{"id":5934,"date":"2018-07-20T15:19:16","date_gmt":"2018-07-20T19:19:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/?p=5934"},"modified":"2018-07-20T22:21:45","modified_gmt":"2018-07-21T02:21:45","slug":"make-them-fall-help-them-stand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2018\/07\/make-them-fall-help-them-stand\/","title":{"rendered":"Make Them Fall, Help Them Stand"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui\/Eastman performs at Jacob’s Pillow<\/p>\n

\"\"

Fractus V.<\/em> Patrick William Seebacher (TwoFace) supports (L to R) Johnny Lloyd, Sidi Larbi Cherkoui, and Dimitri Jourde; below: Fabian Thom\u00e9 Duten. Photo: Christopher Duggan<\/p><\/div>\n

Ten years ago, I began my review of zero degrees<\/em>, the duet that Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui created and performed with Akram Khan, like this: \u201cThe audience leapt to its feet,\u201d noting that I couldn\u2019t remember ever seeing such an eruption before at New York City Center. Now it has happened again. When the curtain came down on Cherkaoui\u2019s 2015 Fractus V<\/em> at Jacob\u2019s Pillow last week, the theater was smaller, but my 2008 words were still apt: \u201cthe mass of spectators\u2014in the orchestra seats, in the balconies\u2014rise as if a wave has rolled through the theater.\u201d<\/p>\n

I think this response is not to the work\u2019s excellence alone. Several pieces by Cherkaoui that I\u2019ve seen shape up as tests of coordination and cooperation\u2014also as ordeals. How many times can a dancer keep doing this? What stringent rehearsing enabled this unusual feat? What if everything these people are building falls down? If a split-second timing is even slightly off, could a performer get hurt?<\/p>\n

Often, the dancers move set pieces around\u2014building their environment, restricting or enlarging their terrain. I think of the man-sized wooden boxes in his Sutra <\/em>(2008), the silver cages, small and huge, that figured in his 2010 Babel (words<\/em>), the 12-feet tall wooden folding screens of Orbo Novo<\/em> (2009) that shaped a jungle gym, a maze, a prison. Two flexible faceless dummies kept Cherkaoui and Khan company in zero degrees<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The people who inhabit these dances are not always part of a consistent group headed by Cherkaoui. Sutra<\/em> was performed by seventeen Buddhist monks from the Shaolin Temple in China\u2019s Henan Province. He created Orbo Novo<\/em> (which premiered at Jacob\u2019s Pillow) for the now-defunct Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet. Babel<\/em>\u2019s dancers came from thirteen countries and spoke twenty languages or dialects thereof.<\/p>\n

\"\"

L to R: Patrick Williams Seebacher (TwoFace), Fabian Thom\u00e9 Duten, Johnny Lloyd, and Soumik Datta. Photo: Christopher Duggan<\/p><\/div>\n

The five dancers and four musicians who appear in Fractus V<\/em> are billed as Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui\/Eastman, an ensemble founded in 2010. Its members represent nine different nationalities. The dancers were schooled in various traditions (hip-hop, flamenco, circus, et al). Musician Soumik Data plays the North Indian sarod (held like a guitar). Shogo Yoshi plays Japanese taiko drums. Kaspy N\u2019dia sings. Woojae Park sits on the floor to play either of two long, narrow six-string geomungos (similar to kotos). At times, the score also involves a wooden flute, a piano, and a harp. The resultant atmosphere (created by Cherkaoui and the musicians) is fascinating. N\u2019dia\u2019s singing can adjust to another tradition when, at one point, Fabian Thom\u00e9 Duten, an expert flamenco performer, enters with elegant, stamping bravado \u2014a passage in which he is joined by Cherkaoui, born in Belgium of Flemish and Moroccan parentage. Later, when Park also sings what sounds somewhat like flamenco cante jondo<\/em>, the other four men surround Duten, doing introspective b-boying stunts on the floor and looking like fractious dogs.a<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>Fractus V<\/em>, like many of Cherkaoui\u2019s dances, employs text and raises political and social issues. The lines that dancer Johnny Lloyd intermittently speaks into a microphone are drawn from Noam Chomsky\u2019s ideas about freedom of speech versus attempts by the media to control our thinking, and the movement occasionally alludes to traditions that have a ritual tang. For instance, several times during the performance, three or all five of the men line up behind one another and form what resembles a many-armed Shiva (with a difference) or create a symmetrical totem or a formalized scrimmage. During one of Lloyd\u2019s speeches, two additional pairs of arms join the gestures he\u2019s making in order to emphasize his words, enwrapping him and freeing him in the process.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Fractus V<\/em>. (Top to Bottom): Fabian Thom\u00e9 Duten, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Patrick Williams Seebacher (TwoFace), Dimitri Jourde (L), and Johnny Lloyd. Photo: Christopher Duggan<\/p><\/div>\n

