Le palindrome
Compagnie Philippe Saire at the Museum of Contemporary Art, April 2-5
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Saire’s evening-length piece, Le palindrome, was created in collaboration with visual artists. Saire’s idea was that the dance would reflect visual art, and the art would reflect the dancing. It’s a fairly common premise, the basis for much work in Chicago. But the two art forms here don’t so much comment on as go to war with each other. As the piece proceeded, the dance came to address larger and larger subjects until it became a sprawling epic intended to encompass all of existence. The dance’s name reflects this process; as Saire says in a program note, “The work speaks of initiation, of passing between planes and of the resistance encountered….Each passing is a movement and a direction: sometimes one way, sometimes another, from backwards to forwards, like a perpetual palindrome.” Although Saire speaks poetically, he describes the common intellectual experience of discovering the dense interconnection of ideas–trying to follow a single one, you still end up with the whole world.
The second section, on color, explores images of femininity. Two male-female couples dance in deeply saturated red light in front of and behind a clear plastic sheet painted with a medical photograph of a heart connected to a network of veins and arteries. As the dance progresses, the red light is invaded by white light, until at the end the red and white lights are balanced. Saire associates femininity with emotion, with sex, with male-female partnering, with manipulation, with rationality confronting emotions, with the struggles of the soul, and with honesty.
Tandem’s concert was a complete surprise. The work features stunningly fresh movement gracefully composed and beautifully danced. Unusual and sophisticated, it well deserved inclusion in the Dance Center’s series.
Blumenthal and Noiret’s intellectualism is different from Saire’s. Blumenthal has created a fascinating style of his own out of the widely different movement styles he’s explored. Noiret, who’s developed one specific style in depth, has also generated a new way of moving. They are true dance intellectuals, absorbed by the qualities of movement and awesomely creative. By contrast Saire seems derivative; he thinks that the interesting part is the philosophy–dance is merely a rocket to take him to the stars.
