'Waterzooi' is a dance with heart and soul

By Emilie Sueur

JAKARTA (JP): Let's take a little test on general perceptions of contemporary dance.

Tell a male friend that you have a couple of tickets for a contemporary dance performance.

Watch the scope of emotions flit across his face -- incredulity as he refuses to believe his ears, unabashed horror and a preview of the boredom he foresees.

Imagine that you eventually managed to drag him kicking and screaming out to Taman Ismail Marzuki to watch Waterzooi, a performance by the Maguy Marin French dance company, last Wednesday and Thursday.

Take your seat, forget him, enjoy the show and only at the end ask him about his impressions.

Chances are he would have enjoyed it.

The simple reason is that Maguy Marin doesn't belong to the world of contemporary dance choreographers for whom great creativity is synonymous with inaccessibility.

Marin took classical dance studies in Toulouse. After working with Maurice Bejart's Ballet XXe Siecle (Ballet of the 20th century) and several other famous ballet troupes, she created her own company in 1977.

First called the Ballet Theatre de l'Arche, it was later renamed as her own company.

There are currently 12 dancers whose nationalities are French, Chilean, Italian, Spanish and Canadian. Their main characteristic is polyvalence.

Most of the male dancers were initially involved in other disciplines -- including playing the drums and studying economics -- and turned to dance at relatively late ages in their 20s.

On the contrary, most of the women had a classical dance background.

Diverse experiences and qualifications, and the ability to adapt, is a necessity for Marin's pieces as they require members to play music or interpret texts in addition to dancing.

Descartes

The theme of Waterzooi is human passions and feelings. One interesting and unusual aspect of Marin's composition is the use of extracts of Rene Descartes' essay Les passions de l'ame (Passions of the Soul).

To balance the almost surgical approach to human feelings by the French philosopher, Marin personifies the text with her emotional choreographies.

Love, hate, worry, happiness and friendship are all represented and introduced by a philosophic description extended by gestures, contacts, looks and attitudes.

The bodily actions are the outcome and the extension of the soul and the mood.

Interlacing of bodies expresses love, but the latter can easily turn to hatred. The bodies reject each other but, still attracted, come together again.

As well as dancing, the dancers murmur an unknown language. Though it is impossible to define its origins, we still understand what is happening as it centers on emotions.

Emotions don't require words; they are sounds, rhythm, attitudes or expressions. This is what Marin and her dancers teach us in the most mesmerizing way.

The entire performance was impregnated with a specific atmosphere -- soft lights, sometimes warm for cheerful emotions, sometimes cold to reflect the darkening of the soul.

Music also contributed to the creation of the ambiance. An insistent harmonica tune, performed by the dancers, wrapped the artists and the audience in a closed, detached world.

When dancer Michel interpreted the feeling of worry through a disjointed dance while reciting a text about existentialism and determinism, the anxiety was palpable.

His performance was all the more outstanding as he improvised the rhythmical choreography on stage.

Wednesday's performance, organized by the French Cultural Center, was impressive as it seemed the text exerted a kind of euphoric effect on the dancers. The text and rhythm enthralled the audience and trapped it in the dancers' frenzy.

Marin also knows how to play with humor, shown in the dance about friendship.

First, the narrator explained there were four groups of people.

Friends, he said, are few and far between. They distinguish themselves by their ability to deceive you, maybe because you have high expectations of them.

A dancer entered carrying a heavy refrigerator on his back. His friend arrived and agreed to help him. But, of course, the fridge tumbled to the floor.

The narrator continued that the second group are pals. They don't deceive you as much as you don't have lofty expectations of them.

The third group are acquaintances. And the last, the most numerous, are all the people you don't know and consequently don't care about.

The audience enjoyed the talented interpretations.

Everything about the performance was a question of sensation and feeling.

The title of the performance, named after a traditional dish of Belgium and the north of France, is also revealing.

As Marin says, Waterzooi is made of many simple elements that are cooked together for a long time. The outcome is a simple but satisfying meal.

This is precisely what characterizes her choreography. On paper, the program appeared nothing more than a series of acts introducing different feelings.

But when the last dancer had left the stage and the theater lights were switched off, the audience realized that it had been wrapped in a simple but warm and dense setting. Therein lies the magic of Maguy Marin.