KEERSMAEKER'S TORNADO WATCH HITS A NERVE IN PARIS

By Patricia Boccadoro

PARIS, 4 MARCH 2008—It is hard to imagine two more different programmes than that full of colour, passion and exuberance given by the Bolshoi at the Palais Garnier, to that of the Compagnie Rosas, full of people with problems gyrating around in the semi-obscurity of the Theatre de la Ville. After the light, musicality, and classical precision of the Russians came the grey drabness of the Flemish with several improvised dance sequences in silence. When the pianist was playing, the dancers were often motionless, and when they started to move, he got up and left his piano.

Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker's new work, Zeitung, a piece for 9 dancers set to music by Bach, Webern and Schonberg aims high. According to the programme notes, it is "a search of the unstable combination of music and dance, choreography and improvisation, romance and disillusion."

Entering the theatre, the large, empty stage is set with a grand piano on one side and two or three chairs scattered on the other. Three people in street clothes stand chatting casually behind one of the chairs. Are they technicians? No, they are dancers, as they are barefooted, and as if to prove it, a young man begins his solo, kneeling, skipping, and lying on the floor, before his companion joins in. Then a girl in a blue dress and white cardigan moves around the stage in silence. The movements are reminiscent of the young Charles Chaplin with added arm swings, but without his poetry and grace.

Much energy is used by the dancers as more come on in ones, twos and threes, but their message is confused, perhaps because most of them had nothing to say. They lacked substance. It was only after perhaps an hour or so that the work finally took off for too brief a time, with the arrival of a dark-haired, black-suited tornado, who had obviously understood what Keersmaeker wanted, and was doing his best to communicate it to the audience. Suddenly the broken movements like snapped twigs and powerful, staccato swings from the shoulders took on a meaning, but when the dancer left the stage, he took the piece with him and the audience was left a group of people who were seemingly walking with stones in their shoes, with a pain in their side, or with a twenty-kilo rucksack on their back. One dancer appeared to have twisted a nerve in his neck. Improvisation is all well and good when there's a point to be made, but it was irritating to watch a member of the troupe with an itch he couldn't scratch.

For the moment the work, one hour and forty-five minutes long, no interval, is a series of solos, duos and trios, sometimes set to music and sometimes not, and one wonders whether the company did in fact have enough rehearsal time. When a dancer has something to express, a work can be seen in a different light where the most disjointed gestures can take on a grace of their own. Moreover, sequences in silence are rarely satisfactory with the spectators coughing, clearing their throats, sniffing snuffling and scuffling their feet. With time, the piece might improve. On the other hand, it might not.

Patricia Boccadoro is the Dance Editor at Culturekiosque.com

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