Les 9è Bancs d’Essai Internationaux: A Review

Expectations are meant to be defied. I certainly did not go into Les 9è Bancs d’Essai Internationaux expecting to see the best dance show I’ve seen in months. The Tangente-initiated biennial event puts together choreographers from five different countries and sends them on a tour of each of their hometown. This past weekend, they started their tour here in Montreal before heading over to Europe. The level of quality of this year’s program is exceptionally high.

The Netherlands’ Jeans van Daele started the evening off with a bang with Battre le Fer, a duet for Estelle Delcambre and Patricia van Deutekom. We hear the two women before we even see them as they walk around in the dark with shoes with heavy soles. There is but a dim green light at the back of the stage, so we can barely see them. A cheeky choice since even at this early stage we can tell from the sounds onstage that the choreography is extremely physical. Then some lights by the side of the stage come on for brief periods of time to give us glimpses of their violent dance. Floor work takes up the beginning of Battre le Fer and the dancers’ principal means of moving around is by rolling on the floor. The rest of the time, they are most always in contact, pushing and pulling the other into the position that each requires to execute their own movement. They might look antagonistic but they are completely dependent on each other. The loud sound of their shoes against the floor adds to the dramatic impact, like in the section where they lie against the floor and repeatedly arch their back to propel their legs in the air, which come down with a bang. No wonder one of the dancers ended up with bloody knees.

The dancers are back on their feet for the second half of the piece. At the beginning of this section, they are backlit by a blue light that barely reveals their silhouettes. Their most visible body part becomes their long hair as the light shines through it, almost creating a halo. It becomes the primary focal point of the dance, a most unusual one. Though this section is not quite as strong as the floor work (a rather high standard to maintain), it is still full of choreographic gems that jump out at us and move through us. By the end, the dancers obviously take pleasure in their complicit sadism, smiles drawn across their lips.

A tough act to follow, especially with a more understated solo, but Wales’ Cai Tomos pulls it off brilliantly. His Calon (which means heart) deals with the heart from a multitude of perspectives: scientific, personal, physiological, emotional, physical, conceptual. In a sound recording, Tomos talks about the heart. The interaction between his words and his movement multiplies meanings, the words colouring his movement just as his movement colours the words. For example, we hear him say that the average human heart weighs 310– And, just as these words are spoken, Tomos opens his arms as if he were carrying a large object so that we almost expect him to say that a heart weighs 310 pounds, when the word that follows is actually and evidently “grams.” Often his movement illustrates the sound recording, but there are delightful touches of humour whenever there is such a perceived discrepancy. A lot of his movement is of an emphatic nature, the kind of everyday gestures that we unconsciously produce while involved in the act of speech, but pushed further so that it crosses over into our consciousness. Tomos is incredibly charming, not to mention an utterly compelling performer.

Italy’s Ambra Senatore displays great wit with Passo, a duet danced by herself and Caterina Basso. At first, she appears alone onstage (or, as we will wonder later, was it really her?) in high heels. She spreads her legs to the point that it makes maintaining her balance difficult, especially since she insists on keeping her upper body in movement, also spreading it in all directions. As she dances, an arm can briefly be seen poking out from the curtains in the same fashion as hers, like an instant parody of her movement. When her own body becomes hidden by the curtain, another body comes in through the back door in the same position that we can extrapolate she is in, a fragmented yet duplicated view of a single action. Passo is obviously concerned with doubles as another dancer comes out looking almost exactly like the one already onstage, from the dress she wears to the black wig that smoothes out their physical differences. Senatore also turns on the charm by incorporating a (performed) casualness into her work, rubbing her elbow as if she hurt herself, taking a sip of water, or shaking her head as if she’d made a mistake. However, as we discover with the synchronicity between her and her double, everything is carefully choreographed, from putting their hair behind their ears to clearing their throat. If Passo doesn’t put a smile on your face, you might as well end it now; you’re dead on the inside.

There is a temptation to try to find some sort of common thread in all the works to give us a snapshot of current concerns in contemporary dance. The one that was the most obvious to me is that almost all the works incorporate periods of (much needed) rest for their dancers, who are given the chance to catch their breath for a few moments or take a sip of water before going on with the show.

The program also includes Running Sculpture, a duet performed by Katri Siipola and Taneli Törmä, choreographed by Denmark’s Lars Dahl Pedersen. Though it is the weakest of the works in this program, the comparison is misleading since Running Sculpture has plenty of positive qualities, not the least of which is that it shows just how fucking hot a man in a skirt can be. Montreal is represented by Virginie Brunelle, who showed a duet (danced by Luc Bouchard Boissonneault and Claudine Hébert) from Complexe des genres, a new show she is working on. It’s showing a lot of promise and, even though Brunelle just presented a new work last month, it’s already making us look forward to the next one. In Europe, she will be presenting an excerpt from Foutrement, which has already been seen here. All in all, Les 9è Bancs d’Essai Internationaux made for an invigorating evening of dance.

For more information, visit www.tangente.qc.ca.