'Waterzooi' is a dance with heart and soul
'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.