Choreographer invites reflection
AVANT-GARDE CONCEPT DANCE encourages viewers to think about what they’re watching and the effect it has on them
Unlike classical ballet, which holds to wellestablished theatrical conventions like a proscenium stage, aloof performers and cues for applause, avant-garde dance throws conventions into a sack and shakes them up. Montreal choreographer Marie Béland has been shaking the sack for the past 10 years. Next week, her company, maribe — sors de ce corps, will scatter her latest three-part work, BleuVert-Rouge, onto the stage of Agora de la Danse.
For those who insist on fitting art into pigeonholes, Béland’s work can be slotted as concept dance. The very act of performing and observing a performance forms the subject of the work.
Spectators get a clear invitation to reflect on what they’re seeing, on why they’re watching it, and on the effect it has on them.
“I’m more and more interested in how dance can be ‘liberated,’ not only in its content but in its context,” said Béland, 32, in a recent interview. “How it can be presented, what kind of signs and clues can lead viewers to a certain interpretation.”
Béland fell under the spell of concept dance while a dance student at UQÀM at the turn of the millennium. These were the years of the final editions of Montreal’s Festival International de Nouvelle Danse, where some of the finest dance minds on the planet presented shows that reworked notions of what constitutes dance. Béland recalled seeing works by radical European conceptual choreographers like Jérôme Bel, Xavier Le Roy and Boris Charmatz.
In 2010, under a joint agreement between the Quebec government and Berlin’s contemporary dance organization, TanzWerkstatt, Béland was chosen to spend two months in residence in Berlin, where young contempor- ary choreographers live and breathe concept dance. Two other Montreal choreographers who have benefited from this stimulating residency program are Catherine Gaudet and Dany Desjardins.
Even at the outset of her career, Béland was bothered that ordinary people often didn’t get the concept behind concept dance.
“They would tell me, ‘I didn’t understand anything.’ I thought that I’d like to make dances one day that people could understand.”
Not easy to do, however, when you’re pulling the rug from under people’s conceptual feet.
In Béland’s 2011 work, Behind, Une danse dont vous êtes le héro, spectators could see just the reflection of dancers’ bodies in pools of light on the floor, not the dancers themselves. The “dance” consisted only of images put together in people’s minds.
“The body is not the only vehicle for dance. Dance can be an image, a text, a sound,” said Béland in the kind of debatable proposition that confounds traditionalists.
Bleu-Vert-Rouge is a multi- disciplinary work that presents the same sequence or concept from different perspectives.
In the first part, Bleu, the dancers — Simon-Xavier Lefebvre, Marilyne St. Sauveur and Ashlea Watkin — are hardly seen at all. Actions are presented mainly through lighting and video.
“Some things are revealed, other things are hidden. Spectators are invited to recall these fragments. The work labours to confuse perception, and spectators could be somewhat disoriented by what they’re seeing.”
In Vert, the action centres on inanimate objects, while the last part, Rouge, is a kind of response to the fragments seen in the first two parts.
“The spectator must work to put the pieces together to form a whole. The resonance of each part rests in its relation to the others.”
To Béland’s mind, the work is more than simply an abstract exercise.
“I wanted to see how bodies are marked by the images and sounds around them — how they bathe in this framework. In life, we’re surrounded by TV, video. Our bodies spit out these influences without even realizing it.”
Many people shy away from concept dance because they think it’s too intellectual or too perplexing. No doubt, like any dance form, concept dance can fall flat, but it can also be highly intriguing and even funny (admittedly, not always intentionally).
“I want people to be entertained,” said Béland, “but that’s not enough. I want them to go out after with an outlook that’s been a little transformed.”
Bleu-Vert-Rouge, Wednesday to Friday at 8 p.m. and Saturday, Jan. 26 at 4 p.m. at Agora de la Danse, 840 Cherrier St. Tickets: $28, seniors $22, students and under-30 $20. Call 514-5251500 or visit agoradanse. com.