Between Dreaming and Waking Up: A Review of Corps intérieur

It’s into a strange world that a beastly creature brings us as it rubs itself against our leg, urging us to follow it down the stairs. All the way down the stairs. For in David Pressault’s Corps intérieur, we cannot remain on the outside; we must inhabit the same dream as the performers.

Not much of an effort is required. The room is filled with smoke and Michel F. Côté’s gloomy soundscape similarly fills the space. It is in this environment that we submerge ourselves. Five individuals are already there, slowly moving in front of mirrors, interacting with their own reflection. We cannot be outside of this performance anymore than a dreamer can be outside of his dream. Why do mirrors, which only reflect surfaces, invoke such interiority? Because, if anything, mirrors reveal the impossibility of an objective perception of the self. The space between one and one’s reflection is always an imagined space, and therefore necessarily an internal space.

The mirrors remain around the stage for the entire performance, so we move to be able to see both the performance and its reflection in the mirror; as if in this way we got to experience this world twice as much, which in a sense we are as spectators if we are to take dance as a primarily visual experience. This ability to see the performance itself so close, yet its reflection simultaneously so far away, further puts us in a dream-like state, as if we were forever hinging between dreaming and waking up. A fraction of a second earlier and we were convinced the world we were in was real, a fraction of a second later it seems so far away, yet its presence can still be seen in the imprint it has left upon our memory.

The mirrors, of course, double the bodies, an experience that sometimes occur even without the help of the reflecting surface. Like when an older and a younger man dance on a bench in such a way that they could be the same man at different ages. Or like these two women with long black hair and matching dresses, femmes fatales exploring each other as they stare at themselves in the mirror, the presence of another self more threatening than reassuring. Even like Frankenstein and his creature, a paper bag covering its head, which replicates the movements taught by its master, before being abandoned. The double is definitely not a comforting figure in this underground world. As Emily Dickinson writes,

Ourself behind ourself, concealed -
Should startle most -
Assassin hid in our Apartment
Be Horror’s least.

The show’s only minor drawback for me is the fortunately brief spoken word section, which completely breaks with Corps intérieur’s sensorial experience and suddenly demands of the audience to switch into an intellectual mode to decode the words. Better to tune it out and not wake up from our vivid dreams.

You can catch Corps intérieur at Monument-National every night until Saturday, December 5, at 8:30pm. There is also a matinée on Saturday at 2:30pm. Regular tickets are 27$, 20$ for students. For more information, visit www.danse-cité.org or call 514.871.2224.