Jetzt
Abstract
Jetzt
(2000) is a study on movement between falling and landing, the creative
potential of the body in a state of instability. Thelonious Monk's
stumbling rhythms and surprising harmonic sequences forms the
appropriate musical counterpart.
Jetzt
Presentation
No step can ever be like another
A
33-year-old German-speaking Swiss living in Brussels, Thomas Hauert
studied at the Rotterdam Dance Academy before working with Anne Teresa
De Keersmaeker, and later with Pierre Droulers. He founded his own
company in 1998 and, today, presents his third personal piece. The
choreographer is deeply compassionate, a very good listener, while his
reserve denotes great respect for others. All those qualities clearly
show through in his choreographic work. Faithful and concerned with
continuity he works with the same dancers as in his previous pieces:
Sara Ludi, Samantha van Wissen, Mat Voorter and Mark Lorimer. An
extraordinary togetherness cements this group, its members' closeness
and obvious pleasure in each other's company are marvellously
infectious.
Hauert's
pieces associate highly structured material with improvised movements.
He explains: "Improvisation is not just a tool used during rehearsal.
It is also integrated into the performance. I am convinced that the
body can discover through improvisation extremely intricate patterns of
movement it could never imagine before, on its own. We have to be
daring enough to carry the improvisation much further, without
restricting ourselves to the normal movements the body is familiar
with."
This
concept is superbly illustrated in 'Jetzt', Hauert's most recent
creation which was premiered last January at Luzerntanz, where Hauert
was choreographer in residence. In this piece the dance composition is
both extremely strict and unpredictable.
Between shape and desintegration
'Jetzt'
means 'now'. No other title could make a clearer reference to the
present. And Thomas Hauert draws extensively from it. While the dancers
observe established laws they also seem to give in to instant mood
swings they're carried away by their breath, by an impulse they seem
unable to control and that is a response to Thelonious Monk's jazz
music. This is extraordinarily lively music, rarely used in dance
performances. In "Jetzt" the relationship between movement and music is
thus highly harmonious, strongly suggestive. Monk's music is neither
narrative nor illustrative: it follows its own course, underpinning the
dance and the choreographer doesn't fail to pay tribute to it.
The
dancers stagger, twirl, traverse the theatre, fall and get up again,
waver between centrifugal force and gravitation. Because Thomas Hauert
and his company don't satisfy themselves with exploring the corporeal
mechanism of articulation and muscle, they also play with the weight of
given parts of human anatomy, in search of a way to briefly escape
gravitation. The projected images and films also participate in this
search images vacillating in the background or on a white linen
screen, at times cut out, at others altered. The body becomes the
mobile tool of the union of art and nature, artifice and artlessness.
The postures conjure up a limited or unlimited space, depending on the
moment.
Irony of the ineluctable
No step
looks like another. That's the magic of 'Jetzt'. The way the dancers
sway next to each other, cross the space or gather like the components
of a mechanism sometimes resemble a dispassionate movement study. But
barely perceptibly a marvellous kind of humour and irony emerges. The
dancers' articulations limber up, their muscles react faster, their
blood heats up, and audacity makes its appearance. On Monk's music the
dance becomes a relaxed walk, a whimsical play with speed. The dancers
cling to each other like fractious children, their bodies trip over
themselves. It is all brilliantly ordered and stunningly danced.
Eva Bucher
