by It’s tiring being a pioneer. You move forward, break new ground, and then watch others follow the path you fought so hard for. You remain visionary, but time changes your reputation and relevance. Last week’s dance brought three contrasting cases for consideration and review.
For more than 40 years, Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker has been the queen of visionary rigor; Her rigorous reinterpretation of dance has inspired an entire contemporary movement. You won’t necessarily go to work where you’ll be entertained by her, but it’s likely that you’ll be provoked by it.
Over the past year, however, her reputation for creative discipline has been tarnished by complaints from former dancers and employees of her company, Rosas, who said she led the company in an authoritarian manner, leading to bullying and body shaming. De Keersmaeker now apologized “to all the people I disappointed and hurt” and promised a better future. The company has managed to keep going.
All of this makes up her new piece, Exit at the topwith its prescient subtitle, After the stormseem remarkably relevant. It premiered before the allegations came to light and toured in the midst of her mea culpa. It feels like a beginning, combining the theoretical elements of her work into something freer and even happier.
The subtitle contains a pun. However, the piece begins with a quote from Walter Benjamin’s essay on the painting of Paul Klee Angelus NovusBattered by “a storm blowing from paradise” that “hurls a single catastrophe at his feet,” it is full of allusions to Shakespeare The stormto a feeling of magic used and forsaken, of paradises lost and broken. Beginning with a stunning image of a storm in which hip-hop dancer Solal Mariotte is weightlessly tossed back and forth by invisible forces beneath a billowing sheet of plastic, it feels as though it is laden with fear for the planet, but also full of what seems like hope.
At some point the dancers collapse into a swaying and vomiting heap, like so many exhausted ravers
His primary theme is the relationship between walking and dancing, his music is the blues, starting with Robert Johnson’s Walking Blues. The score, a collaboration between the late Jean-Marie Aerts, guitarist and dancer Carlos Garbin and singer Meskerem Mees, is performed live, with Garbin playing guitar and dancing and Mees singing with piercing clarity while going along with the moves.
The 13-member cast are credited as co-creators, and although the colored lines on the floor are purely De Keersmaeker elements, representing the geometric patterns that bind their thinking, the movement evolves to incorporate breakdancing and wild party house outbursts.
There is a feeling of seething chaos; The dancers begin the work in costumes that look like strict breastplates and finish it in chiffon and bare-chested. At some point, like so many exhausted ravers, they collapse into a swaying, vomiting heap. But however uninhibited it may be, there is also a precision – a sense that movements are being analyzed, examined and executed. In his willingness to use a different vocabulary to explore his philosophical concerns, Exit at the top keeps De Keersmaeker up to date and gives it its very special shine.
Street dance collective Flawless may seem far removed from De Keersmaeker’s dance efforts, yet they were among the groups that brought hip-hop dance into the mainstream when they reached the finals in 2009 Britain’s Got Talent. Unfortunately for her, her competitors included another dance group, Diversity, who won the overall competition.
The diversity is now fragmented, but Flawless still performs and celebrated their 20th anniversary Past, present, futurea window display that featured their founder, Marlon “Swoosh” Wallen, and seven of the original all-male crew alongside the new company full of women and lots of children’s lockers and snaps. The tone was mixed, from the hard-edged harmony of the original to the good-humored exuberance of the kids, but it was fun to remember Flawless’ part in making hip-hop dance so popular.
Founded in 2001 by Cassa Pancho, Ballet Black continues to play a critical role in creating space for Black and brown dancers in ballet. It has helped reshape the landscape, and the fact that the nine-member company has five new dancers in its new program, Heroesis a sign of the deep strength it fostered.
The program itself includes a new work by Sophie Laplane, If initiallyand Mthuthuzeli November’s The waiting gameboth of which, in different ways, celebrate the heroism of simple endurance.
If initially is restless and disjointed, as various dancers are given a white crown while the soundtrack vacillates from Beethoven to electronica. The waiting game builds its impact more patiently, held together by detailed performances from Ebony Thomas as a man in crisis and Isabela Coracy as the voice in his head. Both works are beautifully performed by a company that is always a joy to watch.
Star ratings (out of five)
Exit at the top ★★★★
Past, present, future ★★★
Heroes ★★★
