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Male momentum >> Tangente hosts Moment'homme: danses gaies by MARITES CARINO
"It's a dance show, but nobody really dances," explains St-Pierre, with irony. "There is a choreography, but I'm prevented from doing it. Everybody is stopping me from performing: the technician, the lighting director, the understudy and the two dancers." Take the opening scene: "Two people are trying to Scotch-tape me to the ground, and I'm saying, 'Hey, this isn't funny, I've got a show to do!'" St-Pierre's work is one of the creations included in Tangente's annual series called Moment'homme: danses gaies, which opens this week. It also features the works of two other gay male choreographers, Seàn Curran and Alfonso Bordi. Originally, St-Pierre intended Ariel to be a work for himself alone. "I wanted to do a solo, but I realized I'm not good at it. I feel naked on stage and I don't think I'm ready for that yet." Although St-Pierre has already performed in his birthday suit, he informs me there will be "zero skin" in this production. So to avoid stage and studio solitude, he invited two of his friends, Geneviève Bélanger and Laure Ottmann, to join him for the madness. Because St-Pierre finds it excruciatingly painful to watch dancers execute his choreographies from the audience, he often includes himself in the performance to give him some semblance of control. He danced in his last production, Aide mémoire pour le prochain millénaire, which featured him among 20 hysteric women, whose skirts were Scotch-taped to the ground. (Yes, St-Pierre does have a fervid fetish for Scotch tape, because of its "beautiful sound.") The audience could feel a little uncomfortable due to some of the humour in this piece, which St-Pierre qualifies as "pee-pee-ca-ca." He demonstrates this by making fake farting noises with his armpit. While he admits he almost goes too far in parts, he says, "You've got to touch the bottom if you want to ascend." In this work, St-Pierre toys with his two extremes, as reflected in the title. He takes the delicate sprite-like character of Ariel from The Tempest and contrasts it with the image of Windex and squeegees. Always a chameleon, St-Pierre has displayed his colour-changing capabilities by dancing a variety of styles, from Brouhaha Danse's fierce hard-core version of Giselle to the softer tones of Harold Rhéaume's Les dix commandements. Also on the program is Homonym, a duo by Alfonso Bordi, and solos Five points of articulation and Average Tragedy by New York-based Seàn Curran.
Moment'homme: Danses gaies runs May 1315 at 8:30pm; May 16 at 7:30pm, at Espace Tangente, $15
Also check out: the Maison de la culture Plateau-Mont-Royal hosts Projet Danse, featuring choreographies-in-the-making by members of Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal. Tickets are free, but if they're all gone, you can show up an hour before performance time and be put on the waiting list. That's at 465 Mont-Royal E., May 13 & 14, 872-2266, 8 p.m. |
Imagine going to a concert and not hearing any music, or seeing a play without any acting. If you apply this same formula to dance, you get Ariel ou le cracheur de windex (ou la petite histoire d'un solo raté), a work by dancer-choreographer Dave St-Pierre.