The danceable side of Leonard Cohen
Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal evokes the spirit of Leonard Cohen in Dance Me
Among the many gifts Leonard Cohen left to the world, naming one of his songs Dance Me to the End of Love is the one that keeps on giving, at least to dance companies.
A few years ago, a haunting Cohen-based show, somewhat cryptically called Dance Me to the End On/Off Love, visited Montreal’s Centaur Theatre, courtesy of the Danish company Granhoj Dans. Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal close their season this year with their annual Soirée des étoiles, which is subheaded with the song’s title. And in December, Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal launched its own Cohen-based show as part of the Danse Danse Festival. It’s called, with relative brevity, Dance Me, and will tour to the NAC this week.
It’s more than a year since Cohen died, so you might be forgiven for thinking that BJM’s show is a not-too-hastily-created memorial-in-movement to the great man. Actually, as artistic director Louis Robitaille explains in a conversation with Postmedia, it was planned well before Cohen’s death.
“Never when we started this project did we think about him dying,” says Robitaille, a near-60-year-old who, with his blond locks, looks a little like a more approachable version of Klaus Kinski. “We thought Mr. Cohen was eternal anyway. He was still working until the last day. But his passing didn’t really change anything about the show.”
Robitaille (who always add a respectful “Mr.” when speaking of Cohen) prefers to avoid the word “tribute” because “it feels like taking advantage.” Instead, he uses the word “témoignage,” which translates roughly as “bearing witness.”
The fact that Cohen was still alive during the project’s beginnings raises an obvious question, namely: How much consultation was there between the company and their muse?
The answer is none, at least not in person. All of the negotiations took place with Cohen’s agent and lawyer, though Cohen was sufficiently fascinated by — and perhaps apprehensive of ? — the project to make his wishes apparent.
“It was very clear at first that the door was not closed, but not open either,” Robitaille says.
Once BJM got the green light, the choice of which songs to include was the obvious next step. Cohen made it known that he didn’t want the show to be a greatest hits compilation. “That coincided with what we always wanted to do, anyway,” says Robitaille. “The idea was to somehow cover all his career. Since the project is about the cycle of life and because Mr. Cohen had such an extraordinary career until his last day, the idea was to somehow cover all of that. So we were happy that we succeeded in using Suzanne, one of his first songs, and three songs from his last album, You Want It Darker.”
There were, inevitably, lots of songs that never made it to the final cut, a process Robitaille describes as “heartbreaking.”
“We could have done a threehour show,” he says. “But one of our preoccupations was to bring modulation to the evening, so some of the songs were chosen because the tempo was quite high, while some of them were left aside because things were getting a bit too much monochrome. It’s very important for us, because people expect BJM to be very physical and athletic.”
Robitaille promises that Dance Me will be the biggest show yet in BJM’s 45-year history. Three choreographers — Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, Andonis Foniadakis and Ihsan Rustem — are creating the show, which will include video projections to evoke the grand cycles of existence in five seasons.
What it is not, Robitaille insists, is a biographical piece about Cohen, so audiences will be searching in vain for those famously granite features up on the screen.
“We didn’t want to go there,” Robitaille explains. “I think we were wishing one day he would see the performance, and we didn’t believe he would appreciate that. He was such a private person. He’s represented in this as a shadow. You can feel his presence, but we never use his image.”
Cohen’s music is, of course, often beautifully solemn, even lugubrious at times. Which would, you might think, make it a somewhat odd choice for this most energetic of companies, to whom the phrase “feel good” often attaches itself. Robitaille acknowledges the oddcouple nature of the project.
“Of course, when you listen to Mr. Cohen, one wonders how we can dance to this music,” he says. “And, in fact, I did get that remark from somebody who knew we were doing the project.” Then he breaks into a smile that clearly means business. “I can tell you: We can dance to this music.”
Some of the songs were chosen because the tempo was quite high, while some of them were left aside because things were getting a bit too much monochrome.