"Mouvements" - from A to Better

Data

Date of visit: Wednesday 27^th November 2013

Title: Henri Michaux: "mouvements"

Choreography and Artistic Direction: Marie Chouinard

Duration: 35 minutes

Lighting, Set Design: Marie Chouinard

Original music: Louis Dufort

Sound environment: Edward Freedman

Costumes: Marie Chouinard and Marilène Bastien

Hairstyle: Marie Chouinard

Projected text & drawings: Henri Michaux, from the book "Mouvements" (1951), with the permission of the right-holders Henri Michaux and Editions Gallimard 

A piece of art about a piece of art

For this piece the book “Mouvements” by Henri Michaux inspired Marie Chouinard. This book contains 64 pages of India-ink drawing and a 15 page long poem. She ‘literally’ translated the book into a dance score. Page by page she shows a choreography representing the drawings in the book. This means in the middle of the performance there is a interpretation of the poem as well, since she goes through the book chronological. The build up is great; the tension equally rises and lifts you up. Sometimes the potrayal of the drawings are a still body position; sometimes it is a repetitive motion – until the next drawing appears. At the end of the performance you will have a complete overview of all the drawings in the book, because you can see them at the small strips left and right of the big pages.

All the different ingredients in this piece make it all together a pleasure to watch. The minimalistic setting works well. The black cat suits give a very clean view of the dancers body. What I find noticeable is that most of the dancers are very thin, or at least proportioned in a way to make them look slim. This works well with the drawings they are portraying. The silhouettes translate well into pencil strokes. This creates clear lines and shapes; it matches the rectilinear aspect of the drawings.

Something I find fascinating about Michaux’ his work because the title of the book insinuates motion, but of course the drawing are mere still images. I can see how Chouinard took translating still images with human bodies as a challenge. Besides the simple fact that you can clearly tell all movement is inspired by the book, Chouinard added more elements to it. The choice of music sets a more specifik mood. To me it sounds like an industrial soundscape. The combination of noises, deep bass and guitar all together make it sound rather mechanical to me. In its importunate speed it makes me feel rushed and restless. This helps convey that these drawings are actually moving, instead of being plain motionless. Besides the music she also added a theatrical element. At times the dancers would make exaggerated facial expressions. For example they would frown their eyebrows and open their mouths wide open, as if screaming at the top of their lungs. Nothing in Michaux’ images set a specifik atmosphere, it is open to interpretation. So the elements added by Chouinard really added something that in my opinion worked really well. To me the images came alive. Somehow this performance managed to grab my attention completely and it did not let go until the end of the book. I felt really energized by this piece and I think I would have enjoyed it very much to dance it. That does not happen very often either, that I wish I was on stage instead of in the audience. I am looking forward to see more work of Marie Chouinard! So surely I can recommend to everyone going to this performance if you have the chance.

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Review by Tomas Milan