PUT ANY ONE OF FABRICE RAMALINGOM’S PIECES on your bucket list of to-see Paris dance-performances. You’re bound to experience something both absorbing and creatively finished.
At the end of a performance of Une singulière histoire de la danse, Fabrice Ramalingom’s danced biography, I was muttering encyclical-like to myself that “the human person is a mass of figures”.
I was thinking of figures as discrete postures of body and mind to which one usually attaches one or multiple words. For instance, the figure of two people clenching: “couple”, “fighting” or “loving”, among many other possible opposites and apposites.
As to the mass in the “mass of figures”. When I see a fellow human or, indeed, when I see myself, what I see is the mass of figures acquired through time and accident. The figures pulse and shift upon the unknowable shape of the wordless heart that we both call “you”.
And as to Fabrice Ramalingom’s work, I think this figures-on-wordless-heart schema explains at least approximately how his choreography succeeds as capital D Dance. The schema also explains why the man sitting next to me during Générations, the choreographer’s most recent dance performance piece, took a moment to paw the air with hands and eyes before pulling out “bienveillant” to characterize the piece:
A.− MORAL. [La bienveillance as a virtue or as behavior]:
- [Francis] Hutcheson (1694-1746) writes that the essence of virtue in the soul is bienveillance… He defines it thus: “A feeling that leads you to desire your neighbor’s well-being”. . . [the post-Revolutionary philosopher and statesman Hegelian historian Victor] Cousin [1792- 1867], Cours d’hist. de la philos. mod., t. 4, 1847, pp. 149-150. – Dictionnaire : LLF .
Also, the schema explains why bienveillant sticks in my head, and why there were so many stung, sparkly-eyed faces among the spectators, including my own. Générations was a relief for me – like my neighbor also said, there is “no eroticism” in it. Let’s tell the truth: fear of accidental eroticism in my inter-male friendships makes me stiffer than actual desire ever will. I don’t think I’m alone.
Basically, Ramalingom evokes all this feeling by artfully reducing and arranging the number and impact of figures on the heart. The spectator can better perceive then experience the pulse and shifts of the person. In short, a body can empathize and from empathy, feel what they can’t see or say.
GENERATIONS TURNS AROUND A PAIRING of Jean Rochereau and Hugues Rondepierre, respectively, a 78 year old man and a 23 year old man. From the git-go, and with the most apparently inconsequential opening, Ramalingom’s art – the noos in the stage and people set up, the discrete sets of figures, the sequencing of the spectator experience of the latter, the pace of movement and sound-scape – first make it plain, for instance, that age really is relative; for instance, that pater-linearity is just another possible inter-persons positioning among others; that the words (and with them, the emotions) we attach to them are not of some necessity adequate, inadequate or à propos to the figures we’ve so heavily farded our shapeshifting persons with.
Within Ramalingom’s framing, Rochereau and Rondepierre, pared down to the pulsing and shifts that is themselves, are in strong and sustained physical contact, what my mother used to say was horseplay and my father, wrasslin. They grapple, roll about, butt, laugh and wail.
As I watch, the word that comes to my mind is “rivalry”.
The word, there, experiencing Ramalingom’s choreography, with Karine and strangers and acquaintances about me, seems … shocking … It has that strangeness, but not quite, that words sometimes get during psychoanalysis.
Man and boy, traveler, tinker, tailor, soldier, spy! In such a wide world, where did I fall in love with this word “rivalry” and its slutty emotion?
After all, as a kid, I had a lot to do with country folk and our chattel species, barefoot yahoos with a straw between the teeth and slop-bellied sheriffs and, especially, horses, cows, chickens, sheep, cats and dogs, foxes, bats and mice, daddy long-legs, crickets and snakes. A lot of words come to mind among the figures that remain. But “rivalry” is very far from a striking one. It’s much too strong to describe any interpersonal relations I ever had …
I think, if horses mostly just “horse around” – standin’ close to each other, browsin’, digestin’, twitchin’ & swishin’ flies – humans then must mostly “human around”. And humaning is exactly what Ramalingom has Hugues Rondepierre and Jean Rochereau doing: a bit of wrasslin’, givin’, ignorin’ and foolin’ with little presents and bein’ (as birds), until they and spectators with them are there where we all really are when the playactin’ is stripped away.
Finally, in his way, Ramalingom’s choreography serves up a visible heart. It’s interesting. It’s moving. And, as my neighbor said, well, it’s bienveillant.
I saw Générations – Battle of Portrait at its premiere 12 March 2022 at Atelier de Paris CDCN, Performers were Fabrice Ramalingom, Hugues Rondepierre and Jean Rochereau. Atelier de Paris CDCN was the principal supporter for the creation and production of the piece. While at 23, Hugues Rondepierre is still at the debut of his career, Fabrice Ramalingom and Jean Rochereau have deep historic roots in contemporary dance, in France, especially, as performers, choreographers, transmitters and developers. Une singulière histoire de la danse by Fabrice Ramalingom was produced by Studio Regard du Cygne as part of the Belleville venue’s annual Signes de Printemps program.
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Author: Paul Tracy DANISON
