“Mi non sabir” Théâtre Benoît XII, Avignon.
Par Philippe Verrièle
Dance
Social movement
Theatre Benoît XII Les hivernales d’Avignon 2006
In the same evening dedicate to the Czech dance two pieces cross each other with different merits towards their performances. Karine Ponties gives us a small piece of jewellery with a sense of humour perfectly accomplished, Petra Haureova a technical and heavy solo.
The choreographic Czech life has been mark at least in relation of the more recent forms, by the influence of the Tanec Festival in Prague. Is her director Yvona Kreuzmanova who has accomplished the encounter between the French-Belgium Karine Ponties (French but working in Belgium) and the quarto of Czech dancers.
The movement generates a dramatic approach by him.
In few weeks the performers had found not only a way and a new approach of work but also the specific gestures for this singular piece adapted specifically to the Czech atmosphere. “Mi non sabir” functions like a machine, one makes a gesture that interacts with the other, and that follows to the rest of the performers. That way the movement of the arms of one is avoided by the other, but this one founds himself precipitated inside the arms of a third that at the same time affects the forth…Which ever is the first, the second, the third or the fourth.
The piece doesn’t work on the principles of psychology or of a situation, but on the movement itself that generates a kind of dramatics on is own. So when the four interpreters are sitting on top of each other on a bench, they shift a limb provoking the necessity of the other to shift hi head, arm or leg whatever could disturb the other. Impassibly the four dancers are at times a single movement taken over by four identities somehow being embarrassed of having to interact among themselves. Even if the original intention of the choreographer is far from this, is at the same time tempting to see in this kind of disturbing attitudes the others alone, a kind of metaphorical approach in this piece of Czech dancers.
A remarkable accomplishment.
The political changes have – in the last decade- made burst the social and constrained body (a single movement for all) but paying the price of a solitude for each (burning out the movement for the four). This discrete choreographer but particularly inspired functions with a logic that recalls what Petr Kràl wrote towards the burlesque proposals of the unspoken movies “ the burlesque hero could become a simple and pure object giving him a life of his own”… a remarkable coming trough.
(Translated by Jordi Granados)