Behind The Line is an audience-pleasing, intelligent meta-political live performance dance hit put together by musician Malik Djoudi, choreographer Anne Nguyen and dramatist Joris Avodo. Savant, collaborative and fun to watch, Behind The Line is contemporary live dance performance that shows what live performance experience can be and can serve as a pattern for what will be coming as performance genres continue to mix and fuse.
The set for Behind The Line is inside a broad play space – a big gym floor essentially – a rectangle delimited by white tape laid down for the occasion within Carreau du Temple’s main hall. Spectators are on bleachers on either side with DJ, sound and light and other tech at one end, public and performer entry on the other.
Watching from the second row of the bleachers, between, above and below a couple of just post-teenage women, one or two families with toddlers and teeny-boppers, completed by a range of 20-30-somethings, Behind The Line resembles a social situation more than a story line. My perspective has been influenced by the very strong reaction of the toddlers and pre-teens. They struck me as unusually attentive and interested in the show. The audience in general was rapt, even those who had charge of toddlers!
Whether or not it is an intention, Behind The Line seems to roll out in three parts, pass through three situations: an individual, an individual and relationships with other people, intra-group relationships. Performers range in age from pre-teen to thirty-something, and include one girl and one woman, whose gender is not emphasized, though the competent air of the woman cries “mother”, “wife”, “sister”, at least to me. A strong drift of sound and rhythm that evolves but never seems to break creates a gravity of sound over which Behind The Line rolls out, not exactly background, but not a driver or prompter, either.
In situation #1, a single man is the first to walk onto the set. He wears a multi-loop gold neck chain, drawing the eye. His dance stretches him between floor and ceiling, radiates weight and weightlessness; Krump-style, he stamps a foot from time to time. He is joined after a while by what appears to be a family group, situation # 2. On entry, the “siblings” fall in around the first man, watch, follow and respond to him, create a second situation: constellate into solos, duos, and small groups, center themselves, it seems, around the man. Situation # 3 commences from here: complex responses that range into “battles” – that illuminate each person’s stuff – there are breathtaking break moves, especially footwork, and acrobatics, but also a great deal of personal expression and gesture for themselves and among themselves. At the end of the dance and interaction, my sensibilities have been turned toward friendship and redemption.
Like any break dance you’re likely to see in the street, Behind The Line is a collaboration of auteurs: a dramatist, a choreographer and a musician, each finding their place in a concert of movement in a concept or vision.
Theater performer, screen and play writer, habitué of collaborative and multidisciplinary and multimedia creation, Joris Avodo embeds a narrative of exile and equality – as per Carreau du Temple’s vision of a “show that uses urban dance, music and personal stories to put human equality at the center of art” – that comes out as both as coherent phrasing and evolutionary shifts in emotional tenor within the choreography as a whole.
B-girl, author, choreographer, promoter and producer Anne Nguyen over the past 20 years or so has become a hands-on intellectual of cultural integration. The last time I saw a Nguyen creation, in 2022, she was working with performers on a piece called Matières premières, contemporary dance, Africa-optics. Nguyen’s strong hand is evident in the piece in both authenticity and on-target fusion of genre. Authenticity in a savant mix of hip hop and contemporary Afro-urban dance that binds four 20-30-something professional urban dance performers from France from her own company and four 9-15-year-old B-girls and B-boys from a village in Benin. On-target fusion in her combination of contemporary and urban dance (exemplified by the Krump performance).
With an ability to mix and match sound from every music niche and make it a treat for any ear, the newly-named artist-in-residence at Carreau du Temple, the music press has lately been calling Malik Djoudi France’s new prince of pop. In Behind The Line, the sound track is a fusion of Idaatcha traditional music (the B-kids grew up in this tradition) and contemporary electro-pop.
Put Behind The Line on your bucket list.
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I saw “Behind The Line” a dance performance collaboration by Malik Djoudi, Anne Nguyen, Joris Avodo at Le Carreau du Temple on 22 June 2024. Choreography: Anne Nguyen/ Original music: Malik Djoudi with collaboration with the traditional musicians of Camaté-Tchakaloké, Benin/ Dramatization: Joris Avodo/ Costuming assistance : Didier Boko/ Adult performers: Mark-Wilfried Kouadio alias “Willy Kazzama”, Joseph Nama alias “Jo Kiero”, Tony Ndoumba alias “Tonynoscript”, Emilie Ouedraogo alias “Lady Madskillz” / Child performers: Frejus Attoukou, Jean Gbadi, Salomon Gbadi, Assiba Otta/ Costumes : Ludivine Maillard.
Child performers for “Behind The Lines” are part of the cooperative dance exchange group “Enfants des Collines” created by the Association Irilojù of Camaté- Tchakaloké, Benin, and Association Fondament’ALL of Champigny-sur-Marne, France. Sylvestre Otta is France coordinator for Irilojù.
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Author: Paul Tracy DANISON
