DANCING AMONG SHADOWS TO FIND LIGHT
On the surface, the hour-long solo dance called Memory of a Shadow has rather simple elements — a chair, a sheet of white material, a pool of water, some pointed lights. Underneath, however, lie powerful forces. Memory of a Shadow is a sort of meditation which has an approach to performance more akin to that of eastern philosophies than to the kinetic impulses that inspire much of western dance.
“I’m interested in slow things,” the work’s creator, composer Jean-François Laporte admitted recently, after a partial run through of the piece at his Mile End studio.
The floor was cluttered with the techno gadgets of a man who, for the past two decades, has experimented with new soundscapes and visual backdrops, creating a wide variety of performance pieces in conjunction with dance artists like Frédéric Tavernini. His musical works include compositions for conventional string ensembles as well as for unconventional places like grain silos. For Memory of a Shadow, he constructed what might be described as a series of pipes through which he shoots blasts of air, almost like a pipe organ.
Two years ago in the same studio, before an invited audience, Laporte showed the initial version of Memory of a Shadow with dancer Siôned Watkins. They later presented the piece on a world tour that took them as far away as Japan, where Laporte once lived for several months, learning to appreciate the minimalism and formal beauty that characterizes the esthetic underlying Japanese art. When Laporte first saw a Japanese garden, for example, he dismissed it as merely a pile of rocks. Closer inspection revealed the refined sense of scale and proportion that the gardeners used in placing each rock in relation to the garden’s carefully chosen plants and to the surrounding pond. The “natural” look of the garden was really a result of great deliberation.
Memory of a Shadow also has a “pond” — a shallow expanse of water inside an inflatable pool. Powerful lights illuminated a white sheet hanging in front of the pond so that objects behind the sheet cast large silhouettes. Magical shadows appeared when the water in the pool was disturbed by strokes from a long, wooden pole. The rolling ripples moved in different directions simultaneously. The smallest movement created a shadow. The effect was mesmerizing.
“What I try to bring is another state of mind, where you just forget your life,” Laporte said. “If you go inside the piece, then you disappear and wake up at one point. You just go back and forth in a kind of state where things are not so clear … where you just float. Slowly, things kind of make connection with each other.”
The pool extended in front of a wall where a wooden chair was suspended a few metres from the floor. Lifting the white sheet revealed the chair where dancer Maria Kefirova sat. She remained seated there for just over half an hour, moving her limbs languorously and shifting her position in a way that cast telling shadows on the wall. Some of her poses were clearly uncomfortable, but the resulting shadows were striking. This was a case where the shape of the shadows determined the “choreography.”
“Staying on the chair for 35 minutes is quite challenging. I don’t want to give that impression at all, but make it as smooth as possible,” said Kefirova, a Montreal-based dancer who has created thoughtful, edgy solos like Corps, Relation (2010), and Gold Meat (2010) that invite viewers to rethink their perception of reality and human interactions. In Memory of a Shadow, she followed the basic choreographic outline that Watkins had made, then added her own interpretation.
Kefirova admitted that the severe constraint imposed by a dance work that compels her to remain stuck on a chair was far different from her way of moving in her own creations.
“I feel I’m in the service of the set-up. You can find a lot of richness in its minimalism and detail, but not a lot of freedom of movement. In my own work, everything is possible, so here this restraining is interesting for me.”
Stuck in the air and overwhelmed by shadows, Kefirova seemed at times almost to disappear, a blot of darkness rather than a person. As a metaphor for humanity, her situation suggested rather a bleak fate. At the same time, the languid quality and variety of Kefirova’s movement were a reminder that beauty can find itself over and over even in remote and dire places.
Viewing Memory of a Shadow in a studio setting enhanced the intimate connection between spectator and performance that the work seeks. Whether the same intimacy can be achieved in the vast, high-ceilinged space of Studio Hydro-Québec of the Monument National is a question that La Porte hopes to answer affirmatively. At the Monument National, the wall and “pond” will be greatly enlarged, but so will the distance between audience and dancer.
To avoid a formal setting and to encourage individuality, La Porte hopes to have spectators either standing or sitting on cushions on the floor. Sitting on a folding chair in the studio worked fine, too. Meditation has that effect.
Memory of a Shadow, March 19-21 at 7:30 p.m. and March 22 at 4 p.m. at the Monument National, 1182 St. Laurent Blvd. Tickets, $23, Seniors, $21, Students, $19. Call 514-871-2224 or www.tangente.qc.ca
Dance Note: Buoyed by the success of his fine restaging of The
Nutcracker for Ballet Ouest, artistic director Claude Caron has turned to the wise old story of Pinocchio. His ballet retelling of the tale for eight dancers shows
the little wooden boy as a victim of bullying. Children should get the message and adults will enjoy Caron’s fluid narrative. Pinocchio by Ballet Ouest, March 28 at 2
p.m. in Théâtre Outremont, 1248 Bernard. Tickets, $25, seniors, $20, Students, $15. Free entry for a third child. Call 514-495-9944 or www.theatreoutremont.ca