uprising

source: dancetabs

If I were ever to succumb to a failing heart, then doing so at a Hofesh Shechter gig might provide that tiny grain of luck that could make all the difference in such a devastating circumstance. Sitting in the stalls, I fancied that the heavy resonance of the rhythmic beat of Shechter’s music pulsating through my body rattled my chest with enough power to provide an instant cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

I use the word “gig” to describe a Shechter event since the music (usually heavily influenced by percussion and often composed by Shechter himself) is as critical as the choreography. Loudness is a given and anyone with a susceptibility to extreme noise would be well advised to stay away. Under the influence of these ferocious rhythms, Shechter’s work is often soaked in an overwhelming macho virility (even when the cast has been mixed gender) and so this retrospective of two pieces from his back catalogue presented, superficially at least, a fascinating double-header with an all-male group (in Uprising from 2006) followed by an all-female piece made more recently (The Art of Not Looking Back, 2009).

I have followed Uprising through various iterations. From its premiere in the intimate surroundings of The Place in 2006, through its reincarnation via The Choreographer’s Cut at the Roundhouse in 2009, and now in a conventional, large proscenium theatre here at Sadler’s Wells. Each setting has given Uprising a new cause, although my clear favourite remains the extended version at the Roundhouse, which presented a throbbing synergy of music, lighting and performance with the added frisson of audience participation. Here at Sadler’s Wells it began with a perplexing incongruity as the seven dancers strode menacingly in their familiar line to stand in a one-legged pose across a band of light at the front of the stage; only, this time, one dancer stopped early, breaking the formation and standing back from the light. It may be that the choreography required this irregularity or it might just have been human error but either way the visceral punch of that opening was a weaker blow than it should have been.

When I first saw Uprising at the Place, I likened its virile intensity to choreographed hooliganism, which is an allusion I now no longer see although the emphasis on the tribal interactions of a gang of young alpha males is certainly profound. Fighting and floor-based movement are continuing motifs. The opening line of men segues into a duet that appeared to be a back-alley rumble. Later, the dancers stand in a circle and begin with the matey gesture of playfully patting each other’s shoulder in a sequence that could have been accompanied by a jaunty “Awright”, but needless to say the thumping gets harder and leads to a slap before a riotous fight ensues; not in the “Hollywood” style of stand-up fisticuffs but in the much more realistic scenario of a heaving, throbbing mass of bodies wrestling on the floor.

Shechter’s own score ranges from the sounds of heavy turbines clanging in an engine room with precise rhythmic certainty, while the dancers appear for awhile to be skipping along a conveyor belt, to the violent scattered sounds of a tropical rainstorm. It ends with a tableau borrowing imagery from Iwo Jima of a group of men helping to raise a flag (although in this case it is a little red one that might have come from the top of a sandcastle).

Uprising is a powerful testosterone-fuelled fight club, played out in an unrelenting twilight of gloom, to sounds of toil and trouble, in an uncomfortable world that is as free of femininity as the exercise courtyard of San Quentin State Prison, after dark.

And then the women came in The Art of Not Looking Back, a work personalised by Shechter’s own opening voiceover about his mother leaving him at the age of two. The immediate juxtaposition to Uprising lies in light and sound: the former provides for sequences of brightness, often reflecting shadows of the performers against a side panel; and the score is led by music rather than percussive rhythms, involving excerpts from Bach, John Zorn’s LITANY IV and a song composed by Nitin Sawhney. But it is also peppered by loud and long screams that strike out like sudden aural slaps.

Shechter’s movement is coloured by quick switches and stops, by drooping bodies that have lost muscular control, and there are sudden segues into the formal harmony of six girls standing neatly in fourth position as if about to begin a ballet class. These elements have an undoubted feminising effect of gentleness and sensitivity (notably contrasting with the opening work) but Shechter’s voiceover shakes away any complacency. “She is everything to me because she is nothing to me” he says, before alluding to feelings draining away as if contained in a “bucket with a hole”. We are shocked into remembering that this work is railing against a mother’s decision to walk away. Sounds of vomiting and gagging heightened the emotional context; and we are left with a lone woman on stage, metaphorically drowning as Shechter’s voice says “I don’t forgive you”. This heart-rending finale morphs into an optimistic epilogue of a bouncy, lyrical song bringing this visceral performance to a conclusion by suggesting – without words – that the art of not looking back is the only way to forget.

