exhibition

The CN D’s Nouvelle cinémathèque de la danse Portraits collection presents the work of various choreographers in half-hour mon- tages of extracts from performances focusing on a particular aspect from the wealth of dance material. This exhibition of films pres- ents five portraits that are screened continuously in the Galerie space.
 

La Ribot ou la durée du geste
Fanny de Chaillé, le décalage

Ana Rita Teodoro, du sol au ciel
Volmir Cordeiro, Panoplies
Lucinda Childs, la mise en marche

La Ribot, or the duration of the gesture

The frequent nudity in La Ribot’s work hides something. Something different, and something moreover that is well worth looking at. First of all, La Ribot loves to experiment with duration, which she stretches out as much as possible – sometimes for hours, as in Laughing Hole, where the female dancers exhaust themselves laughing. In addition, she is not afraid to return to the simplest gestures and repeat them endlessly, very often subverting classical grammar, as demonstrated by the almost comical and highly energetic chorus lines of PARAdistinguidas. Duration and repetition are part of a more general project based on hypnosis or fascination, of which the minimalist trio Another Distinguée is a magnificent example. The aim is to alter the viewer’s perception, to give them a chance to inhabit another time and another place, a space where expectations collapse, where there is nothing to generate other than the very naked feeling of being there.
 

Lucinda Childs, getting going

The art of Lucinda Childs could be described as the story of a choreographer who amplifies her movements little by little. In her first performances, she played on the gestures that society allots, not always kindly, to women: making sandwiches (Carnation) or taking a bath with elegant legs (Pastime). Then, gradually, she got going by standing up as a militant claiming her autonomy, who only wants to live and dance in a world whose laws she defines herself. Mathematical abstraction and geometrical compositions are a neutral world in which Lucinda Childs has succeeded in becoming a mistress of forms and durations (Melody Excerpt). Based on this knowhow, she was able to return to the world of classical ballet: arabesques and ports de bras then became complex-free parts of her splendid combinatorics.

Ana Rita Teodoro: animal body, vegetal body

Ana Rita Teodoro creeps like a worm or a snake through the streets of Lisbon. She picks up papers between her legs like a busy spider. She slowly undulates her arms, like supple seaweed at the bottom of an aquarium. She glides over another body in a strange simulation of love. In the dance of this young Portuguese choreographer there is a feeling of both animality and vegetation, a wilful exploration of the frontiers of the human body; hence the title Orifice, which is often a generic term for her. Ana Rita Teodoro moves along the edges of spaces. The idea of such dancing is to feel what a body can learn by mingling, temporarily, with another nature, or other forms of gesturing, and above all an organicity which is utterly different, which givess the body a strange and appealing way to inhabit space and time.

Fanny de Chaillé, being offbeat

In Fanny de Chaillé’s work, there is always a moment which can be comic, or even totally burlesque, when things we thought to be stable waver or drift off course: you bump straight into doors, you stumble and fall, you watch your own shadow live out its life in front of you, you speak without opening your mouth, you fail to make yourself understood. In the end, everything in this work is a question of rhythm. Not the right rhythm, not at the right moment, not with the right words, nor in the right order. By artfully playing on a full palette of shifts (the camera can even film off-centre), Fanny de Chaillé invents a dance-theatre that touches on the bitter-sweetness of the greatest difficulties in life. In the end, it is hard to leap calmly into a current of language or gestures and allow yourself to slip gently inside.

Volmir Cordeiro, Panoplies

There is always a moment in Volmir Cordeiro’s pieces – which are above all, for the moment in his young career, solos or quasi-solos – where clothing takes on its full significance. For example, he dances in a loose black tunic that hides nothing, he pulls down his tights and pulls them back on, he wraps himself in colourful fabrics or he sticks two pieces of black sticky tape over his eyes. What purpose does this panoply serve? It no doubt shows that perception follows conventions – social as well as with regard to clothing – and that what he is trying to dance, with his huge limbs that slice through and disrupt space, is a form of dance that deconstructs the gaze and accepted norms.