МАРИ ШУИНАР
Soft virtuosity, still humid, on the edge

source: danzaeffebi
una nuova creazione di Marie Chouinard che firma anche scene e video, un lavoro su musica Louis Dufort che ha debuttato lo scorso giugno a Stoccarda. La coreografia esplora in 55 minuti diversi schemi di tempo, da un ritmo frenetico alla estrema lentezza, passando dalla frenesia all’estrema lentezza. La coreografia è un gioco continuo e fluido che sperimenta varie forme di deambulazione sulle punte e sulle mezze punte: il passo si fa ora dolorante o zoppicante, ora libero e divertente. Sullo sfondo il caleidoscopio dei volti dei dieci danzatori ripresi e proiettati in diretta nella loro mutazione lenta e costante completa questo affresco del magma umano, duttile, rapido e malleabile, che, come nella vita reale, talvolta si ferma e va lento, talvolta accoglie cambiamenti e va più veloce.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
source: mataderomadridorg
Pre-estreno mundial de la creación que la Cía. Marie Chouinard realiza en coproducción con la Jheronimus Bosch 500 Foundation de Holanda con motivo del V centenario de la muerte del pintor. Coreografía en tres actos (El jardín de las delicias, Infierno y Paraíso) inspirada en el famoso tríptico de El Bosco. Chouinard es una prestigiosa y muy premiada coreógrafa canadiense reconocida como una de las innovadoras de la danza contemporánea.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
source: mariechouinard
An organic and organised inquiry into the foundational wavelength.

My source has always been the body itself, and especially the silence and the breath which make up the “invisible” stuff of life. At the root of each new work there is always what I call the “mystery”, an unknown wavelength that calls out to me in an almost obsessive manner. My work consists of capturing this primordial wavelength, of “tuning” it in a sense, and of arranging it in space and time with a structure and form proper to it. Since 1978, this is what I have been doing: listening attentively to the vital pulsation of the body to the point of crystallising it in a new order. Each time, I start afresh from zero. Each time, I focus and re-direct my “antennae”, I seek out a new “state”, I track this wavelength until everything is in line, like in a reinvented classical structure in which, I hope, the viewer’s own “mystery” will be revealed to her.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
source: dancetabs
Quebec-based Compagnie Marie Chouinard give off the same vibe as their west coast, Vancouver cousins, Ballet BC (seen recently at International Dance Festival Birmingham) – uncompromisingly modern and challenging. Whereas Ballet BC’s visit was rather softened and much enhanced by a piece of Crystal Pite on the bill, both of Marie Chouinard’s works are true to the modern and challenging moniker, where sometimes a little can go a long way.

Chouinard’s latest work may have the ponderous title Soft virtuosity, still humid, on the edge but in the actuality is an interesting and intriguing 30-minute work… unfortunately spun out to 50 minutes and all the worse for it. The premise is simple – to explore various forms of perambulation from frantic to ultra slow. It starts almost like a Ministry of Silly Walks advertisement as dancers funnily and sometimes uncomfortably move across the stage – looking like they are mimicking the disabled. The backdrop is a huge projection screen and after a while we see the dancers’ faces up large – faces that become grotesque, latter-day Hogarth characters, as they twirl on a large Lazy Susan or walk in endless contra-rotating loops as if in an M.C. Escher woodcut. There is a long section as an ever-morphing pack of dancers move very, very slowly across the back of the stage and some of their heads are picked out and magnified on live video. Interesting for 2 minutes but it seems to go on for 10 times that and they still never reach the other side! It ends strangely as a nude dancer comes out in a huge ruffled see-through suit. We also get a Mr Muscles display and and some insect movement. The score of Louise Dufort can also annoy and tantalise, varying between oppressive electronic thrum and the joy of rain (or joy here). What I really liked was the interesting use of video and playing with slow movement, not unlike David Michalek’s Slow Dancing installations, but against it was a feeling of always wanting to press the fast forward button. A shame, but one was very ready for the interval.

The second work, HENRI MICHAUX: MOUVEMENTS, also seemed to go on too long. It’s based on a book of Indian ink drawing (and associated poem) by Henri Michaux, published in 1951. In this 35-minute piece each Michaux drawing is projected up on the backscreen for a few seconds and a dancer, or dancers, attempts to copy it – as if casting shadow projections. The drawings are vague doodles that convey movement, though I doubt you’d put one on your wall and proudly point it out to dinner party guests. While the speedy inventiveness of the dancers is interesting for a while one’s lost interest long before the end, a view encouraged by the the building sound cacophony and reciting of the poem in earnest French declarations. That said, the final flourish, when all the dancers perform together, has some excitement – they really are a great and characterful company in that respect.

Marie Chouinard certainly has interesting and original ideas – hurrah for that – but an editor would really help make the best of them sparkle.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
source: festival-avignon
Observer la marche. Encore et toujours. Comme un inépuisable point de départ vers des mondes inconnus. Regarder comment, à elle seule, une marche porte un corps. Explorer son caractère. Déformer sa course, la ralentir ou au contraire l’accélérer. Complexifier sa trajectoire. Et recommencer à marcher. Ensemble cette fois, en cherchant, même claudicant, un possible unisson. Observer cet unisson, décrocher de son orbite, plonger dans les abysses. Complexifier à nouveau sa trajectoire en la déviant d’un regard. Et maintenant cadrer en plan serré ces regards qui se croisent dans une forêt de hauteurs et de marches, dans des remous de vagues et d’ensembles, dans les jeux complexes du perpétuel mouvement de la vie. Ce monde inconnu… Avec son incroyable compagnie, Marie Chouinard multiplie les états de grâce dans une oeuvre à la fois sauvage et raffinée, primitive et sophistiquée. Ses matériaux ? Un corps « sismographe » captant « le jeu des fluctuations qui l’environne » et cette lumière qu’elle travaille dans une incandescence sonore. Comme ici, dans cette épopée abstraite, tour à tour tragique et comique, païenne et sacrée, qui célèbre d’un geste vif et précis une humanité partie en quête de ses confins.

Marie Chouinard
C’est en solo que Marie Chouinard commence sa carrière de danseuse en 1978. Pendant douze ans, la chorégraphe née à Québec, aujourd’hui installée dans son propre espace à Montréal, expérimente les multiples dimensions de son corps, de sa relation à l’esprit et à la matière. Une période au cours de laquelle elle signe près de 30 pièces dont Cristallisation (1978), Marie Chien Noir (1982), S.T.A.B. (Space, Time and Beyond) (1986) et L’Après-midi d’un faune (1987). En 1990, alors qu’elle est internationalement reconnue comme une artiste singulière, elle décide d’interroger en groupe « cette pulsion vitale du corps » qui la fascine avec Les Trous du ciel, premier spectacle de sa compagnie. Suivront des oeuvres marquantes du répertoire contemporain comme Le Sacre du printemps (1993), Les 24 Préludes de Chopin (1999), Le Cri du monde (2000) ou encore bODY_rEMIX/les_vARIATIONS_gODLBERG (2005). La recherche de Marie Chouinard, qu’elle définit comme « un point de fuite vers l’innommable », revêt des formes aussi diverses que la poésie, le dessin, la photographie, le cinéma, l’installation plastique ou la virtualité des nouvelles technologies.