An Early Christmas Gift From Gauthier Dance

After seeing several shows by the modern dance company Gauthier Dance, I felt that I was by way of being an expert, able to "define" the company's style. 

I would have described this as a company that brings immense energy and intense concentration to modern dance works which are seriously thought-provoking when they aren't completely off the wall.

And, as Noel Coward said, in the film version of his classic comedy Blithe Spirit, "We are quite, quite wrong."

With the holiday season at hand, Artistic Director Eric Gauthier decided to mount a show which falls somewhere in between "Gauthier Dance's Greatest Hits" and "Let's Have a Laugh."  In all, there were six dance works on this programme from five different choreographers.  Three I had seen before, while three were new to me.

What was most striking about this show, though, was the number of pieces in which the audience were invited to laugh, to enjoy, to appreciate that dance (often so serious) is perfectly capable of being downright funny when the creators so choose.  Very right and proper with the joyful season -- Christmas/Hannukah/Kwanzaa or what you will -- so close at hand.

The show opened with Virginie Brunelle's Beating, a work which I saw staged just over a year ago in Montreal.  At that time I was more focused on the technical aspect of the piece.  Now, I found myself caught up in the emotional life of this dance work.  The title refers to the beating of the heart, and particularly to the times in life when two hearts beat as one.  This emotional aspect of the piece is steadily heightened through the three distinct movements of what I still think of as a "dance symphony."  The climactic moment when all the other dancers exit the stage, leaving a single couple to embrace as the lights went down, really tugged my heartstrings in just the right way.  Brunelle is a choreographer whose sensibility and emotional openness is both refreshing and engaging, as is her mastery of so many aspects of human movement.

The second work was the one truly serious note in the programme: For D, a co-creation of the wife-husband team of Roni Haver and Guy Weizman.  It's a duet for two men.  The setting is a kind of "tunnel of light," created in a smoke haze by a single strong light at the rear and side lights which create an effect of stripes or ribs on either side.  As the two dancers circle around each other in the narrow slot of bright light available to them, we get an intense picture of a close-knit relationship.  But then we reach the point where one of the men tries to leave, while the other tries to prevent him, to stop him, to keep him close.  In the end, he does exit along that lighted tunnel to the rear, leaving the other in a state of anguish as the ballet ends.  The portrayal of ultimate loss could hardly be clearer or more heart-rending, and this piece would (I'm sure) have a profound effect on anyone who had suffered the loss of a parent, a child, a sibling, or any other person they truly loved.  

Conflict of Interest Alert

As it happens, my nephew, Robert Stephen, was one of the two dancers in this piece.  Very unusually for me, I was not particularly aware of his presence as one of the characters, so strongly was I caught up in the intense emotional world of this unusually deep and thought-provoking dance drama in miniature.

The third piece up was plainly meant as a perfectly-timed bit of slapstick comic relief, The Sofa, by Itzik Galili.  In this three-hander, a man tries to seduce a younger woman, only to have the tables turned and go through the exact same choreography with a younger man trying to seduce him.  The choreography is marked by numerous intentional and neatly-timed pratfalls, flipflops, and rapid repetitions of movements.  The song, Nobody, by Tom Waits, provides a neat polar-opposite counterpoint to the duel of desire and lust (but not love) unfolding in all its comic mayhem on the stage.  One aspect of this piece which gave me a strong cringe moment: the all-too-graphic move when one dancer's face got mashed into another dancer's crotch.  It happened twice, and both times it got on my nerves in a big way.  Artistic Director Eric Gauthier appeared here as the man, with Anneleen Droog and Jonathan Dos Santos as the younger woman and man.

Next came a comic solo choreographed by Gauthier for Danish dance star Johan Kobborg.  ABC was accompanied, not by music, but by a speaking voice reciting "the ABC's of ballet."  As each word was spoken, the dancer had to strike a pose representing that word.  The easy ones, I suppose, were the ones rooted in the classic French technical language of ballet.  The more emotional words involved freer choices of posture and movement.  As the piece went on, the pace of the recitation got faster -- so of course the dancer had to move faster too.  The biggest laugh came under the letter "I" when the voice said "Intermission," and the dancer sauntered offstage, waving his hand, as the house lights came up.  But of course the piece continued right on, the laughs getting bigger every step of the way.  This solo was danced by Theophilus Vesely at the first performance I attended, and by Luca Pannacci at the second show.

The last number before the real intermission was  Gauthier's Orchestra of Wolves, another piece which I had seen before on my October visit to Stuttgart.  The sheer absurdity of this, another slapstick comedy, was on display at full force, with the wolves chasing the unfortunate conductor around the stage and finally dispatching him in a shower of shredded paper -- because he was, after all, only a stuffed bunny.  Equally absurd was the vision of six wolves making violin motions while spinning and rolling about the stage on wheeled office chairs.

After the intermission, the programme concluded with Minus 16 by Ohad Naharin.  The company performed this one when I saw them in Chicago in April, and it definitely bore repeat viewing.  I also have to say that, for my money, this was a far more successful compendium work than Naharin's lengthy, tedious Decadance which the Gauthier team performed in October.  

I've always sensed the existence of some kind of unifying factor in Minus 16.  This time around, I felt sure that the theme, conscious or unconscious for the choreographer, is a fatalistic belief in living in the moment because you can't change what is going to happen next.  Each of the work's multiple segments, I felt, cast some light on that thematic concept.  I don't know if that was Naharin's intent, but I certainly felt that the work as whole was speaking to me on that level.

As for the performance, the company was stunning as always in the sheer dynamic athleticism of the Passover song, Echad Mi Yodea.  The slow duet, danced to an aria from Nisi Dominus by Vivaldi, added a sense of heartache to the other qualities I'd noticed earlier.  There was an air of desperation about the joyful dancing of the party scene, and the final slow epilogue echoed the heartbreak of the duet again.  It's a strange work, with its juxtaposition of such wildly different dance styles and moods, yet it feels to me as if it couldn't be any other way than what it is.  Since Naharin always varies the content of these dance works whenever he sets them on a new company, I'd be intrigued if the versions danced elsewhere also echo that underlying theme that I sensed in this version.

If all that sounds a bit heavy-weight, be assured that the party scene is still fun all the way.  Even the high energy of Echad Mi Yodea becomes entertaining, as I welcomed the return of each move added to the song when it came around again in subsequent verses.