Programmed into the heart of Atelier de Paris’ June Events 2019, performed by a hard-charging masculine septet, with strong rhythms and rocking-rolling-breaking solo, duo and group performances, Fouad Boussouf’s Näss (Folks) closed the festival Printemps de la danse Arabe#1, which began in March. I thought of it at first as a deliberate dance counterpoint to a performance-heavy June Events 2019 offer. It seems to me now that Näss wasn’t so much a counterpoint as a pointer toward a nearly completed transition of multiple dance and performance styles, traditions and approach to dance.
The CCN Ballet de Lorraine’s intensely moving performance of Thomas Hauert’s Flot (2018), which closed June Events sums up my thought. The troupe danced a ballet around ten Waltz Suites from Serge Prokofiev without a single – as far as I could see – classically inspired movement. On the contrary, the choreography seems to splurge on – and performers enjoy to the hilt – that play of almost clumsy disequilibrium and exquisitely defined balance that so often makes contemporary performance so visually interesting. It was ballet – we onlookers felt it as ballet – … But maybe my thought should trump the collective feeling. I will say precisely, Flot is dance that references historical ballet; Flot is not contemporary-style ballet. Maybe this will be true for all ballet from here on out.
Feeling hip-hop as much as a social origin as a performance style, Boussouf says he co-evolves his native Moroccan dance-culture with the socio-emotive power of hip-hop and the athletic esthetic vision of Nouveau cirque to create “urban dance”. He addresses his choreographies – including Näss (Folks) – to what he believes a universal quest for “elsewhere”. The audience at the Atelier de Paris, not by any means second-generation immigrant kids, seems to have been suitably transported: Näss got five ovations – as good as Crystal Pite’s The Season’s Canon at the Opéra Garnier in Spring 2018, as good as Noé Soulier’s Les Vagues (From Within) at Palais de Chaillot last Fall, as good as Hauert’s Flot at the Aquarium last week.
The spectator response says something and for the same reason: if Näss references hip-hop; if Canon references historical modern ballet; if Les Vagues references historical modern performance; if Flot references historical ballet dance, and cetera, spectators see them all as dance, a unified art of movement that must be good movement, whatever the choreographic references.
I wonder if this seeming shift in the way audiences and choreographers and programmers perceive dance – “the old quarrels are dead” is what it comes down to – isn’t an outlier of of shifted perceptions elsewhere?
NÄSS (Folks) - dance • 2018 • Fouad Boussouf - Cie Massala • 60 minutes • Théâtre de l’Aquarium, Cartoucherie, 5 June, 21h, • June Events 2019 /Printemps de la danse Arabe#1/Institut du monde arabe
FLOT - dance • 2018 • Thomas Hauert – CCN Ballet de Lorraine • minutes • Théâtre de l’Aquarium, Cartoucherie, 15 June, 21h, • June Events 2019
Fouad Boussouf - Cie Massala performance calendar; CCN Ballet de Lorraine performance calendar; Thomas Hauert (cie ZOO) performance calendar
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