A Modern Quartet

Wow -- it's been almost three whole months since I last sat down to attend and review a live arts performance -- how did I ever survive that long?

With this week's presentation, which I attended twice, at Place des Arts in Montreal, a new artistic company enters my list of subjects.  Gauthier Dance is a modern dance company with its home base in the Theaterhaus in Stuttgart, Germany, under the leadership of the Canadian artistic director, Eric Gauthier.  One of the sixteen dancers in the group just "happens" to have a prior connection to me and a prior presence in this blog.

Conflict of Interest Alert:  Robert Stephen is my nephew.

So now everyone can understand why I just "happened" to travel down to Montreal to see a European modern dance company in performance!  My regular readers will recall that Robert left the National Ballet of Canada (after 14 years) at the end of the last season to pursue this new and challenging artistic track.

The programme presented in Montreal was a unique, eclectic collection of four very different dance works from five very different choreographers.  The range of stylistic and artistic approaches challenged the dancers of the company in unexpected and diverse ways, all the while providing an intriguing experience for the near capacity and enthusiastic audience.

The first item of the evening, Beating, choreographed by Montreal-born Virginie Brunelle, was an intriguing fusion of lyrical, almost balletic movement and tableaux, with edgier, high-speed, angular movements.

The title, by the way, refers to the beating of human hearts, and particularly to those moments when two human hearts begin to beat together as one.  Brunelle has found a very broad range of ways to visually capture the approaches, the retreats, the coming together and the breaking apart, of human relationships.

Much of the energy of this dance arose from the rapid shifting and changing of roles among the eight dancers.  A pair would briefly form a couple, interact for a few moments, and then as quickly race apart and into other configurations with other dancers.

In a sense, the multi-section work became almost like a "dance symphony" with each "movement" having its own discrete tempo, rhythm, and style.  Especially remarkable was the middle section in which dancers formed a half-circle, standing still, and snapping their shoulders forward and backward to create a striking visual counterpart of the heartbeat-like rhythm of the score.  Two by two, the dancers would dash into the centre for a time of interaction, then dash out to be replaced by the next couple.

The brief coda of this symphony of movement was the stillness of the final tableau as the crowd dispersed, leaving a sole couple coming slowly together into an embrace as the lights faded out.

The second work on the programme was definitely "out there" by comparison with the others.  We Like Horses is an example of the highly-charged, socially and politically conscious Tanztheater which has grown and developed in Germany in recent decades.  German choreographer Helena Waldmann chooses to present strongly political works which merge dance and theatre, and which she describes as "political choreographies."  We Love Horses is her first work for this company, and is intended as a strong commentary on the written and unwritten laws which we willingly allow to hedge us in on all sides in our societies.

In this work, one member of the company stands tall on "shoes" which effectively mimic the configuration and length of a horse's lower legs.  The other five wear outsized buttock falsies, clearly visible on the outsides of their costumes, and tall nodding plumes which suggest horse's headdress.  The tall-shod woman, dressed in a black costume which strongly suggests a dominatrix, cracks a long whip and the other five, kneeling facing her, all begin madly twerking in time with the rhythmically charged electronic score composed by jayrope.  Each time the whip cracks, the dancers fling themselves into more frenzied efforts.  As the piece proceeds, the whip holder retreats upstage and simply watches, while the five dancers begin to enforce behaviour upon each other.    

At first blush, this almost sounds too kinky for words, but that wasn't the impact for me at all.  In fact, I found myself thinking of this more general reality: examine a bully closely, and you'll usually find a person who was bullied.  The behaviour of the dancers towards each other followed that principle closely, as well as clearly showing how we in society enforce behavioural norms on each other almost as much as we let the laws do it for us.  I definitely admired the sheer amount of energy which the five "horses" expended throughout the work, and the skill with which the chief whip balanced on those tall stilt-shoes.

If Waldmann's piece had a weakness, it was the difficulty of wrapping it up.  I guessed, rightly, that a final whipcrack would be followed by a swift blackout.  But once the woman with the whip had retired upstage, there seemed no particular reason why the turning point in the action -- the sudden snap with which one of the "horses" rebelled -- should come when it did.  It could just as easily have been two minutes earlier (some people were probably hoping) or five minutes later.  The motivation for the timing of that final vignette of civil disobedience and violence was not clear.

Another strong contrast followed with the third work, Infant Spirit, created by Marco Goecke with a score drawn from the American music group, Antony and the Johnsons.  Goecke's work is a solo, inspired by his formative years growing up in Wuppertal, Germany, and particularly by the key role of the famous choreographer Pina Bausch, a key founder of the Tanztheater style, in inspiring his development as a dancer and choreographer.

Rosario Guerra gave a powerful performance of this energetic solo number, bringing ample amounts of edgy drive to the choreography.  One key aspect of Goecke's style here is the focus on the hands, which often move a great deal, and very quickly at that, while the rest of the body remains largely still for varying amounts of time.  Another signature of his style is the strong contrast between the sadly lyrical singing on the soundtrack and the movement of the dancer which becomes vehement almost to the point of violence.

I was intrigued to see that, at later stops in the tour, this solo was to be danced by Sandra Bourdais.  I definitely would have welcomed an opportunity to see a different dancer bring her own stamp to the role, since I have never had the experience of seeing any role pass from a dancer of one gender to a dancer of another gender.  

The final work on the programme was a tribute to another great leader in the world of modern dance: Louise Lecavalier, famed for the explosive energy she brought to her decades of work with the Montreal troupe, La La La Human Steps.

And explosive energy was exactly what we got with Electric Life, co-choreographed by Eric Gauthier and Andonis Foniadakis.  This piece displayed as much speed and wild abandonment as the other three works put together.  The energy of the dance was underscored by a series of light bars, standing vertically or carried in any position, which glowed brilliantly in different colours or strobed rapidly.

On the first night I saw the piece, I was sitting in the front half of the theatre and I found those flashing lights were a bit hard to take -- enough so that I periodically had to close my eyes.  On the second occasion, I sat almost at the back of the house and the lights were less obtrusive, being farther away as well as below my eye level.  It's by no means the first time in a live performance where I felt that the technical foobaz were interfering with, rather than supporting and helping, the performers.

The signature of this work, and its most memorable aspect, were the sudden bursts of motion, including numerous leaps -- both horizontal and vertical -- which appeared to defy the laws of gravity.  Another memorable moment came when the dancers turned the light bars towards themselves, giving an intriguing new twist to the stroboscopic stop-motion effect.

Overall, I felt that this last work was the one which came closest to being a disconnected series of effects -- and I think the lights played a role in making it seem so.

The teamwork of the members of Gauthier Dance throughout the evening was truly remarkable.  Unanimity was expressed through fearless leaps and throws, rapid stops and turns, dancers (apparently) slamming against each other as they halted in mid-step, and more.  The sheer fiery energy which this company brought to its work made this programme memorable indeed.