Premieres of the Lyon Biennale de la danse

The first week of the 20th Biennale de la danse ended in Lyon (Kommersant wrote about its opening on September 9), the main theatrical events of which were two premieres – the world and the French. From Lyon – Tatiana Kuznetsova.

For the first time in forty years, the Lyon Biennale has two art directors – the anniversary festival inevitably found itself at a crossroads. Having headed the festival since 2010, the French choreographer Danielle Hervieu, having received an appointment in Paris, handed over the reins to her successor, the Portuguese Thiago Guedes. But since the official change of power occurred only four months ago, the biennale program was shaped by both directors, and it is difficult not to notice this: although the Lyon festival has always shunned snobbery and declared democracy, this time the gap between “cultural” and “popular” dances became very clear. Both directions have zealous adherents, but dividing the public into “conservatives” and “innovators” would be wrong: the French, eager for everything new, are open to any experiments. Rather, these are generational and social differences. Respectable audiences go to traditional theaters, young people have occupied the Fagor Factory, a new dance space on the outskirts, where after a series of free performances you can fraternize with the artists and hang out long after midnight, and Lyon townsfolk, especially mothers with children, enjoy the street performances that appear in the squares and squares throughout the city.

In the first week, the “respectable” part of the biennale was supported by two high-profile premieres. Christos Papadopoulos made his debut at the Lyon Opera, staging the hour-long play “Mycelium” for the troupe. And on the home stage of the Biennale, at the Maison de la danse, the famous Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, who recently headed the Grand Ballet of Geneva, showed his latest production with the new troupe – the one-act “Ukiyo-e”. Both authors declare a desire for spiritual harmony and promote human cohesion as a way to withstand the cataclysms of a cruel world. Judging by the enthusiastic reaction of the audience, their sermon is finding a massive response. But, oddly enough, the experienced manipulator Cherkaoui, who knows perfectly well how and with what to hold the audience, suddenly showed excessive verbosity (verbal and movement), forgivable only for a beginner. While the Greek debutant minted the minimalist formula of the performance with the inflexibility of a self-confident master.

“Mycelium” by Papadopoulos is a kind of ballet “Black Square”, next to which the dances of the great minimalist of the 1960s Lucinda Child seem like Forsythe fireworks. For the whole hour – three simple leg movements: “snake” (in which the frontally turned body seems to float, as in the “Beryozka” ensemble, only parallel to the ramp), stepping from foot to foot almost in place, and easy running back and forth. The arms and body follow natural coordination, not allowing any independence. The choreographer’s asceticism is supported by the entire team. Muted, affectionately menacing, like underground rumble, music by electronic composer Koti K.; the buttery black jersey of trousers and tops, the black stage office, the dim lighting hiding the legs up to the knees. Incomprehensibly, this lapidary structure sucks in like a black hole: pulsating rhythm, bizarrely asymmetrical movements, unpredictable relationships between group and individuals and general bodily breathing with the seeming freedom of each artist. Twenty diverse dancers of the Lyon Opera dance as if they are really connected by invisible threads and feed each other with energy, like an underground mycelium. The calculation of time, space, and stage composition here is impeccable and all the more incredible since this is the first work of choreographer Papadopoulos with a large professional troupe. Whether it’s a coincidence or the start of an interesting career is the main mystery of the “mushroom” world premiere.

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui tried to make his sermon as entertaining as possible. He interprets the term “ukyo-e” (usually used to designate an era in classical Japanese art of the 17th–19th centuries) as “floating world,” supplementing it with a homophone—the Buddhist “path of sorrow.” This “world” and “path” are visually beautiful. Set designer Alexander Dodge’s huge, complex movable staircase creates a spectacular three-dimensional mise-en-scène, allowing dancing and posing at all levels of the stage. Artist Yuima Nakazato deftly combined European culottes and tops with kimono silhouettes, coloring the underside of the costumes with the heavenly colors of Hokusai. “Live” Japanese drums and flute, Japanese singing and speech, complemented by European electronics, create a diverse soundscape, and Cherkaoui himself creates an equally vast physical landscape. There are wide throws of half-ronds, and renvers, and pirouettes, and parterre supports, and abundant port de bras, and bodily furies borrowed from martial arts, and risky falls flat from the top step of the stairs into the invisible void.

But when such a fall occurs for the twentieth time, when all thirty characters dance approximately the same thing on the same hysterical bodily note; when the soloist repeats his sensual adagios with any partner that the choreographer gives him; when a Japanese dancer once again performs his dance hara-kiri, staining his hands with “blood”; when, as a culmination, the soloist reads out a seven-minute moral about the fact that we should live ascetically, not chase the products of prestigious brands, accept ourselves and others as we are—willy-nilly, we want to do exactly the opposite.