Moving Thoughts

Babylon. Choreographer Paula de Vasconcelos decides to look to the past to begin her Trilogy of the Earth, hoping that it might hold useful lessons for today. With a work that hovers between theatre and dance, she takes the world in and reveals it back to us with great lucidity.

An elderly gardener walks the stage. He complains about the young dancing couple, the color of the floor, the music. Settled in his ways and unwilling to be touched by others, he is unable to become a full participant in life.

In an effort to pacify him, part of the floor is removed at the back of the stage, revealing the earth. With de Vasconcelos, the earth is not some vague notion of humanity; it is concrete, the soil that generously provides for us and the beings that populate it and are intimately tied to one another.

A diplomat records a message for his answering machine. He has traveled the world, but his messages speak of absence and detachment. A young narcoleptic girl buries her nose in books, not knowing that “the end is not yet to come.” After all, Babylon may be in ruins, but humanity still stands.

For this reason, a lot more hope shines from Babylon than one would expect. Despite the early objections of the gardener, life goes on – “quand il n’y aura plus d’eau, il y en aura encore” – and it carries him along with it. A man builds a water system while an Indian woman makes bread over an open fire on stage. All 13 actors, dancers and musicians gather around a table to feast.

As they speak in different languages, they break into an incomprehensible fight. Images of Babel emerge from these characters incapable of communicating peacefully, of understanding each other. Luckily, our narcoleptic girl suddenly wakes up, throws a glass of water in Gilgamesh’s face and breaks into dance, where most everyone joins her.

Hence de Vasconcelos’s inability to succumb to pessimism even while standing in the middle of Babylon’s ruins; her work is ultimately about the positive powers of creation. Dance and music become the truly universal language and speak of the necessity for a language outside of words.

EARLY REVIEW: Demain, the last installment in the Earth Trilogy, touches on these issues once more. To end the trilogy, da Vasconcelos decided to look to the future and surround herself with performers who are all under 25. They come from different backgrounds, ranging from contemporary dance to the circus, passing by ballet and break-dancing (performed by Concordia’s radiant Forty Nguyen).

Despite their awareness of the critical issues at stake in our contemporary global reality, the performers refuse to capitulate and resiliently feed the world with their artistic contributions.

The stage becomes a global village where performers break the walls between individuals and allow themselves to fully be touched by their peers. A miraculous work that bursts with life and that should be seen by everyone in need of hope during these scary times.

The second part of the trilogy, 5H du matin, is showing this week from Thursday, March 29 to Saturday, March 31.

Demain follows next week from Thursday, April 5 to Saturday, April 7. Student tickets are $20.75 and can be purchased by calling Usine C at 514.521.4493 or online at www.admission.com.

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