Double Murder | Dark and bright humanity

It’s a Montreal crowd favourite, and for good reason. The company of the same name, led by the brilliant English choreographer Hofesh Shechter, will once again tread the stages of Montreal, at the invitation of Danse Danse, with Double Murdera double that promises to be all in contrast.

Iris Gagnon Paradise
The Press

Hofesh Shechter appears, all smiles, on our screen, live from London. On the day of our interview, Prime Minister Liz Truss had just resigned, barely a month after her disastrous inauguration. “So you will have a new prime minister today?” “, we throw at him, with a smirk. “Hey yes, one more! We can never have enough, we want more! laughs the man who says he can’t wait to see Montreal, a city he loves, with his company.

Even if his pieces often tackle burning current issues or probe with acuity the paradoxes of human nature, the creator is careful not to qualify his creations as “political”.

So it is for Clownswhich will open the double program titled Double Murder, at the Théâtre Maisonneuve. Shechter discusses the human fascination with violence and its staging in the society of the spectacle. “I don’t come up with a program that says violence is bad, even though we can all agree that violence doesn’t help anyone. What I try to do is to provoke reflection around this very complex question: why is violence there, omnipresent, among us? »

First created for the Nederlands Dans Theater company, Clowns was born out of a rather childish game: “Quite naively, we started playing pretending to kill each other, in a very theatrical way, on stage, in different ways. At first, it was rather amusing, very grotesque,” ​​says the artist.

But these explorations ended up leading the choreographer to wonder why there is this side in us that takes pleasure in the spectacle of violence, to feel the shivers it arouses: “I have two little girls. And there’s nothing they love more than when I play the monster chasing them! There is something in these instinctive games about danger, about death, that challenges us. »

Isn’t it precisely this human fascination for violence that the media exploit by showing it in an ever more frontal fashion? “For questions of money, of power, the media seek to capture, to keep people’s attention in a very primary way, by always pushing the limits of what is shown,” he believes.

Thus Clowns has become this grotesque, squeaky fable around the entertainment society. “Eventually, all the dancers are trying to do by ‘killing’ each other is to keep the audience’s attention, however pitiful it may be. They are clowns, after all! “says the one who also signs all the music for his shows.

An “antidote”

Whether Clowns is first entertaining to watch, it is still a very dark room. “I really like working with repetition. In Clowns, that’s what makes the room very dark, this feeling that you can’t get out of it. It starts off as a bit of a weird cabaret show, but at some point it feels like you’re trapped in a David Lynch nightmare. »

The idea of ​​responding to it with an “antidote” in a double program imposed itself on the choreographer. ” Clowns offers a rather pessimistic vision of humanity. I thought it would be interesting to explore another angle: a community that tries to survive together, in a harmonious way. »

Luminous, imbued with softness, naivety and slowness, this second creation, The Fix, was an opportunity for Shechter to challenge himself. “My work is often very sarcastic, right in the face. I wanted to try something new. These are emotions that exist in me, but that I do not really let exist on stage, ”he remarks.

Mostly created before the pandemic, The Fix took on even more meaning after these troubled times. “All this gave even more meaning to this work. It was even more powerful to work to give the public what is sometimes sorely lacking in our world: hope. »

From November 2 to 5, at the Maisonneuve Theater