably worse than the previous time, but as it was from fifteen years ago, that’s not an issue.

It was not abstract enough for me, the more literally theatrical parts didn’t help, even though I did like the gradual shift to dance and back. That was very well done, but again I failed to connect, and was left with the impression that I was missing something important. I felt I was making some progress though, because these intermediate stages were more interesting to me than the purer dance sections. My favorite moment came early on, when a male dancer was really mixing both levels with the table and chairs, with motions that were going back and forth between natural movement and dance moves that were more than an extension of the original ones; that was part of it, but there was clearly something more at work here. I wish there had been more of that balance in the rest of the show, but it was mostly too much of one part or the other. It feels weird to complain about more pure dance, but in that case I didn’t connect to it, so I’d have wish to stick with what works. It was a big success anyway, so who cares about what I think?

Maybe next time I’ll finally get it?

@abbesses

Not exactly the usual Indian dance evening, it didn’t have the traditional structure at all. The idea seemed to bring four members of this well-known artistic family on a single stage, two dancers and two singers. The singers were Madhup and Sawani Mudgal, and the two Odissi dancers were Madhavi and Arushi. The first part was music only, with the performers sitting in the middle of the stage. Now I just don’t know enough about Indian music to say much about this, but the Madhup’s voice was rich and powerful, even when more subdued, and I thought the younger Sawani’s voice brought a beautiful complement when they were both singing. But I really don’t know what I’m talking about. Both left the stage after that, to be replaced by a different lineup until the very end of the show, when everyone came on stage to perform together.

The good thing — for me — about the dance part’s departing from the standard structure is that is was heavy on pure dance, which is my favorite aspect. The lack of expressive dance meant it was less balanced, but this was not really a problem as this was clearly not business as usual. Moreover, my recent seeing too much of it meant it even things out for me. What made this show very satisfying was that both dancers are talented in different ways, and for me there was the added gratification of seeing some Odissi, not that frequent a treat.

The performed separately as well as together, and their joining made very clear that Madhavi remains the master, and that — relative — age has left her talent for intricate and dynamic footwork intact and superlative; here dance was crisp, yet seemed effortless, a performer clearly on top of things. On the other hand, Arushi showed much more than mere promise, she is an accomplished performer in her own right. But next to her aunt, her technique can still improve — an exciting perspective, even though I’m not sure I’ll have the opportunity to see that unfold, but she had some grace and fluidity about her arms and head movement I liked a lot. Not inconsistent traits by any mean, but a challenge to conventional wisdom — and a complaint I hear sometimes about Indian performers touring over here — that holds that older dancers lose their talent for the more rhythmic parts and compensate with additional expressiveness.

@theatre de la ville

I’ve been seeing Sankai Juku regularly for many years now, and it’s been a weird kind of appointment of sorts. Ushio Amagatsu’s work has been very personal and consistent throughout, but with a definite evolution as well, so the shows have been both familiar and different. One common thread for me has been the almost hypnotic effect. It’s not like I was fighting sleep at all, just that I usually get into the show enough to feel drawn into some kind of altered state. Nothing obvious, but the end of the show is always a mild shock, when I realize I never left that seat and am actually seated in a crowd — well at least a few hundred peoples — that completely dropped out of my mind for the last hour or so. The aesthetics of it all are just so strong that it seems to bring me back to the previous time I saw them, bridging seamlessly that time gap, resuming that collective dream. The hook for me is not so much the make up, costume and music — though these do play a part — as the hand motions most specifically, but really some signature postures that were made most obvious to me by the amazing solo the Amagatsu gave to Shantala Shivalingappa. No matter the how, it really works well on me, and gives some sense of continuity to my dance seeing I come to appreciate for the structure it gives to an otherwise scattered experience.

This time the stage appeared at first more barren than usual, with a black ellipse on a clear stage. That would prove deceptive, not by much quantitatively, but the difference maker would turn out to be light, immaterial yet more transforming that many solid props could have been. At first three dancers would come to be illuminated in turn in a pool of light, going through a familiar sequence of mostly hand and arm motions, rising from a crouch to standing and with that beloved effect of a sudden arm movement leaving a slow moving cloud of powder in its wake, a ghost of speed. I do know this trick by now, but it always gets me anew. These three dancers, dressed in white robes, then came back and moved around the stage still in a stately mode, while four others, in orange skirts, would move much faster with straight backs, arms held up and using those typical sharp hand motions. The contrast was my gateway to getting into this one.

The next sections unfolded with the back of the stage coming alight with star-like pinpoints. The overall trajectory was from back left to front right, across the ellipse, and had one white robed, stately dancer circled by the four orange skirted one. Again, the white one started low, went to the ground early, framed by a moving canopy or arms, then went up and progressively faster, and by the time they left the stage he went almost as fast as the others. Which were circling around him in that typical Sankai Juku way, managing to be both flowing and made of discrete postures. More slow moves at first then, with three dancers coming one by one around the ellipse, which had turned to a pool of blue stars, through more pinpoints that looked to me to come from the floor itself. At first they were touching its boundary, then went circling it, and finally stepped onto it.

