Le Patin Libre merges modern dance with ice skating
Award-winning Le Patin Libre pioneers new genre with its latest show
Don’t expect the kind of over-thetop chintz sent up by I, Tonya or Blades of Glory in Le Patin Libre’s latest show, Threshold, which plays at Aréna St-Louis from Wednesday to April 22 as part of the Danse Danse season.
True, the five members of the award-winning, Montreal-based company largely come from the more glittery end of showbiz skating. Founding member Alexandre Hamel even spent a year with Disney on Ice, while Samory Ba used to skate on cruise ships. But Le Patin Libre’s moves and street-casual look are more that of down-to-earth, postmodern dance, while the theme of their new show — exploring the mysterious threshold immediately before and after catastrophic change — seems more performance art than prince-meets-princess romance.
Speaking to the Montreal Gazette by phone, Hamel describes how television depictions of competitive figure skating “tricked” him into entering that world, which he came to see as an almost militaristic, sect-like discipline sternly discouraging of individualism or experimentation. He escaped through acts of adolescent rebellion (“I’ll admit they were a little bit silly”) and, in 2005, he formed Le Patin Libre, largely in opposition to those earlier experiences.
But merging skating with contemporary dance was still very much uncharted territory.
“Individuals in the past did extremely interesting things with skating,” says Hamel, “but they often stayed isolated from the arts world, which understandably looks down on skating, because it’s a popular medium associated with family entertainment.”
With little to no artistic vocabulary for a more contemporary and challenging approach, Hamel says it was “like arriving in a choreographic Wild West.”
Enter a new sheriff in town in the shape of Ruth Little, who specializes in dramaturgy for non-linguistic performance.
Little previously worked with the company for its 2014 show Vertical Influences, which toured internationally, including in Montreal last year, and won the Edinburgh Festival Audience Award. (She also collaborated on another Danse Danse show, Xenos, from the Akram Khan Company, which plays in Montreal next February.)
Back with the company for Threshold, Little admits “there were elements of their work that were still, as we all agreed, sort of cheesy, and didn’t belong in this more concentrated crucible of making contemporary movement and gestures on ice. And so they sort of laugh about the fact that I turn up with my dramaturgical chainsaw and do try to carve out the unnecessary leftover material that tries to explain itself too much.”
Threshold, Hamel explains, takes the form of a kind of “zoomin” on a charged moment of change.
“Our style of movement is really well adapted to do this choreographic zoom-in, because we can stretch time with glide,” he says. “We can move across space in this completely mysterious way that suspends the normal laws of movement. We can play with slow motion, with fast forward, with rewind in ways that dancers and people in theatre could not do.”
Little says that part of what she encourages the company to do is “just to let the physics of the thing become visible” — a process that echoes the way modern dance often emphasizes gravitational forces and the effort it takes to overcome them. And whereas figure skating usually overwhelms the sound of the blades with music, composer and skater Jasmin Boivin incorporates it into his soundtracks.
It seems, oddly, a long time coming for skating and contemporary dance to have found each other, especially here in Montreal. Le Patin Libre have finally established themselves as the first bold proponents in what appears to be a brand new genre.
But, as Little puts it, “the dance community is still confused about how to name and place them. Which is good, I think.”
Speaking of dance dramaturges, Raimund Hoghe,
who dramaturged for Pina Bausch before turning to choreography and performance himself, makes an appearance next week at Usine C.
Hommage à Raimund Hoghe will feature two of his pieces: Pas de deux, which he performs with Japanese dancer Takashi Ueno, and La Valse, in which he joins a group of dancers for a three-hour piece set to variations on a waltz by Ravel.
Perhaps the most immediately noticeable thing about Hoghe is his physical appearance. He has a severe curvature of the spine and cuts a strikingly diminutive figure. Hoghe boldly incorporates these physical characteristics to create explorations of grace and awkwardness, stamina and stillness.
Following Le Patin Libre’s performances,
Danse Danse continues with Tero Saarinen Company from Finland. Breath (Cinquième Salle of Place des Arts, April 17 to 21) is a one-man history of dance (with an accompanying accordionist) that incorporates the absurdist humour of Samuel Beckett.
The Danse Danse season ends with Sutra (Théâtre Maisonneuve of Place des Arts, May 3 to 9), the 10th-anniversary performance of this emblematic work from Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. Featuring 19 Buddhist monks and kung fu masters, it’s the fruit of several months in China’s Shaolin Temple and includes a set design by British sculptor Antony Gormley. Call 514-848-0623 or visit dansedanse. ca.
Agora continues its season with anOther (yes, that’s the name of the show), which is playing to April 14. Part installation, part performance, part concert, it marks Dana Gingras’s 25 years as a choreographer. Running Piece (April 18 to 21) has Jacques Poulin-Denis travelling while being rooted to the spot as a reflection on contemporary society. Les rois de la piste (April 25 to 28) is a theatrical celebration of disco culture with a touch of burlesque. All Agora shows play at the Wilder, 1435 Bleury St. Call 514-525-1500 or visit agoradanse.com.