… [The Angels] see cleary
that [Humans] are not really at home
in the interpreted world. Perhaps there remains
some tree on a slope, that we can see
again each day: there remains to us yesterday’s street,
and the thinned-out loyalty of a habit
that liked us, and so stayed, and never departed.
First Duino Elegy, Rainier Marie Rilke (A. S. Kline)
“There is something of Giselle in it,” said I to Karine, darkly, after seeing Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker’s Verklärte Nacht (“Transfigured Night”) the other evening at the Espace Cardin. It’s not that I object to the hokey melodrama; neither Karine nor I are strangers to inconvenient evolutions of affection, god knows.
Emotive incontinence or problematic pregnancy, either, for that matter. But.
I meant to tell her that Giselle or Verklärte Nacht or most other ballet-classic dance pieces use the body to tell a story rather than using the body so that it tells some-body’s story. So, I think the need to tell Verklärte Nacht’s story – de Keersmaeker wrote the choreography for the music, after all – means that the fluidity of Samantha van Wissen’s modern-dance expressionism (of bodily feeling and emotion) must necessarily stumble over Schoenberg’s made-just-for-ballet-style melodrama.
Since the whole strength of Claire Croizé’s Evol – which opened at the Théâtre de la Bastille not too terribly long ago – is that the some-bodies tell themselves, there’s no worry of expression stumbling over a story. The art in Croizé’s choreography is in keeping the way wide enough for improvisation that works as performance; she does that.
Inspired by Rainier Marie Rilke’s Duino Elegies, which hold that a human being exists outside of thought, belief, tradition, philosophy and religion, Croizé says the idea behind Evol - an anagram of “love” which also recalls “evolution” - is “to share the love of the bodies of the dancers and the beauty of their movements”. As Evol goes forward, sometimes accompanied by music from David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust, sometimes by silence, performers improvise personal movement that expresses their different personalities.
Evol opens with the cast spreading itself in a diagonal line, back corner to front corner, across the stage, giving the impression of a spray of salt or of flower petals. Two women performers – I identified them as “Blue” and “Grey” in my notes – detach. They remain non-positioning in respect to each other as they dance silence, though it does seem that Grey uses her body as a semaphore from go; from this begins an almost by-the-numbers introduction of personalities, of some-bodies.
I was struck by what seemed an almost continuous signaling and semaphoring, although it
seemed to me more non-intentional tendency in movement than deliberate attempt to establish communication, at least at first. So it is that hands and arms point and wave more than propel and position, while strong costume identities and costume alterations and changes, highlight, without establishing, different potentials for positioning among the performers. The development of these potentials – couple, group, female-male, female-female, male-male – evolve up until the show ends.
About 10 minutes in, Ziggy Stardust makes rhythm and beat available to the evolving personalities. Plants begin to furnish the stage and define space. What was signaling and semaphore seems to become interpersonal stories that parallel a progressive positioning of all.
Performers become more articulated around music, although this does not mean that performers systematical, or even often, dance to the music… rather they use music to articulate their positioning: sometimes the spectator watches movement through the music, sometimes performers express feeling within the music. This said, there is a lovely moment of straightforward ballet to “Major Tom”.
“Major Tom” presages an increasing synchrony that, with performers all dressed up, becomes an equally lovely finale of dance and rhythm (not interpretation) to “Rock & Roll Suicide”.
I felt, although neither Karine nor the people next to me agreed in the feeling, that strong improvisation was a factor in making the piece more mechanical than fluid. The observation isn’t necessarily a criticism in the context. Evol isn’t about an approach to movement such Ohad Naharin’s “Gaga”, but about “spontaneous synchrony”, real improvisation. Where there is more spontaneity in movement, performers must assess their positioning in the movement around them: a certain holding back, which visually translates as “mechanical”, is the result.
Conception and choreography: Claire Croizé / Performing co-creators: Claire Godsmark, Youness Khoukhou, Emmi Väisänen, Jason Respilieux / Dramaturgy:
Étienne Guilloteau / Lighting: Jan Maertens / Costuming: Anne-Catherine Kunz / Production: Action Scénique vzw : Kunstencentrum BUDA (Courtrai)
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