By Thomas Chiasson-LeBel
It’s almost Christmas Eve and the St. Lawrence market is swarming with customers. Some are walking fast, already thinking about the dinner they’ll have to cook for their relatives. They are rushed. In the midst of the crowd, something is about to happen. I am confident of this, I have been invited, I just don’t know exactly where ‘it’ will take place. I ask the first passerby:
-Have you seen dancers or a dance show somewhere around here?
-Oh yeah, it’s just there! Look!
I turn in the direction she’s pointing only to find…nothing! But then something catches my eye. There, on the median strip of the road, two dozens or so people are milling about. The way they move leaves no doubt: they are dancing.
As I get closer to see what is going on, I overhear a conversation between a homeless newspaper vendor and a pedestrian:
-What is going on?
-I don’t know, said the paper man, its art!
This exchange neatly summarizes the whole situation. Apathy is always the enemy of meaning.
Paradoxically, dance is the least intuitive art. Least intuitive because we do not get the meaning immediately. When looking to a dance performance, ideas, words, feelings and emotions are not bursting into one’s mind as it does with other forms of art. Paradoxically, because when we speak, the gestures that come-along with the words are consistent with the meaning. I cannot but think of Bakhtine who insists, in his essay on materialist linguistics, on the importance of tone and gesture in understanding the meaning behind words. The ‘F’ word, for instance, can be employed and interpreted in a myriad different ways. It all comes down to body language and tone. It can mean «I hate you» if used with the middle finger, or it can signify «you are funny! I don’t believe you» if said to a good friend after he/she just made an incredible affirmation. If gestures are so intimately related to the meaning, why is it so hard to understand what message or meaning each choreography conveys? Is it because the meaning is too culturally embedded? Is it because the contemporary dance has developed a hermetical body language?
The newspaper seller didn’t get the signification conveyed by the dancers, and worse, but understandably perhaps, he thought the meaning wasn’t meant for him. He was probably wrong on this last assumption. But he is not the only one who has a hard time getting the meaning of contemporary dance. I am probably one of them. By chance, the choreographers of Intersection Project have paid attention to people like me when preparing their show.
Looking at the spectacle, a first meaning is obvious. They are dancing in the middle of the street, on a narrow strip of ground, without music, giving another flavor to the space. But very few people stop. For many, it’s simply ‘business as usual.’ They don’t notice what is really going on or they don’t care. What’s going on is ‘art’, and for them it can exist as long as business goes as usual. The fact that the dancers are trying to say something, and people don’t care, is probably part of the signification the dancers are trying to convey. It is exactly behind such feelings that a government can hide when deciding to atrociously expel artists from institutional recognition.
A second meaning, and probably the most important, is that those dancers are still there. With no means, they mean. They decided to stand up (or in this case : turn, flip, jump, twist and much more) and share their meaning publicly, out of the spaces reserved for specialists. Even when institutionally rejected, they still express themselves.
A third meaning can be discerned also: in the simple choreography. A group of dancers are moving individually, minding their own business, and they suddenly gather together. Something attracts their common attention. A threat? Just after, one after the other, they fall, and their bodies seem disarticulated. But instead of falling on the ground, alone, and being left there, the others form a human chain to support her and lead her to a place where she will be safer, far from the frontline for a few minutes, where at her turn, she too will become part of the support chain.
I am probably wrong in what I got from this show but I am pretty sure to be right on one thing. We are more than just animals simply because we produce meaning. If I don’t get what somebody says, instead of turning my back, I should ask him/her to repeat it until I understand. And if few people are listening, it might make perfect sense to go out on the street and yell it publicly.
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