Performer Simon Tanguy does words well [by Tracy Danison]

Simon Tanguy Inging ©Elian Bachini 4

Simon Tanguy performing “Inging”. Photo©Elian Bachini

Although she disdained mostly everybody but her two sisters and her boon girlfriend Dottie, my mother was much involved in good works. Ma mastered the trick of feeding the hungry, comforting the sick and clothing the naked while quite literally holding her nose. Also, she had a natural talent for mimicry. To show her disgust of talkative people, for instance, she would open her mouth wide, wetly blubber “blahblahblah” and roll her hands from her face outward and toward the floor, simulating the trajectory of spurting word-vomit.

I bring the matter up because of performer Simon Tanguy’s deft insertion of a similarly excellent wet blabber at exactly the right moment with exactly the right gesture during his performance based on choreographer Jeanine Durning’s Inging at Regard du Cygne the other day. Ma was a fine natural mimic, but Simon Tanguy, having studied matters a bit, is much better, if, perhaps, less terrifying for children.

The title “Inging” is a reference to certain signifying qualities of the “progressive and continuous” ing suffix. In Tanguy’s take on “Inging” he suggests that the enemy is not a signifying quality or even a chatty neighbor but words themselves: De do do do de da da da …

Tanguy’s performance also suggests that the danger of too many words is not, as it probably was for my mother, intimacy, but exhaustion that leaves you vulnerable. The logic of ‘em, Sting sings, ties you up and rapes you, sure, but Tanguy’s performance suggests to me that the trauma and exhaustion leave you lost to yourself in the fake reality of the The Word. That’s worse: Mirabile dictu! That wine is truly blood; Don’t peek, there’s nobody behind the curtain; Nothing to see here; Donald Trump is the Messiah; Jew Zelensky is a Nazi; Those bombs on Kharkov are good bombs! And so forth, go those lost in The Word.

Tanguy’s performance makes of words a broad, impossibly damp, burlap sack. The sack has once carried some putrid, vaguely foreign, vegetable. After a little tickling flattery (using shared references) to let us know we are the right sort of people and a set up that teaches spectators to twist and turn in our seats to follow him with eyes and bodies, in a mere 45 minutes Tanguy gently has descended that sack, drowned the spirit in damp and scratchy discomfort.

Two details of Tanguy’s set, both somehow as absurd as sinister, stick in my mind, seem to me to demonstrate how his Inging works through a subtle destabilization of perception and sense. A little camera, just on the verge of audience awareness, apparently films Tanguy as he blahblahblahs at his desk. But the image is nowhere projected, ‘though, on the wall to the right, also just on the verge of awareness, are three silent earnest looping, looping, looping, talking, talking, talking heads talking with easy passion. Can Tanguy be filming himself just for filming? Can he be doing it for some secret reason? What’s the sense in it? Why is it not quite out of sight? As for the silently earnest looping talking heads, I come eventually to understand these are historical, perhaps, deep, Tanguys not Tanguys live. What’s the sense in it? Is it weird vanity. A marker for something else? Why is it just about unreadable?

Once, I notice “Ing Projection” flash beneath the earnest talking Tanguys. I laugh to myself because that seems so, what? Corporate, – marketing? Now, – selfie-ing? It comes into my mind that the absurdity of commercial manipulation and personal narcissism likely hides the sinister fact that my attention is continuously being engaged by this video stuff –  exhausting my ability to engage, exhausting me.

So. Tanguy’s Inging is more like participating in Kundalini dancing than vegging out with West Side Story. Tanguy’s showing and not telling; he’s full of sensibility but leaving me to feel.

It is no fun – it is not That’s Entertainment! – it’s not edifying – it is no TED Talk. But it sure is interesting.

It’s interesting because taken all together Tanguy’s performance leaves room enough for my own and his experience.  There’s a place for my strong personal guilt and embarrassment for de-do-do-do-ing my students that very day. There’s place for my appreciation for Tanguy’s insight, performance talent and stagecraft and room enough for the unique experience of the performance itself: I’m sitting here several days later imagining still a world with less of The Word in it.

Simon Tanguy’s production of Inging was presented 18 March 2022 at Studio Le Regard du Cygne as part of the studio’s annual Signes de Printemps program. Simon Tanguy, originally trained as a clown, has performed with a wide variety of choreographers, including Boris Charmatz and Maud Le Plaudec. He has his own troupe, cie Propagande C. Choreographer Jeanine Durning is currently active in the U.S.; in addition to inging, Durning’s pieces include: Dark Matters; This Shape, We Are In; and To Being.

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Author: Paul Tracy DANISON