Violent Reanimation of a Modern Style in Crisis

The Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève began its engagement at the Joyce Theater this past Tuesday night. The Swiss company, making its New York debut with these performances, has had a vibrant international history, passing through diverse phases of classicism, modernism and expressionism to find itself today no longer attached to any particular style. However, the three dances in the evening’s program clearly embraced the contemporary release style, with the dancers’ bodies violently thrashing as they bounded across the stage. While this movement style tends to quickly become redundant, these works were filled with innovative uses for the capacities of the dancers and consequently revitalized this style in crisis. Throughout the evening, the dancers carried with them a melancholy individualism, infusing the dances with an air of tragedy, heartbreak, and exoticism that brought the audience to its feet. One can only hope this wave of unique modernity will catch on in Europe and the United States, where release today is often synonymous with a hyperactive lack of technique.
The first work on the program, Saburo Teshigawara’s “Para-Dice,” featured eight dancers who began onstage in a staggered line, alternating men and women. To sounds and musical creations arranged by Willi Bopp, the dancers began by performing repetitive arm movements that created the ambience of an ultra-modern runway show. This soon gave way to a series of now-traditional contemporary dances, emphasizing thrown arms and overactive torsos, compared to the relative articulation of the legs. Apart from the changing lighting and emotional content of the different sections, the piece gave the misleading impression that the evening would consist of proficient, but largely repetitive dancing. Happily, this was not the case.
The second dance of the evening, “Selon Désir,” was danced to selections from Bach’s “Saint Matthew Passion” and “Saint John Passion”. This was a challenging task considering the numerous other choreographies to this magnificent music, including Charles Wideman’s dance of the same name. However, choreographer Andonis Foniadakis did an outstanding job reinterpreting this multifaceted composition, which certainly holds up to multiple incarnations. The dance began with a woman’s solo during which the dancer tore across the stage, completely uninhibited by bones, muscles and flesh, rising and crashing into the floor. Immediately, one felt trapped in the confines of the stage, as the haunting voices in the musical chorus smothered the dancer, nearly tearing her to pieces. Eventually, the rest of the dancers emerged, clad in skirts and tattered, mismatched rags. The piece rapidly escalated into hectic group pictures, signaling the chaos of mass movement in a frenetic desire to ascend and transcend boundaries both real and imagined. The dancers moved to the limits of physical capacity, throwing themselves across the stage in seemingly impossible bodily feats. A particularly beautiful moment, revisited throughout the work, had women held perched inches above the floor, all limbs extended. Suddenly, carriers would spiral the women upwards until they were held vertically in the air in crucifix-like poses, limbs extended, lurching forward, hair flying. Interestingly, Foniadakis decided to have the dancers wear their hair down during the piece, their faces covered throughout—anonymous, androgynous creatures clambering across the stage.
In the last work, “Loin,” titled to indicate the company’s travels around the globe, the stage was draped with pleated curtains evoking an air of serene exoticism. The curtain lifted to reveal two male dancers standing head to head, performing liquid, mirrored arm movements, soon echoed by the corps of dancers who explored further nuances of the mimetic theme. Eventually, the dance gave way to a stunning duet with lush partnering, inviting the audience into an intimate gathering, recalling old-world images of “the Orient.” In sections following the duet, the dancers alternated between reciting comic monologues about the horrors of giant cockroaches storming the stage during tours through China and dancing to vocal music, which they sang. While having dancers accompany themselves frequently destroys the unity of a piece, showing the dancers to the audience in an often-uncomfortable light, as they are in “Loin,” instead bring the performers to life through their vivid testimony. While the piece ran a bit long in the middle, the final scene created a lasting impression rarely accomplished in the theater nowadays. Following an impassioned and lyrical solo by Manuel Vignoulle, two men fell through the curtains onto the stage to be carried about by Vignoulle. Never separating hands, these two corpse-like figures were spiraled, somersaulted and dragged in a dramatic disjunction that finally brought all of the dancers back to stage to form a poignant body pile-up. The audience, rightfully moved by the works, demanded multiple bows from this spirited group of dancers. Choreographers, take note: audiences respond to substantive choreography. Modern does not have to mean meager.