Shechter has evolved a way of maximising the impact of his repertoire by dusting off and replaying past work, sometimes in new Choreographer’s Cuts or – as here – in different theatres, rearranged settings and new pairings. Each revisiting seems to offer up more than the sum of its parts, giving these former works a new and exciting lease of life. One might say that – in his professional life at least – Shechter has perfected the art of looking back.
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source: envoguefr

Young Israeli-British choreographer Hofesh Shechter is the young talent behind one of this season’s best pieces of modern dance. Uprising, The Art of Not Looking Back combines vital energy and deeply-held emotions, set to highly-charged urban percussion created by the choreographer himself. In the explosive show, Hofesh – whose name means ‘freedom’ in Hebrew – brings together the energies of an angry child abandoned by its mother at just two years old, an Israeli ex-soldier in a hostile country, and a dance geek who is hyper-connected to the world around him. For Hofesh Schechter, who places the body “in touch with the space around it, the social and political world, and intimate space,” all this is expressed through dance. We meet a prodigal dancer.
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source: paris-art

Hofesh Shechter travaille à Londres, Hofesh Shechter a travaillé pour la Batsheva. Dans l’imaginaire collectif ce n’est pas rien alors voir un spectacle d’un tel chorégraphe c’est savoir à quoi s’attendre. Il a été dit que c’est organique, énergique, tribal, engagé. Effectivement c’est comme cela.

Dans le noir de la salle, une rampe de lumière en fond de scène nous aveugle; les danseurs en ordre de marche foncent à l’avant du plateau. Ils en imposent. Cela pourrait être agressif mais ne l’est pas car immédiatement ces hommes se mettent en péril: le péril de l’équilibre instable, dans une proximité du public qui rend assurément la chose plus difficile encore. Le plateau est nu, place est faite pour que toutes les explorations soient envisageables sans obstacle; les coulisses ce sont les lumières, les garçons apparaissent et disparaissent au gré des projecteurs.
Tout ici balance entre force virile et détermination fragile. L’énergie de la violence est sublimée, se détourne vers un but dont rien n’est révélé, mais il est certain que si ces hommes dansent c’est bien pour quelque chose: ils se battent pour.

Plus tard, comme les Danaïdes remplissant toujours le même tonneau percé les femmes sont condamnées. Nous ne savons pas à quel châtiment laborieux mais nous entendons pourquoi: Hofesh Shechter explique que sa mère est partie quand il avait deux ans (puisque la pièce se veut autobiographique). Trois murs blancs s’élèvent autour des danseuses et rappellent les jardins clos de l’imagerie médiévale, métaphore de la maternité.
Ces danseuses, elles nous regardent et elles affirment leur présence. Elles ne cessent de faire, défaire, refaire les mêmes combinaisons et à la faveur des répétitions un motif invisible se trame, l’hypnose de la danse se déploie. Il y a de la manipulation dans l’air tandis que le texte parle d’histrionisme. Il devient évident que si ces femmes dansent c’est bien pour quelque chose: elles se battent contre.

Ces deux pièces au programme recèlent de nombreuses ressemblances. Entre autre, des similitudes de composition dans les successions de mouvements d’ensemble et de solos, certaines lumières, la durée, le nombre d’interprètes également. Ou alors au contraire, les oppositions sont si totales (plateau nu versus enceinte murée; boîte noire versus boîte blanche) qu’elles semblent vouloir signifier que les deux pièces sont indissociables, qu’elles communiquent. Non pas à la façon de vases communicants, rien ne s’échange ici, mais à la manière de surfaces en friction. Un grincement qui monte et qui apporte avec lui son lot de questions.

En montrant isolément ceux-ci et celles-là, que veut donc Hofesh Shechter? Cette tentative de séparation entre hommes et femmes n’a-t-elle pas plus d’éloquence qu’un simple exercice de style? Mais surtout, par cette mise en ordre des sexes, le chorégraphe ne modifie-t-il pas le monde?
De facto il en diminue le désordre, il l’organise, et nous rappelle que l’homme est un animal politique.