Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Lfounded in 1981, the pioneering Montpellier Danse festival changed the landscape of modern dance, in France and beyond. In 2024, its face changed when the long-time leader Jean-Paul Montanari was replaced by a four-person leadership. Hofesh ShechterJann Gallois, Dominique Hervieu and Pierre Martinez – although the program continues to spread dance in the city, mixing the recherché with the famous.
Welsh’ Close looks across the board: an hour-long powerhouse for six women that’s relentless and always entertaining — if not always spectacular. His signature device, built for a long time, comes from the beginning: the women lean against each other in loving pairs, then slowly merge into a dynamic and moving group, connected by linked arms and joint forces. The backdrop is a soundscape, with a bank of lights that can light up as if powered by the electricity the dancers create.
Other images change the tone of the voice: a vibration, a solitary one trapped inside a cone of light; almost a succession of machines for whipping and pumping torsos; a line in which women’s hands show that they have purified themselves, even sanctified themselves. But the great feeling is of fierce women working hard together and burning through their energy; and if it sometimes has a blockbuster – more inspiring than material – it also finds its audience.
Getting to the sweet spot, and deep, that is Le Pas du Monde by Collectif XYa major sports company that reached the masses through the opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. The performance is impressive – human towers, vertiginous dives, vertical rolls, spectacular aerial tilts and holds – but not spectacles.
The legs of the tied bodies in the opening section are a fascinating act, and they evoke the idea of people together reaching for the sky – and of the ephemerality, even the futility of earthly desires as the buildings are made or, more interestingly, collapse and fall. Another scene, in which actors carry someone on their shoulders while others lie on the ground, is not only physical but also symbolic: we help some people by stepping on others.
The images of Le Pas du Monde go beyond man, however: there are dismembered creatures with strange protuberances, shapes that look like a forest in motion, actions and changes that sound like a storm or a sea wave. Before the end, the piece has already become a physical poem that reaches the mind to touch the body and soul.
Contemporary dance always has works that surprise you – or is it just me? – and Montpellier is different. Some of them are worth mentioning A stormy wind Belgian composer Lisbeth Gruwez (dance) and Maarten Van Cauwenberghe (music) which begins like this, Gruwez cutting and jumping around the water stage like a battery-operated toy, drumming continuously – but it ends with a spectacular flashlight, swirling as shadows swirl around where you can’t look directly. wise.
There are many people, in purpose, size and matter Take Paradise Tunisian-born, French-raised Héla Fattoumi, duets – sometimes almost solo – with Tunisian dancer Sondos Belhassen. Recalling the events and memories of their different but similar lives, it positions these two old women variously as twins, allies, rivals, ghosts or luminaries. Combining Arabic music and French music, the meandering lines of dance lines avoid simple cultures to create a rich picture of lives connected through popular music, design and decoration, past experiences, longings, and old age. Rigorous work, on many levels.
