It is very pretty, the painting offered by the Ballets jazz de Montréal (BJM) with Vanishing Melodies, which unfolds on the superb and captivating music of Patrick Watson. But does the proposal convince? Not entirely.
No doubt, Vanishing Melodies should, like Dance me, a play in tribute to Léonard Cohen, to seduce a large audience beyond our borders, as evidenced by this spontaneous ovation, on this second evening of performance, Wednesday, of the room filled to the brim, new sanitary measures allowing it, of the Theater Maisonneuve.
To mark the company’s 50th anniversary, BJM is doing it big, and it’s no wonder that Danse Danse has made it the flagship piece of its lineup for the season. This work, which brings together the 15 dancers of the troupe in a series of beautifully executed solos and duets, or in large movements of well-synchronized groups, has all the ingredients to charm, if we add the ethereal and sensitive music of Patrick Watson, and the touch of two talented choreographers, Juliano Nuñes and Quebecer Anne Plamondon, all under the aegis of Eric Jean, who acts here as creative director and director, as he had done for Dance me.
Aesthetically, it is very successful. The costumes, available in shades of blue and green, are elegant. The lighting, all in modulations, dresses the stage well, sublimates the bodies of the dancers. The scenography is well thought out, with its three large structures which soberly frame the stage, with the projection screen behind the stage, used in multiple and ingenious ways, and with as the main element of decoration a bus shelter on wheels which is transformed into according to the tables.
Dive into the abyss of memory
PHOTO SASHA ONYSHCHENKO, PROVIDED BY DANSE DANSE
Vanishing Melodies is a hybrid proposal, between theater and dance.
It is to a hybrid proposal, with an assertive theatrical side, that the company invites us with Vanishing Melodies, alternating between monologues and dance scenes.
The paintings follow one another, all linked by a common thread: a woman (the actresses Brigitte Saint-Aubin or Louise Cardinal) who learns from a “man in a white lab coat” that she has Alzheimer’s. “Degeneration. Erosion, ”she repeats, dazed. A short story that shakes up her existence and plunges her back into her memories, like so many detached pieces of her life that she sees falling one by one. Songs from Montreal singer and songwriter Patrick Watson punctuate the action as she wanders in search of something to hold onto so she doesn’t sink.
The theme of water, convincing, thus slips everywhere, in the colors of the costumes, in this bus shelter which is transformed into an aquarium – a very beautiful painting -, in the image of the diver who comes back repeatedly, evoking this feeling that the protagonist has of sinking into the abyssal depths of his memory.
The gestures go well with the music. Undulating and curved, it sometimes becomes angular, with broken lines, crossed by tensions and tremors. But, in the end, the choreographers offer us above all a lyrical dance, sometimes acrobatic, where the chiseled legs shoot up towards the sky, with numerous pas de deux, bodies which overlap and intertwine. The dancers – especially the dancers – become extensions of the protagonist, reflections of herself, doubling in a kaleidoscopic way.
But does the synergy really operate between this story, the dance and the music of Patrick Watson? Partially.
We admit that we were not totally convinced by this proposal. Why stick, in a way that sometimes seemed a bit clipped to us, often literal, this story over the already evocative music of Patrick Watson? As if it was absolutely necessary to put words (those of the playwright Pascal Chevarie) on top of Watson’s poetry, so unique and so beautiful.
Obviously, the themes explored by Vanishing Melodies are not unrelated to what Watson evokes in his musical pieces: the child in itself, the recurring motif of water, the forest, the diving in oneself, this surreal side which touches the marvelous. All this, the piece manages to convey it well.
But, ultimately, one wonders if the addition of this theatrical part was really necessary. This narrative thread undoubtedly makes the proposal very accessible. But through the tape we lose a certain cohesion in the tone, a depth in the body language, which remains in the same modulations, without too much venturing, and an emotional charge in the interpretation, as if the performers were only becoming accessories in the service of a story, as beautiful and touching as it is.
Vanishing Melodies
Les Ballets jazz de Montréal with the music of Patrick Watson
Maisonneuve Theater, November 2 and 6