Mental workout
ErosioChoreography: Isabelle Van Grimde
Vin Grimde Corps Secrets
Studio de l'Agora de la Danse
Since founding her company
Isabelle Van Grimde Corps Secrets in 1992, the Belgian-born Montreal choreographer has had much acclaim in pieces À l'échelle humaine, May All Your Storms Be Weathered, and perhaps her most well-known and received work, Trois vues d'un secret.
Her new run at l'Agora de la Danse reunites her with several dancers from previous productions, remounting two short works and unveiling a new collaborative piece with musician Rémi Bolduc.
In Esquisse 1: Lina, solo dancer Lina Malenfant's economical steps shifted from pose to pose–the music a slow contemporary composition conveying the feeling of a succession of frames, while floor-level lights cut sharply across the stage, accentuating Malenfant's angular movements.
For the second piece, Graffiti pour une nuit blanche, an ingenious technique in lighting is used: starting from a darkly-lit stage, slashes of light are cut out from the black floor, synched carefully to dancer Robert Meilleur's movements.
In the main piece of the evening, Erosio, the three dancers (Annie-Claude Coutu Geoffroy, Lina Malenfant, and Zoë Poulch) appear solo and in various combinations. Two areas are set up in opposing corners of the stage with percussive instruments; musicians Rémi Bolduc (sax) and Julien Grégoire (percussion) play and move between them, sometimes interacting with the dancers, sometimes exiting the stage. The interaction sometimes extended beyond the collaboration of music and dance in moments when Poulch touched Bolduc's shoulder or leg, the dancer supporting herself during a change in movement while the musician soloed.
While Bolduc and Grégoire's spare improvisational made for some occasional felicitous synchrony between them and the dancers, overall it failed to satisfy.
If there is a common theme among the three pieces presented, it is that the choice of music: contemporary compositions, minimal jazz improv, coupled with the deliberate, stretched/extended movements of the dancers mostly made for a cold and cerebral study of tone and movement–interesting, certainly, at times–but curious rather than exhilarating.
(photo: Rémi Bolduc and Zoë Poulch, by Michael Slobodian)
Erosio continues to March 2, 8 p.m.
Studio de l'Agora de la Danse
840 Cherrier
tickets: 514 525-1500
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