The men begin sitting at ease in chairs ranged along the back of the stage. Half the musicians are stage left, half stage right. But all of them form two squads, facing each other across the space to sing in a harmony that lifts your heart those Latin words familiar to Catholics; \u201csanctus\u201d and \u201cbenedictus\u201d rise sturdily and float heavenward.<\/p>\n

What we see contrasts with what we are hearing (or does it?). Patrick Williams Seebacher (TwoFace) advances toward the center of the stage and performs an uncanny solo. Without moving from his spot, he quails, dissolves, entreats, sickens. All this fluidly and almost simultaneously. His opponents\u2014one or many\u2014are invisible; his own hands tighten about his throat. When he has finished, he watches the other four collapse, as if echoing a lesson that they\u2019ve learned.<\/p>\n

The men bring in and rearrange the large white triangles that make up the set (by Herman Sorgeloos and Cherkaoui), as if fitting together the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. These flat shapes create floors and walkways and poke up like icebergs. In one remarkable coup de theater, they have been arranged, peaks pointing upward in two lines that form a V; a falling dancer touches one, and they flutter down in sequence like a house of cards.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Patrick Williams Seebacher (TwoFace) and Fabian Thom\u00e9 Duten “shoot” Shawn Fitzgerald Ahern. At back: Kaspy N’dia. Photo: Noor Eemaan<\/p><\/div>\n

Cherkaoui perhaps wants us to understand that violence doesn\u2019t conform to theatrical time. One sequence takes place between those soon-to-topple walls for so long that it becomes almost unbearable. Shawn Fitzgerald Ahern (who alternates with Dimitri Joude in this exhausting role) falls over and over\u2014shot by three others bearing revolvers. Collapsing, flipping over, dropping like a stone, he keeps rising, will not die. And the executioners replace their guns with cameras to capture his unending demise.<\/p>\n

Through all this the men dance wonderfully\u2014maybe in pairs, maybe in unison. Sometimes they\u2019re weighty, sometimes fluid (Charkaoui is as flexible as a contortionist). Often they\u2019re contentious, occasionally deferential (they bow down to Seebacher a couple of times). When Park sings sweetly, they advance toward us, taking small steps and swinging their hips invitingly, almost an exaggerated rendition of geishas in a tea house. Krispijn Schuyesmans\u2019 lighting throws the dancers\u2019 enlarged shadows on a fiery cyclorama; at times, eerily, two men are moving, but only one of them has that other self. Whatever the dancers do, the musicians soothe them, incite them , force them into rhythms, and underscore their moves. The Latin title \u201cfractus\u201d can mean \u201cbroken\u201d or \u201cweakened\u201d or \u201cdefeated.\u201d A percussive crack at a certain moment can make you imagine a bone shattering.<\/p>\n

Charkaoui<\/em> has written that \u201c<\/em>Fractus V<\/em>\u00a0 stands for the natural fractures which are necessary to grow and become stronger.\u201d You can think of that in many ways: as the knowledge that healing transmits to the body, the torture of supposed heretics that promises them a place in heaven, or the revolutions against an existing order that hope for an improved society.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui\/Eastman performs at Jacob’s Pillow Ten years ago, I began my review of zero degrees, the duet that Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui created and performed with Akram Khan, like this: \u201cThe audience leapt to its feet,\u201d noting that I couldn\u2019t remember ever seeing such an eruption before at New York City Center. Now it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5935,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2893,2472,199],"tags":[3068,3069,1656,3071,3070,3066,835,3067,3074,3065,3072,3073],"class_list":{"0":"post-5934","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-company-from-abroad","8":"category-political-performance","9":"category-postmodern-views","10":"tag-dimitri-joude","11":"tag-fabian-thome-duten","12":"tag-jacobs-pillow-dance-festival","13":"tag-johnny-lloyd","14":"tag-kaspy-ndia","15":"tag-krispijn-schuyesmans","16":"tag-patrick-williams-seebacher-twoface","17":"tag-shawn-fitzgerald-ahern","18":"tag-shogo-yoshi","19":"tag-sidi-larbi-charkaoui-eastman","20":"tag-soumik-datta","21":"tag-woojae-park","22":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5934"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5943,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5934\/revisions\/5943"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}