The dance performance Grande Mess by Clémence Baubant starts with three young woman dance performers of color from Guadeloupe standing front of stage, left. Grande Mess, local French for “high mass”, the choreographers say, does not reference the Christian ritual. The performers wear black molding leotards, are in among two unequally-high white pedestals, like high steps; they stand on the blocks, stretch and gesture elegantly, drape themselves in the air, show themselves off, fun each other; there’s drum music in the distance. When they move off, I notice there are long, braided cords slung over their athletic shoulders.
Sugar island, dark skin, auction blocks, braided cords, showing themselves off. Why, that must be. Slave sale, with bullwhip.
Of course!
However, when the women have sashayed to the center stage and segued into costumes of white panties over black leotard with banana leaf halters and the far off music has become whole-stage present, the slave market story doesn’t make much sense.
With my casual racism out of the way as well as taken into consideration in terms of my reflections, in my experience of Clémence Baubant’s (and Lenablou’s) pieces, I think I’ve discovered something I had never thought about. It never occurred to me to imagine a body schema not centered around itself but rather from a point of contact in movement space. It seems to me that in Grande Mess, the three women’s dance begins at the soles of their feet, at the contact point with the ground, not, or at least it has seems to me, from the first or, root, chakra – as for instance you see in Martha Graham’s dance technique. As they progress through Grande Mess, the performers, Clémence Baubant, Naomi Yengadessin and Lisa Ponin, do not so much balance their bodies as shape them in the air, as if dancing a reflexology foot chart.
In experience, though, Grande Mess makes a unique demonstration of dance feeling. There is no mention of a particular technique or of dance feeling in the Grande Mess notes. However, the notes do declare the intention to explore the intimate relation of the body to walking while recalling (chthonic) figures such as such Ladjablès (“La Diablesse”) a Wild Woman, who re-balances the man-woman relationship gone to whack, or Mûlatresse Solitude(“Mulatta Solitude”), a real-life “mixed-race” anti-slavery leader turned Guadeloupe origin myth.
All this of suggests to me “point of contact” and fusion, rather than “center” as technical approach. Indeed, Baubant’s choreography fuses different movements into a body’s natural rhythm. As I watch, I see shades of traditional dancing from Africa with maybe even a jig from Europe with break attitude with Rock&Roll exuberance with line-dance execution with ballroom kaleidoscoping with personal expressionism with … I don’t know what-all! This is not to say, Grande Mess is potpourri de danse bouncing here and there: Grande Mess is all vertical motion, ether-wards, rippling up out of the Earth and pulsing through the air.
I felt the “point of contact/soles of the feet/vertical motion” theme as equally present in the second piece of the evening’s double bill, Le Sacre du Sucre (“The Rite of Sugar”), featuring the celebrated Guadeloupe dance performer and choreographer, Lenablou (or Léna Blou). Again, the notes make no mention of a particular approach, but explain that Le Sacre du Sucre is in the tradition of GwoKa, a dance practice that uses call and response and Ka-drum rhythms to initiate then shape a “spontaneous” dance. It strikes me that the premise is “The waters are not divided, so make the world”.
Le Sacre du Sucre, the notes declare, means to bring spectators into a story that is rooted, on the one hand, in the de-humanization of the body that historical slavery requires, on the other hand, in the unexpected, the unlikely and the unforeseeable in that same history.
As experience, Le Sacre du Sucre works out as an origin story. The question is: how does music exist? The answer is: contact with the world around and its rhythms.
The piece opens with what I think of as a dance floor in a poor, hot, country café. Two men, one woman. Drum sound in the wind, but no music. Too poor a place, I reckon, for a Victrola record player; must be a ménage à trois in the vein of Porgy & Bess, maybe Frankie & Johnny. Lenablou and her two men begin rough, awkward, slow. I think, like a couple dealing with an interloper who is by no means a third wheel.
And here is where it turns from a chronology to an ontology: all three are such practiced performers, their awkwardness also hints of them as guests at a party thrown by people who are new to them. This is not after all a story of what happens but of taking shape.
The drum sound takes on rhythm as the three continue together, are there, become practiced, letting in the sound of the world around through contact with their little space and with each other, by creating… The performers, Lenablou, Félix Flauzin and Allan Blou don’t just pick up the sound, they find it in the world around.
The men begin to rhythm the poor tables as if they were drums, bringing in effect what is distant near… With feet on the ground and hands searching the air, Lenablou makes their rhythm into dance, into a place where she can be together … They put on “sound shoes” (designed by performer Félix Flauzin). These transform the point of contact with the earth to music with their movement.
By the time the performers are taking their bows, they have defined themselves as individuals synching and falling out of synch, that is, they have gone from movement to rhythm, to dance to music …
Lenablou shows creation: it is a dance we all do.
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I saw “Grande Mess” and “Le Sacre du Sucre” at Carreau du Temple 10 October 2024.
“Grande Mess” is a creation of Clémence Baubant, with performance by her, Naomi Yengadessin and Lisa Ponin; dramaturgy by Mathilde Rance; scenographic creation by Anais Verspan; sound by Yannick Berbié; light by Marion Jouhanneau. Click for more on Clémence Baubant.
“Le Sacre du Sucre” is a creation of Lenablou (also written Léna Blou) with performance by her, Félix Flauzin and Allan Blou, assisted by James Carles; with music directed by Daniel Trépy; sound by Steeve Lancastre; and sound accessories by Félix Flauzin; light by Roger Olivier. Click for more on Lenablou.
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