Un Homme et une femme Forgets its Audience

Setting dance to the only opera ever composed by Béla Bartók, Le Château de Barbe-Bleue, is an ambitious project that Alain Francoeur and Dominique Porte set out to accomplish with Un Homme et une femme, currently underway at Agora de la danse. The duo is an incredibly difficult work that might frustrate the most avid dance enthusiasts, offering very little reward for its minimalist approach.

To its credit, Un Homme et une femme never misleads its audience. It starts small and ends in the same way. Francoeur walks in and turns on the lights at the onstage switchboard. He then stands in front of one of four speakers facing towards the center of the stage and shakes up and down for minutes on end.

Porte enters the scene topless, just like Francoeur. Her dance is equally minimalist as she stands on the tip of her toes. In fact, their creation often looks more like a series of blocking than dancing. Theoretically, the juxtaposition of such dramatic music with such minimalist movement seems like it could have created an interesting experience; in reality, it simply does not work. Instead of bathing in the music, the performers are swallowed whole by it, their creation unable to compete with its majestic musical accompaniment. Personally, I always feel a bit uneasy when the best thing about a dance show is the music.

There are two main problems with Un Homme et une femme that are symbolically represented onstage. First, the speakers facing inward and the dancers repeatedly performing with their eyes closed: Francoeur and Porte are the sole choreographers and dancers of the show, leaving them no possibility to experience it as the audience does and to fix the deficiencies that appear when viewed from the outside.

Which leads us to the second set of symbols: the performers repeatedly stand still with their back to the audience and, again, their eyes are often closed. In its current state, Un Homme et une femme is not a show for an audience; it is a show for the dancers that perform it. The performance makes the audience feel completely ignored, which clearly becomes alienating no matter how durable their patience. Whatever interior life the dancers are experiencing, it never succeeds in being communicated to the audience.

Even though the audience was resiliently patient the evening I attended the show, it did not stop them from periodically looking at one another with a puzzled look on their face. Un Homme et une femme is the perfect exemplification of inaccessible contemporary dance. Luckily, having seen countless dance shows these past few years, I know that this generalization is inaccurate and that there are plenty of choreographers who strive for an experience that, no matter how difficult, can be truly rewarding for both the artists and the audience.

Un Homme et une femme continues until Saturday, March 24 at Agora de la danse. Tickets range from 15-21$. For more information, call 514-525-1500.