In the next section the lighting turned mind-blowing: the lights were razing low, and turned the black ellipse white and the ground reddish, with a small horizontal band of red stars in the back. Three dancers proceeded from back right to front left, on the ground, sometimes seeming to attempt to rise but never getting quite there, rolling and not-quite-tumbling instead. I think that was the first time the familiar gaping round mouths were used, at the very end. That bit of familiarity was offset by the next section, a shocker costume-wise, as the stars covered all the back wall again and the dancers came on stage in deep blue robes. Not only blue, but with a swath of many colors across them (there’s a picture of them on their website home page right now, much better than my clumsy words). I thought this was the highlight of the whole show, with different speeds — though more on the slow side, granted — and at the top of its otherworldly feel. To me it had a kind of mythic feel to it, an impression of witnessing not just guys moving on a stage but an embodiment of elemental forces. Not deities walking among men but men bringing abstract symbols into visibility for a fleeting and precious moment.

After that the stars in the back were narrowed down to a vertical band while a single dancer took the stage — I think that was Amagatsu himself, but I really don’t know. That was still a highly charged moment for me, because there was something in the way that solo unfolded that reached me quite deeply, though I could not isolate any factor for that. At some level it came across as a bridge, bringing different and apparently opposite factors to balance if not harmony — I know this isn’t making sense but that’s what came to me in that altered state. Then in the final section both the ellipse and the back were star strewn again, with four dancers on their backs on the ellipse and three standing around it. My least liked one, as I didn’t really connect to the movements there. Part of it might be feeling the end coming, part might have been the distraction of the stars all around.

Then it was over. Each time I regret not getting a ticket for the other work, as they usually bring back an older one as well. I know why I don’t do it though: part of it is that by now there are not that old and that means I saw these the first time around, and the biggest part is that these shows are always sold out, and going there hence means someone is not. I don’t want to deprive anyone of that opportunity.

@abbesses

I love Padmini Chettur’s work, or at the little I’ve seen of it so far — meaning 3 solos and Paperdoll — so she’s on my short list of choreographers I hope to get to know better, so I wasn’t about to miss this, even though the lineup at my favorite venue looked good — Otomo Yoshihide, John Wiese and especially Sachiko M.

OK, let’s get the bitching out of the way. First, I mildly resent the poster that lumped together Priyardarsini Govind, Padmini Chettur and Madhavi Mudgal. The “dance from India” label just doesn’t cut it, and the excuse that Chettur was originally trained in bharatha natyam feels just wrong: does anyone lump together western choreographers because they were at some point trained in western classical dance? I think Chettur’s work is much more related to some of the most abstractly oriented choreographers than to traditional Indian dance. I wrote “mildly” because I can’t blame the fine people who brought her to Paris in the first place; what I “resent” is that it might make sense as a strategy to bring people in there. I guess that worked, judging from what is item 2 in tonight’s bitching section: many people left during the performance — not unusual at all — but what was painfully clear at the end is that the applause came strongest from the back whereas the front rows were sparse, as in almost everyone in the front row left, and most of the remaining people there were making clear they were just being polite but hated it. Food for thoughts for me, especially with my recent unexplained invitation to a local event. Long bitching section, but I had to get this off my chest. On to the show.

I want to record first that I really loved this. I think I liked it even better that Paperdoll, which is as it should be and gives me hope for the next time she grants us — meaning me, but that would not be enough to warrant a stop — the favor of coming here. I didn’t like everything in it, but there were very strong moments I’ll remember for a long time, and most of all there was a strong personality there and both a sense of mastery and research. So I got the feeling that there was finely honed technique, a stable foundation to a personal language, and a willingness to go beyond both, a tantalizing combination.

A common thread was moving from side to side on the stage within a band of light. Most of it was slow and deliberate, and backs arched backward were prominent. There was some coiling/uncoiling motions in the beginning as well, but what struck me more than the solo work was the supporting work: as in not really carrying but giving just enough support. There was a lot of this, from dancers leaning back on each other to just toes touching in some of the ground based chains. Nonetheless, these times when several dancers were involved brought together abstract geometrical figures with a sense of physical togetherness that I can only get from dance. Maybe that’s something I’d rather have shown than said to me, to wink at my favorite philosopher — initials LW.

By now I’ve kinda lost interest in a play-by-play, so I hope the following impressions will be enough to bring back the rest if/when I read that post again. The sequence that most got me in was one where the dancers were upright and sliding/rubbing their right feet on the floor. The straight legs reminded me of Ligeti’s metronomes, and of Steve Reich as well — bringing about more thoughts I’m not going into here — because they were at times perfectly in synch but that didn’t hold for long, then they were on different rhythms but nothing was sloppy in that, hence the Steve Reich name-dropping, it was not phasing at all, the changes were more abrupt with a less linear trajectory, but the relation to same/beat/shift felt familiar.

From then on I felt that playing with patterns was more involved, but maybe that’s just what it took to get me tuned in to what had been there to begin with. Another highlight was beyond my ability to describe, a dancer face up on hands and toe, looking like a spider or a table, then joined by a couple of back to back dancers on the ground echoing that divide; what seemed important at the time was the way the pair stomped the ground, just for the contrast and difference. A chain came into being, with more of that rhythmic play on same/different. My problem right now is that there is no way I can spit out words that can do any justice to what went on then.

I really loved the way one dancer — I think that was Chettur herself but I’m at least as likely as not to be wrong — took the stage alone close to the end of the performance and repeated some of the movements that had been used throughout. None of the ground-based ones; and even then not all, but enough to convey to me how controlled it had all been. There she brought to a close the left-to-right pattern by introducing a diagonal trajectory. After she left the stage, the other dancers crawled around — I’m ashamed to write this, but I do think it will be enough to remind my future self — and used that diagonal, except I was wrong and it was actually a circle, no it’s a spiral, so it’s a collision, it’s a pile-up, it’s a… it’s over, and being jolted back into reality this way tells me how deep into this I was; a cold shower effect indeed, see bitching section above.