Dance + Live Performance | Pittsburgh City Paper: Canadian choreographer Marie Chouinard says she has butterflies in her stomach over her latest work, "Gymnopédies." That's because when I spoke with her recently about the work that premiered in Lisbon, Portugal, this past June, she was still revising it.
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This was without question the worst show I have ever seen in my entire life. I was excited by the idea, it was certainly intriguing. Using a book as choreography instructions was an original idea. As soon as the show started the "music" started as well. It was this terrible grinding noise that went on the entire show. For the first 30 minutes various dancers proceeded to do one position, flail around a little bit, and then across the stage to the next position with absolutely no attempt at fluidity. Then the strobing started. It was the first time in the show the "music" had any relevance to what was happening onstage. So naturally they cut the music and continued to strobe for a full 7 minutes! By the end of that my eyes hurt and I could no longer tell what was happening onstage. The ending of that was the ending of the first act. Amid very unenthusiastic applause the performers came out for 4 curtain calls each one receiving a lot less applause then the previous. After intermission I think 50% of the audience was still there.
The second act was set to a slow beautiful melody played on a piano, and the sound of cars going by being blasted through the speakers for no apparent reason. The dance they performed had nothing to do with the music or the cars. It was a lot of chaotic flailing set to an entirely different beat. There might have been parts where they were dancing but it was hard to tell because they were often dancing in darkness wearing all black. Looking at the program revealed that the director was also the set, and lighting designer which might explain the terrible decision to strobe for 7 minutes and the inability to light the stage. After the curtain cal the curtain went down and the house lights came up. The audience got up and started to rush out. People started to sit down again when the curtain went up and some of the performers came out onstage. To everyone's astonishment they just started goofing around onstage and asking for applause. They would just walk around pose and then wait for clapping. When it didn't come they would start asking for via gesturing. 10 minutes into this the audience started refusing to clap and they brought out a boombox and played pre-recorded clapping. This went on for at least 20 minutes. I say at least because after 20 minutes of this, I left. I do not know how much longer they kept doing that, but when I left most of the audience looked pretty pissed off. A colossal waste of time, I would not encourage anyone to go see it.
Although the comment above mine says the show was not very good... I am super intrigued by it. Traditionally, dance is supposed to be beautiful and create a calming environment, but I love the idea of dance being used to create discomfort and disarray. I watched a video clip of this performance (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyT1Stijt20) and loved the way they tried to mimic the art in a true way. The art appeared to have violent, jerky movement, so the dancers did too. this choreographer particularly, Marie Chouinard, is known for her performances which chillingly portray dance. I was shown another piece of her's where the dancers were all portrayed as having physical or mental disabilities. They danced with crutches, or canes, and moved in a way which was truly haunting, yet extremely effective for the statement she was trying to make.
I have not seen the show and so I can not say whether it is good or not, but the concept behind it sounds really cool. Painting with India Ink is like calligraphy. There is such an art to it and it's been said that the paint brush dances across the paper. The movement in calligraphy can definitely be translated through dance. The concept is beautiful and it's really upsetting to hear that the show was not good. I just watched the clip that Anna had posted and it looked really good. It seemed like the music had fit the dance and the paintings perfectly. The chaos and yet organization together I think is pretty amazing. It's definitely different, but I think it looks fascinating. It's too bad that the production wasn't as good as it seems it is...
This show sounds so interesting. I love the idea of the dancers playing the music as well as dancing and the India Ink paintings sound so cool. I spend so much time trying to create drawings of people that are done with minimal strokes and can actually convey movement and do not look like stick figures, and it's pretty amazing how much of a challenge that can be. Becki is right, the drawings look like calligraphy and mixing the art of calligraphy with the arts of music and dance seems so beautiful to me. I'd love to see this show, it looks really interesting.
I was lucky enough to see this marvellous performance. I have never seen a single dance performance before in my life and this was certainly the best way to start it off. To begin, the first movement was completely inspiring: dancers began to create with their bodies a shape that was projected onto a screen on an upstage wall. The tempo increased, and eventually one begins to realize that these dancers are becoming the embodiment and characterization of lines, of shapes of drawings. One is only forced to ask are we just the embodiment of lines on a grander painting? Possibly the most courageous moment was after the dancers bowed at the "end" of the piece, they re-entered onstage, except as clowns. They then followed to preform a 20 minute clown piece mocking the entire performance they just put on. A pleasant reminder to never take yourself to seriously- a very important thing to remember.
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