Wednesday evening saw the opening of the 2024/2025 season of the Agora de la danse. On the program, the brand new creation of the Carré des Lombes, where choreographers Danièle Desnoyers and Taoufiq Izeddiou – the instigator of the first school of choreographic arts in Morocco – confront their artistic writing to make it one. Presented at the Montpellier Danse Festival last year, Montreal-Marrakech captivates with hybridity and the dialogue of bodies.
Daylight coming in through the window on the garden side. Canvases that diffuse and reflect shadows and lighting. A stage cut by a central square that will serve as a play and exchange area. Thus, even before entering the bodies, the setting up of an open stage, a neutral space where everything can take place has been thought out and is shown to us. Slowness is at first required, with performers exchanging blankets, walking in slow motion in the space, soft music in the background. Then the flute takes over, the bodies become more active while remaining in restrained movements, simple steps, forward, backward. Then undulations gradually become inserted until the four performers, two from Montreal, two from Morocco, come into contact.
The movements then enter into fluidity, into the mixing of skins. The bodies mingle, and untangle, wrap around, and unroll, all in gentleness. Listening to others is palpable and captivates the gaze and the senses. The duos form and explore other choreographic scores, with work on counterweight, small jumps, etc.
The partners exchange, the smoke thickens, the noises become more urgent. The gestures accelerate, fast and efficient, in small, lively and raw movements then relax, in complete abandon, but without spreading out in time. Pushing. Pulling. The individuals explore and inhabit the space together, or separately. Then, the music becomes more rhythmic, bringing with it the disarticulation of the limbs and spasms. Here again, our attention is taken by the mixture of sounds and performers who embody this search for bodily state and encounters with the other.
Throughout the piece, the performers enter and leave the square. And with each encounter with an individual, the bodily proposition is different. We always enter with micromovements to arrive at explosive, exciting gestures. A simple “no” of the head thus transforms into large forward and backward thrusts, in harmony with a second performer. All in power. Same thing for small pelvic movements that are assumed as the music progresses then amplified and take up all the space on stage. The marriage between these various gestural explorations and the music, all as different as each other, works wonderfully. It is this beautiful duo and the felt and true incarnation of the performers that keep us in suspense. Despite this, some moments would have been more striking with more assumed, more detailed lighting, especially with the decision to have canvases and natural light.
Always further
In another part of the piece, one of the dancers comes forward, hands in his pockets, and begins to undulate. Here again, the gradation is slow and beautiful to see. He is then followed by the three other dancers who come forward into the square and undulate, each in their own way, but all in the same rhythm, the same lively energy. Same work during an ascent on demi-pointes then a release towards the ground. The looks are cooperative, the bodies, in communion.
The complicity between them is subtle, but is seen above all in the coordination and, sometimes, in the reactions of their bodies together. We can detect the long-term work and the many exchanges that took place during the creation. Their style remains individual and unique to them, but we can detect the creativity of each of the two choreographers who managed to shape a united quartet.
Montreal-Marrakech ends with an effervescence of jumps, in bodily euphoria, which is nevertheless controlled. The diagonals created by the artists who move and who form and deform before our eyes are captivating. It is a breath, heavy and full of satisfaction, which concludes this work.
So, with Montreal-MarrakechDanièle Desnoyers and Taoufiq Izeddiou immerse us in their encounter through the bodies of their performers. Thus, we see the bodily investigation that they all conducted together, with a simple, but beautiful complicity. Throughout the piece, we discover that each creator was able to dissect his vocabulary to enrich it with that of the other and, at the same time, transmit it to him. A fine and sought-after dance work that transports us into the beauty and human transformation of the encounter.