The Belgian company C de la B is bringing its latest creation, Out of Context - for Pina to the Spring Dance Festival in Sydney on August 30 and 31 and September 1 at the Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House and the Brisbane Festival on September 3 and 4 at the Powerhouse Theatre.
Many choreographers have been influenced by the late German Pina Bausch. Such was the impact of her Tanztheater Wuppertal in Germany that it could be said the she singlehandedly shaped the direction of European dance. One of her greatest fans is Alain Platel, who loved her long before it ever entered his head to become a choreographer.
Platel originally worked as a psychologist with disabled children (“there is no word in English that describes it,” he says of his job) in his hometown of Ghent in Belgium. As has been related many times now, he began choreographing on a dare from his former high school teacher. Platel had seen a performance by his compatriot Maurice Bejart – and hated it. His teacher challenged him to come up with something better. So Platel got together with a couple of friends and put on a show in his loft apartment. They called themselves Les Ballets C de la B (short for Ballets Contemporains de la Belgique), though the untrained performers were a long way from being ballet dancers. As it happened a festival director was in attendance, and before Platel he knew it he had an invitation to perform.
As it happened, he was on the crest of a wave of invention in the performing arts in Belgium that included a landmark group of choreographers – such as Anna Maria de Keersmaker, Wim Vandekeybus and Michele-Anne de May. “That was at the beginning of the 80s,” he says. “Something was happening in Europe, but especially in Belgium. There were some new young directors of festivals, people who were trying to build alternative theatres, contemporary shows. I think at the end of the 70s the theatre scene had become very old fashioned. If people wanted to see something different they had to make it themselves. People with no background started to make pieces, and started to organise these festivals. There was a certain electricity, it was exciting.”
Another scene from 'Out of Context', which tries to establish a new form of communication.
Photo: CHRIS VAN DER BURGHT.
In Platel’s case, what started as an amateur collective of friends and relatives gradually became more professional. In 1993 he created Bonjour Madam, which incorporated both amateur and professional dancers, and won him a place on the international festival circuit. “That was an important moment, where I think the whole thing changed. Not only was I able to work with professional dancers, but I also started to receive support from the government. It was also the moment where I felt I could change my way of working. Before that I was always well prepared before I went to the theatre, but with Bonjour Madam I threw all my notes in the bin and started to look at what was happening in the studio.
“Since then it [my choreography] hasn’t changed. It has become more refined, the whole way of how to communicate is much more refined and intense and profound. But the way I work hasn’t changed.”
He admits now that he wouldn’t say the same thing of Bejart these days. “I was young and extremely arrogant. Being a little bit older and probably a little bit wiser, I now understand what a great person Bejart is. Toward the end of his career it’s true his works were not very representative. But we were young and our heroine at that time was Pina Bausch. I was very shaken by the work of Pina.”
Her influence is obvious in his work and working methods, which have now become almost standard among choreographers – workshopping ideas in the studio, getting his dancers to improvise around “tasks”, drawing on dancers’ experiences, personalities and backgrounds – the more varied the better – using speech and collage and piecing together disconnected fragments to make a whole. In this he readily admits he is not “special” – “everyone in contemporary theatre is working the same way. There’s a long, wild period of improv where you trying to figure out what to do , trying many different things. The impulse can come from me but it can also come from the dancers.”
Platel met Bausch several times and cherishes the experience. “We got along very well, I completely loved her very much, not only as an artist but as a human being. The moments that we met were so intense and so beautiful. She was the kind of person who fitted completely into the sort of image I had of her from her performances. The strange thing is that when we met each other we seldom talked about dance or art, we talked about life, she was so intense.”
He was devastated when she died. After attending a memorial event “which really tore me apart” he decided he wanted to give Bausch a posthumous present. “The next day we were going to start rehearsals on Out of Context, and I decided to call it Out of Context – for Pina. There is no direct link to her work, nor is it inspired by her work, bit it is something I would like to give her.”
Platel: his working methods are influenced by his heroine, Pina Bausch.
Photo: ELLEN GOVAERTS
Overseas reviews of Out of Context – for Pina have made much of Platel’s use of the bodily distortions in his choreography – ticks and spasms
and various uncontrolled forms of movement he became acquainted with while a therapist.
“But this aspect is very minor,” he says. “In summary, there are nine people on stage, they take off their clothes and their belongings and everything they don’t need. They get a little blanket. Then for an hour-and-a-half we try to establish a new form of communication between each other, and the audience. At the end they put on their clothes and go back from where they came from. They create a new context out of a normal context. They way they try to do this is through their physical means. They try not to depend on anything more than dance. No set, no props, except for mikes. It’s quite simple.”
The group of dancers coming to Australia has been together for five years. “Which is quite an exception,” Platel says. “Before that I was changing the company for each performance. But since 2005 I met a group I really like to work with and I think it’s mutual, because since then we have been working together and making three performances a year.” Among the group is New Zealander Ross McCormack.
Les Ballets C de la B will appear at the Heath Ledger Theatre, State Theatre Centre from February 19-22.
Other dance events at the Perth Festival include Lucy Guerin Inc with ‘Human Interest Story’, ‘Trust’, by Anouk van Dijk and Falk Richter, and the West Australian Ballet performing works by Kylian and Scholz. See www.perthfestival.com.au for more details.