Tanz im August has begun in Berlin. Yesterday, the Canadian company of Marie Chouinard, founded in 1990 in Montreal, performed at the Hause der Berliner Tanzspiele as part of the annual festival.
Both of the two choreographies performed by the company were highly engaging. With a kind of soft virtuosity, somehow humid and on the edge — truly a work of 2015 — the dancers crossed the stage in uncoordinated steps, almost clumsily, sometimes appearing ridiculous or lacking in grace. These unlikely strides, carried out in syncopated or trunk rhythm, were then intermingled with brief moments of harmonic dance.
Watching them, it seemed that the dancers were each performing their own rhythm, their own music, their own inner time, finding themselves together, uniting into a framework that twirled about ever so slowly. The faces of the performers writhed with dramatic expressions, and their grotesque or mocking faces were then projected onto the large LED wall behind them.
In a world that wants us all to be equal and perfect, Chouinard’s performance was a cry in defense of diversity, and a reminder of its beauty.
In Henri Michaux: Mouvements (its text rom the year 1952, the choreography from 2011) Marie Chouinard, inspired by the images in the book by Henri Michaux, has translated the poetry contained in the book into dance drawings.
The drawings are projected onto a white backdrop, allowing viewers to simultaneously experience the pages of the book alongside its visual representation. What results is an interplay of images and forms that refer to one another as sounds might, represented through a game of echoes.
As a whole, the choreography also serves as a reference back to that cry in defense of diversity that I characterized as a soft virtuosity. In fact, one of Michaux’s most famous phrases contains a significant confession: “Un jour j’arracherai the ancre here tient mon navire loin des mers.”
The warm, unanimously positive applause that greeted the final bow is perhaps the most fitting review for this beautiful evening of dance.
