« Negatovas »
Premier rendez-vous avec Danse à Lille
Clin d’œil à huis clos
Their space is limited by an invisible thread. Four dark men in a closed space look at each other, walk about with indifference. Discovered last year at the “Reperages” of Danse à Lille, Karine Ponties in her latest creation “Negatovas”, makes her characters wander about in an informal uniform, at same time masculine and feminine, inside a universe basically empty, a weighted silence only disturbed by some moaning of small water drops.
Everything is slowed downsweet approach of the individuals like in a transparency. Hardly can we appreciate throughout some suddenand ample movements, the premises of a dance constructed like a building game. And then the first encounters nearly passing trough unnoticed…where the body of the other comes, pinned by the pointed movement of the first. Impression of lightness in choreography in constant unbalance, that plays in a game of frantic and extreme simplicity.
Decalage. Behind a shadowed appearance and the unsmiling faces of the dancers, the light brings a kind of particular humour. Where the movements talk to us in a second degree. Each of them in his particular mimic precise gestures, having fun and taking pleasure from one another, the crescendo arises. The dance evolves from the line of caricature, but always alarm, obvious and calculated. It’s developed at the minimum detail, a glance, a hand raising, a leg in suspends and the slightest detail is being multiplied…In pairs and then all four, the dancers take you suddenly in a sweet vertigo. A sweet craziness where the movements are brought to with an incredible hold. The bodies touch, and disappear again or gather surprisingly. Karine Ponties grows with jubilation the art of mechanical construction, geometrical and absurd positions. With a remarkable suppleness she offers a portrait of a family with this four anonymous dancers making us being surprised by our own laughing and natural dreaming.
(tranlated by Jordi Granados)