Compagnie Marie Chouinard
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Perhaps most dancers and choreographers fetishize the body, but Canadian Marie Chouinard’s approach is radically fetishistic, whether she’s painting breasts blue or attaching nails to the body of the half-human creature in L’apres-midi d’un faune (seen here in 1995, the last time her company was in Chicago). The 11 dances in “Les solos 1978-1998,” a retrospective of her solo works performed by company members, all make the body strange and thereby magical; by extension human consciousness also comes to seem bizarre. In the 1986 S.T.A.B. (Space, Time and Beyond) a nearly naked woman in dehumanizing makeup wears a long, curving, flexible sword on her head, attached to a helmet; she seems predatory, martial, even insectlike as she stabs herself between the legs from behind, trembling, or talks incomprehensibly in a ragged, growling, possessed voice. In the 1998 Etude poignante a woman with pierced nipples, wearing a chain between them and a chain mail headpiece, folds her arms and hands into her body, flapping them in gathering, self-feeding motions. At once infantile, birdlike, atavistic, and futuristic, she seems a mythological creature, an archetype of some part of our consciousness we’d rather not know about. In this context a work like the 1980 Petite danse sans nom is almost refreshing: a woman drinks a glass of water, then pees in a bucket. After a thoughtful look down–am I done?–she picks up the bucket and walks offstage. Talk about economy! There’s a satisfying sense of closure to this simple, everyday but seldom staged action. Tuesday and Wednesday at 7:30 at the Shubert Theatre, 22 W. Monroe; $14-$39. Call 773-722-5463 for tickets and information.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Michael Slobodian.
