Corps caverneux explores the inner male being
Three performers use dance to explore what it means to be a man
For women who care to make an effort to understand men beyond the cover stories in Cosmopolitan, the new creation by Montreal choreographer Aurélie Pedron could be a ticket to ride. Presented under the joint auspices of DanseCité and Tangente, the work, Corps caverneux (Cavernous Body), delves into the inner male being of three quite different men.
Daniel Soulières is the mature dean of Montreal dancers, Lael Stellick projects a young man’s formidable physical presence and Félix Beaulieu-Duchesneau brings the knowledge that comes with raising three kids.
Each was asked over the course of a working process that began 18 months ago to contribute their notions of how it feels to be a man.
“It wasn’t an intellectual process at all,” said Pedron at a recent rehearsal in the huge studio in the bowels of Place des Arts that she was renting from O Vertigo dance company. “We worked always with what was felt, and revealed images that we hadn’t planned on showing. We never said, ‘OK, here we show men’s relation to their infancy.’ ”
The child is father to the man, of course, so notions of infancy did make it into Corps caverneux. The work’s opening scene at rehearsal showed six-footer Beaulieu-Duchesneau repeatedly slamming an old-fashioned baby carriage violently on the floor. He ended up wearing the hood of the carriage awkwardly on his head. Whether his gestures toward the carriage related to his own infancy or to his role as adult caregiver was open to interpretation.
“I tried to use images as though they were an unfolding fan — they bring various interpretations to each observer,” Pedron said.
“My great fear was to stigmatize men, declaring men are like this or men are like that. I dislike when advertising stigmatizes men or women by using their attributes to sell something. For me, a man can be many things.”
So the cowboy hat in Soulières’s hands was transformed from a Marlboro Man symbol of machismo into a butterfly flickering under a strong light. For Pedron, such transformations are part of the work’s poetic quest to find hidden aspects of men. When poetry is so abstract, nothing should be taken at face value. Taken literally, the sight of Soulières standing forlornly in a steel laundry basin, as he does at the opening, would be absurdly funny.
Stellick, meanwhile, was harnessed into a weird contraption created by sculptor Jeremy Gordaneer using two accordions that had been lying idly about Pedron’s house. Ventilation pipes from a generator pumped air into the accordions to create a long, drawnout single note. The sight of the contraption on the dancer’s back gave rise to visions of labour, toil, drudgery.
“I told Jeremy that I wanted a ‘feminine’ object, but it turned into a very ‘masculine’ one,” said Pedron, inadvertently falling into the sexist trap herself. Yet such traps, she realized, are practically inevitable.
“(Sexist) clichés do exist inside us because we live in society — we’re not untouched.”
Unfolding almost in utter darkness with illumination coming only from strategically placed light bulbs, the opening scene had an undeniable tension.
As the work progresses, Pedron said, it passes through several colours, eventually brightening and ending in light.
“I don’t look to create tension, but it’s in all my works. I have the impression that I’m ‘digging’ in unusual places.
“I want the viewer to have his own image, but I don’t want to set him free. Tension is my tool for holding him captive.”
Corps caverneux is the counterpoint to Chair (Flesh), Pedron’s 2011 work about the nature of women.
“Working with women and men is equally enjoyable, but maybe I had more trouble working with women. Maybe I was more conscious of being a woman. Moreover, Chair was quite violent and it wasn’t easy to accept this violence. I tried to get away from it, but it kept coming back.”
Pedron’s artistic reflections on men and women invite comparison with another trilogy about the sexes by Montreal choreographer Charmaine LeBlanc, the all-female Quarantaine (2004), the allmale Quarantaine 4X4 (2008) and last year’s Terminus, with a mixed cast.
Common to both Leblanc’s and Pedron’s projects are not only their use of accompanying video/ graphic arts, but, more significantly, their violence in the sections about women — emotional in Quarantaine, more overtly physical in Chair.
Pedron might end up with a trilogy of her own. She’s looking for the right format for a possible third work on the same theme.
“Maybe it’ll have a one-on-one with the audience.”