dance on paper

We are going to throw a huge party.

We will want grandiose and pathetic beings.

We will be anecdotal and essential.

We will explain seriously what dance is, the inscription of the intimate and of the collective, the complex articulation of meat and of immediacy.

We will talk about politics, we will say really big words, enormous words, we will say that capitalism is an ultra-violent enterprise of annihilation. We will say that violence is a class violence.

We will invite in our anxieties, the ones that paralyze us, that devastate us.

We will invite in the collective breath.

We will dance magnificent solos of love and we will be tiny fragile things.

Words from the Montpellier-based choreographer Matthieu Hocquemiller for his show “J’arrive plus à mourir” (rough translation, “I can’t die anymore”) presented at Mains d’Oeuvres last night. The performance, which started out as a messy, insouciant party, eventually turned out to be a lovely, insouciant declaration of being. (Right up Miguel Gutierrez’s alley.) The three dancers, Evguenia Chtchelokova, Elise Legros and Cyril Viallon, threw all their might into the performance, dancing with powerful and released voluptuous bodies.

An exuberant and visceral orgy. A touching, honest confession. Tiredness.

Enjoyably unpedantic. The political and the intimate, churning together like the contents of a stomach.

A great show.