Karine frowned as, to hide her doubt, she looked down into her wine glass.
The wine was white. This was after ten in the evening.
As I see it, nightmare’s original recipe. She took a false sip.
She’s never been crazy, so she never does really understand how terrifyingly uncomfortable living in one’s skin may be. Though usually on the money, the importance of some things may escape her.
We were meeting for a drink at la Comète, whose street sign looks like the emoji; I had just seen the CCN-Ballet de Lorraine’s Plaisirs inconnus (https://vimeo.com/269886819), (something like “Fresh pleasures”), at Palais de Chaillot – the Théâtre National de Danse. The idea of the piece was to put the accent on the performance (and its dancers) by hiding the names of the programs’s five well-known choreographers as well as its stage, lighting and costume designers.
The Ballet’s artistic director Petter Jacobsson says that anonymity reduces the affect of expectation. Onlookers might be able to renew the pleasure of first meeting with the choreographers by meeting them anew in the dancers. I counted nine segments in one hour and fifteen minutes of program; at beginning and end, the stage was bisected with a thick check transparent plastic curtain of contemporary colors; otherwise light. The idea seemed to add depth and breadth to the stage: a lot of womb space for the performance.
Unlike many people around me seemed to, I didn’t recognize any choreographic style and did not feel teased.
But then I never can do. I never can put my finger on the music either, even the most well known.
Anyhow, I said to Karine as I sat down, the river is never twice: live performance is to get the new as new is made in the mix of performers, place, set, onlookers, weather and the crowd on the streets bus and metro. What seemed to me to be a mocking Bolero was really nice, because the humor let some real sensuality filter through – why Bolero, a march suitable to snappy uniforms, jackboots and feral shouts, is considered erotic has always been beyond me. A march recalls us to duty, perhaps, when we are bloody sick of our usual sex partner?
But, “Karine”, I said, just as my pint was delivered to the table, “The very best segment of the dance for me was three couples, two slightly in the back and one in front – Perhaps it was a tribute to American musical-style dance? Made me think of that”.
The hands and arms of the front couple came so close as they sought each other that I thought, Well, that’s really as close as you ever get, isn’t it?
“Just to the point where skin galvanism makes potential lovers aware that resistance starts where desire flowers”, I told her.
“Then the man and the woman began to dance. The woman fell, tripped. She was a charged wave shaping into her beloved’s orbit. And he, Karine, he was all head, arms, back, legs, feet, all regard, a Sun to her coruscating Venus. He confronted that woman. He caught that woman in his arms.
He spun that woman then spilled her for that she purled like the rainbow’s arc”!
Then the woman went sprawling! The man stood in disarray!
Bébé, “I was shocked. Almost, I was hurt. No, I was hurt”. And then, in a single, spontaneous spring the woman threw herself into arms that found strength only as they felt her need them.
“It was gorgeous. And then it occurred to me, Karine, that confidence, springing to or catching up, builds the join that lets us seem to come together. That’s the strength of Plaisirs inconnus, too”.
The various the anonymously-written choreographic segments of Plaisirs inconnus were arranged by CCN-Ballet de Lorraine performers. They included Jonathan Archambault, Amandine Biancherin, Agnès Boulanger, Alexis Bourbeau, Clara Brunet, Thomas Caley, Pauline Colemard, Justin Cumine, Giuseppe Dagostino, Charles Dalerci, Inès Depauw, Flavien Esmieu, Nathan Gracia, Tristan Ihne, Vivien Ingrams, Petter Jacobsson, Margaux Laurence, Valérie Ly-Cuong, Amélie Olivier, Elsa Raymond, Rémi Richaud, Ligia Saldanha, Willem Jan Sas, Céline Schoefs, Luc Verbitzky.
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