The future of dance?

LAURENT CHÉTOUANE WITH “HORIZON(S)” AT TANZQUARTIER WIEN

By Astrid Peterle

Beautiful – this lapidary exclamation doesn’t come easy to the critic used to deconstruction choreography. Laurent Chétouane, the French shooting star in theatre and dance living in Berlin, premiered his new piece at Tanzquartier Wien. And he leaves the spectator in confusion, for horizon(s) does not only foil its audience’s expectations accumulated in his choreographies up to now, but also moves with a suppleness and “beauty” which currently are rather seldom evoked by the progressive representatives of European dance.

Coming from stage direction, Chétouane fathomed the boundaries between theatre and dance in his first choreographies, Tanzstück #1–4 (Dance Piece #1–4). Before, the actors in his acclaimed theatre works mostly performed without movement. For his choreographies, Chétouane worked with texts by Heiner Müller, Hölderlin and Goethe, letting his dancers explore the possibilities of togetherness in movement. His investigation of theatre and dance is influenced by conceptualism, so that it is no wonder if Roland Barthes turns up as a reference, or Deleuze and Lacan, like now in the case of horizon(s). According to the programme, Chétouane dedicates himself to the “question of future movement, the futurity of dance with all its historicity and potentiality”. Now, what does the future of dance look like for Chétouane?

An apparent assurance

Three dancers, Anna MacRae, Sigal Zouk and Matthieu Burner, wait until the audience calms down. In the large, entirely empty black box of Tanzquartier’s Hall G, Sigal Zouk looks fixedly at the audience and begins with a solo which could be seen as a variation on the first ballet position. The sound of a piano and a violin (music: Leo Schmidthals) underline Zouk’s playful, careful approach to dance movement. It is the first time that Chétouane is working with music; especially in the first third of the evening he employs it “classically” as corroborative accompaniment. The three dancers circle each other, keep drawing near each other without falling into the ménage à trois which suggests itself – at least not in the usual sense. The audience’s expectations concerning the romantic tragedy which normally follows such a constellation are thwarted.

Chétouane’s choreography makes do without psychology. The dancers’ movements are permeable, supple, effortless. Quotations from ballet creep in again and again. Then again, for a few moments the dancers leave their professionalism behind in order to hop around on the stage like amateurs, unburdened by conventions, childlike, rope-jumping and imitating apes. But before the events topple into unbearable romanticism, and lush green foggy meadows in Scotland over which the dancers move weightlessly unfurl before the mind’s eye of the spectator, the break sets in, the dancers hit the ground for the first time. But Chétouane breaks the choreography only tenderly – as the piece continues, the basic tenor stays tenderness and suppleness. When the dancers in horizon(s) stretch their arms into the air, cover their eyes with their hands, these gestures are not a result of inner turmoil, an existential shiver like, e.g., with Philipp Gehmacher (who worked together with Chétouane for his Tanzstück #3).