The Simple Beauty of Gillis

If there is a common thread to the three works choreographed by Margie Gillis for M.Body.7, it is that of simple beauty. Whether only one dancer or nine of them find themselves onstage, they always seem to quietly embrace life.

The star choreographer opened the evening with her own solo, Par un fil d’argent, where an empty jacket hangs from the ceiling. As Gillis dances around it, she also tries to grab onto it or immerse herself in it, but each time she inevitably falls to the floor. It is one of those moments when absence ironically makes its presence more felt than that of presence itself.

Eventually, she manages to put her hand in one sleeve and she puts her arm around her shoulder or caresses her face. Such gestures could be dangerously sentimental, but there is such honesty in Gillis’s performance that it carries with it the power of conviction. Finally, she puts on the jacket, a gesture rich with meaning that could be read in a multiplicity of ways: as imagination’s ability to dream presence into being, as her presence dissolving itself into absence, as her fulfilling search for self…

Her creation for Holly Bright, At the Hem of My Northern Coastal Clouds, is even more daring in its simplicity. Bright wears a white skirt that has hoops light enough to lift around her body, but heavy enough to give the dress its own distinct shape and delayed movement. She simply thrusts her hips, making the skirt swirl around her for minutes, to great hypnotic effect. Like a metronome, it seems to have a life of its own, eventually bound to wind down. But, as for now, it is still living.

The group work, ICI…, takes the qualities from the first two pieces and instils them in the community of women. But there is also something else at play here. Early on, Laurence Lemieux takes part of her dress off and proceeds to dance with great abandon. Similarly, though on a much smaller scale, all of the women let themselves go, allowing them to dance in all their silliness. Their interactions are filled with playfulness and humour.

But Lemieux takes it one step further and takes her entire dress of, running around the stage in her underwear, carefree. This is what this piece adds to the rest: the letting go. Even when all the dancers try to exercise their adult power over 11-year-old Sandrine Bissonnette-Robitaille, asking her to stand in different spots onstage, she eventually refuses to let herself be told what to do and constantly escape the hands of the eldest to find her own light.

The highlight of the night was the encore. The music of Lupin and Bach appropriately gives way to k.d. lang’s “Simple” for 72-year-old Eleanor Duckworth to take the stage and gracefully dance, Gillis and her seven other performers joining her, filling the stage with their beautiful energy. One by one they disappear, leaving Duckworth to encompass all women. A touching end to a near perfect evening.

PREVIEW Spain’s Compañia Nacional de Danza presents three different works by choreographer Nacho Duato at Place des arts from Thursday, March 6 to Saturday, March 8. For more information: 514.842.2112.