Dancers perform Alain Platel's "Out of Context - For Pina"Only the Best :-))
Alain Platel is a self-taught choreographer/director. He founded les ballets C de la B (Contemporains de la Belgique) in Ghent, Belgium in 1984, and from the very start, this acclaimed contemporary dance company has been noted for risky innovation. The repertoire of les ballets C de la B is always provocative and disturbing. The Globe caught up with Platel in Ottawa where the company had just performed Out of Context - For Pina at the NAC.
I take it from the title that you've dedicated the work to the late German choreographer Pina Bausch. How did she influence you?
Pina died during the creation process, so I added on the dedication. I'd known her for 30 years, and admired that special way she used dancers, transforming them into personalities. She also established the practice that any movement or thought could be used in dance.
What about Out of Context ? Where did that come from?
I had worked with the same group of dancers and composer Fabrizio Cassol on two shows - VSPRS, which debuted in 2007, and pitié!, which premiered in 2008. Each show was inspired by a specific piece of music - Monteverdi's Vespers and Bach's St. Matthew Passion. We were supposed to do a third project but that fell through. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise because I could just focus on the dancers. So this piece is out of context, because there is no music context.
When you say focus on the dancers, what do you mean?
Well, it's the cheapest production the company has ever done because we had very little money. The dancers and I chose a collage of music and sounds that we liked. I had to be the DJ because we didn't have a music director. There is no set and only minimal lights. Just the nine dancers who remain on stage for the entire hour and a half. The piece grew out of improvisation assignments that I set for them.
What is the work about?
At the very beginning of Out of Context, the dancers get rid of everything they don't need. They strip down to their underwear. Their only prop is a blanket. Throughout the piece they keep redefining their communication with each other and their relationship with the audience.
Were you inspired by anything specific in developing the work?
Yes. The first was a documentary about the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould - and his "folie" - the light madness that he lived with his entire life. Secondly, my background in psychology and pedagogy working as a remedial teacher at a cerebral palsy centre for children. I incorporated into the work the state of mind of living with a harsh and difficult physicality. But to me, there is also a poetic side - a beauty and power in the misshapen and malformed.
The movement vocabulary for this piece has been described as an anarchy of spasms, convulsions and tics.
Ballet and modern dance don't express the more chaotic deep human feelings of today. Some might think that the physical language I use is Eurotrash, but I see it as simply contemporary. Strip away the norm and something happens on stage. The concrete idea behind the work is human behaviour, and how to use it to try and forge something that brings us together. I want to seduce the audience to find compassion - to come into our world and share our stories.
Next stop for the piece Out of Context - For Pina is oct. 13 to 16 at the Fleck Dance Theatre as part of Harbourfront WorldStage.
This interview has been edited and condensed.