Like Ships that Collide in the Night

It’s the end of the school year and, as is now tradition, UQAM dance students are hard at work to present the choreography of one of their own. Caroline Dusseault, this year’s selected choreographer, is well aware that the bar is high; last year, two of her classmates ended their run with a sold-out show and even managed to land on a few year-end lists (including my own). “But I think I worked hard too,” she tells me. And it shows. I got to see a short excerpt from a rehearsal this week and it only took a few minutes to find myself touched by it.

UQAM dance students during a rehearsal of Caroline Dusseault’s Les Rudiments

Maybe it’s because she tackles a universal theme: relationships. When I ask her about her inspiration, she says, “It always starts with what I’m going through, and for sure what moves me the most is relationships. It inspires me a lot. I try my best to reach as many people as possible, in different ways. My goal is to touch people. Of course, everyone goes through relationships, even if they’re not necessarily in a couple.”

Accordingly, her dance Les Rudiments relies heavily on duos. I ask her about this decision given that, through school, she has access to ten dancers and that choreographers rarely get the opportunity to work with such a large group. “My inspiration was really in duo work. It was really a challenge to find the relation between two individuals, to work not on ten bodies, but on five times two.” Since for the audition she only had four dancers, there was necessarily a transition period when the number of dancers jumped to ten. “It really became a group work because at the beginning the couples were doing really different things, but when I transitioned to five couples, I realized that they needed to have some points in common. But I also tried to give each couple its own colour.”

When I get to see part of the rehearsal, I’m pleasantly surprised; given our conversation, I expected a languorous work where the couples would perform independently. Instead, what I find is extremely dynamic. Though the couples do not necessarily interact in a direct physical manner, there persists a kinetic connection that deeply enriches the work. We get the sense that we may be looking at five different couples just as well as we might be looking at the same couple at five different stages of its life. “I always try to see all of it as one whole body, whether it be one person or a duo or a quatuor. I really see the rectangle as six people who move like one body with twenty-four limbs. Sometimes, a couple is two individuals who become one, and sometimes a group can become one entity.”

Then there is the matter of gender. Most dance students at UQAM are women and the cast of Les Rudiments comprises ten of them. Without wanting to sound heterosexist, I ask her if she feels that it limited her work in some way. “Even if it would have been up to me, I would have chosen ten women. And if I’d had men, I would have put them together. What I like to see is equal forces. It’s not really impressive to see a man lift a woman. But to see a woman lift another woman…”

This vision of relationships as a meeting of equals is unbelievably refreshing. Still, my experience with dance – where interesting choreography often emerges from instability – leads me to suspect that the reality onstage is otherwise. “Yes, there is often a person in control, one who is more submissive, one more enterprising. Sometimes they’re also in harmony with each other, but I really try to play with when there’s a discrepancy [in power].”

And we fall into the darker side of relationships. She confesses to me, “Sometimes I wonder if we’re made to be in relationships. Often, when we’re in a couple, we become dysfunctional and we lose ourselves in the other. It’s this questioning that fed my dance.” Despite this fairly bleak view, what I actually experience in the presence of Les Rudiments is something of great beauty; it is incredibly affecting to witness human beings connect, even if it is to collide with each other. She concludes, “That’s it, really. When you look at a couple, you know very well that it’s not pleasant, but you want it anyway, for the passion.”

Les Rudiments is presented at L’Agora de la danse from Wednesday, April 16 to Saturday, April 19, at 8pm. Tickets are 10$ and can be purchased by calling 514.525.1500.