Partner dance, the true illusion of being together. “Motifs” by Pierre Pontivianne. Photo © Lena Pinon LangMotif usually means “intention or motive”. For Pierre Pontvianne, I think, the word carries the connotation as well of “recurring pattern” or maybe “recurring sense”.
However the title may play, the Motifs stage is a wide-open, squared-off, white floor – a short luminous yellow hyphen of a line along with an occasional crash of disembodied sound to divide it. Spectators are seated in folding chairs all around, at one level with the distanced action.
“Motifs”. Photo © Lena Pinon LangWhen a Man-Woman Duo commence the Motifs action, that hyphen of a dividing line is separating them; the crashes punctuate and progress the phrases of their movement.
As Motifs progresses, spectators take on the progressive intensity of b-girls and b-boys at a battle of clans absorbed by the developing performance of good friends and serious rivals.
I could feel Karine, my partner and a “b-kid” herself – “b” for “ballroom” not “break” – becoming more and more absorbed as the man-woman duo transforms into a couple, into the image or archetype (?) “The Couple Dancing”.
She becomes more absorbed in what is happening, starts feelin’ good.
I begin thinking that if Tango or Waltz or Break or any other partner or social dancing were just expert performance of a dance,
Motifs’ pleasant 50 minutes would be just that, couples Breaking, Tangoing or Waltzing. Her absorption, spectator absorption, spectator appreciation would be easy to explain.
But the happening and the intensity of appreciation are not so simple to explain. Dancing couples are not just “couples dancing” holding each other and suggestively wiggling butts. Partner or social dance or Beyoncé dance, for that matter, are also part of the movement arts, just more partnered-oriented and social.
When it comes to movement art, I think, partner and social dance lovers, whether b-kids at battle or b-grammas like Karine absorbed by contemporary dance, know Dance from dance by body experience. Whether they’re dancing or watching others dancing, spectators are loving the experience of the coordinated concentration of body and mind and the delicious emotions – friendship and rivalry – involved in dance through their most intense personal experience of dance.
“Motifs”. Photo © Lena Pinon LangSpectators realize that success in social dancing – as is true, as I believe, for all dance – comes down to being there withan Other – being together.
This togetherness, though partial product of it, is quite beyond the holding and butt wiggling of physical performance.
So, I think, it’s the personal experience of being there with that guides the evidently deep spectator appreciation of Motifs.
“Motifs”. Photo © Lena Pinon LangPontianne, his lines and crashes, the passage from duo to couple, gets it right from the beginning. Karine and the other absorbed spectators automatically understand the beyond-words sense Pontvianne’s trying to get across, especially, they understand the sense of the luminous yellow hyphen of a line on the floor.“
The sense of line-hyphen, the happening of it in the choreography, especially, lets spectators experience the complex-and-true illusion that social and partner dancing involves: dance can make a couple of a duo as much as can be, dance puts us together as much as can ever be.
Dance, Pontvianne’s piece choreographs very poignantly, even partner dance, even social dance, even Beyoncé TV dance, answers the existential complaint of a classical Athenian drinking song I learned at school: “O! Were it given us to open up the heart of each and read the mind within”.
So. Your delighted eyes were right, Anne! Bien vu, Karine, Spectators. Bravo, Pierre Pontvianne. Let’s keep dancing!
Pierre Pontivianne created Motifs in 2014. I saw it performed by Paul Girard, Marthe Krummenacher, with sound by Benjamin Gibert, lighting by Valérie Colas and with stage visuals by Pierre Treille at Atelier de Paris for the Faits d’Hiver program, 27 janvier 2023.
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Author: Paul Tracy DANISON
