While in Montreal last weekend, I skipped out on watching the Habs game for an equally hot ticket: the twenty-year retrospective of Belgian dancer and choreographer Wim Vandekeybus’

While in Montreal last weekend, I skipped out on watching the Habs game for an equally hot ticket: the twenty-year retrospective of Belgian dancer and choreographer Wim Vandekeybus’ Ultima Vez (Spanish for “The Last Time”). Judging by the generous turn out and hearty applause, the show was anything but a swan song. Rather, it had the power, speed, and fervor of another spectacle being played out on TV screens across the city.

Perched at the edge of the stage for a post-performance discussion, Vandekeybus told the audience: “Those who know a repertoire too well shouldn’t present it…There has to be an element of uncertainty.” It’s a familiar proclamation, found on dance posters and programs that advertise the “challenging” and “complex” nature of a work, a stab at indifference in bold type. But Ultima Vez delivered the goods. Opening with one of the company’s first creations, What the Body Does Not Remember (“instinct,” Vandekeybus later said by way of explanation), the show alighted with a Thump. Thump…Thump. Stomping around the stage, a set of dancers tests the reflexes of those twitching on the ground beneath them in a tightly choreographed pas de deux. An arm jerks out of the way of a stamping foot; a leg snaps in to avoid being trampled on. No time for the logic of action/reaction, only survival of the fittest. In another scene, a dancer puts his suit jacket on before awkwardly—yet fiercely—clamoring up a chair suspended upside down by a thick chain. Clamping his hands underneath the seat, hooking his feet around the legs, and steeling his body against gravity, he sways from the vein-popping effort of it all until heavily dropping back down to earth and making way for the next person to have a go. The gesture—an absurd attempt to literally hold a seat of power—is humorous at first, yet quickly becomes dismal with the dancers’ propensity for its repetition.

Although much of the show could support weighty metaphor (“Works I created twenty years ago are now being interpreted as anti-Iraq,” Vandekeybus noted dryly when asked about messages behind his choreography), the evening was foremost a celebration of the physical daring and acrobatic prowess for which Ultima Vez is renowned. As one critic observed:

The movement is almost always violent, even dangerous. More Ultima Vez dancers have been severely injured on a per head basis than any other company—many dancers refuse an Ultima Vez invitation out of concern for their well-being…You are working at maximum speed, in direct opposition to other bodies, in perfect timing. You will pay for your mistakes with at least bruises, so you don’t make any if you can help it.

According to Vandekeybus, what you see is “almost non-dance,” influenced in part by the performers’ eclectic backgrounds in theatre, gymnastics, and circus. They hurl bricks back and forth in a tense game of catch, drape one another over what appear to be slaughterhouse hooks, and “impale” their partners with the thrust of a pointed limb. (There are no understudies.) Adding comic levity and a dose of surrealism, Vandekeybus gallops in and out of these scenes like a two-legged steed that lost its way, an uncanny transformation. As the son of a veterinarian, he grew up around animals and has incorporated many of their movements, most notably in Blush:

The adrenalin-fuelled performance had spectators alongside me sitting with their elbows propped on the mezzanine railing, mesmerized. For a full ninety minutes—without intermission—Ultima Vez had us in a tight grip. Being at the show didn’t feel much different than being at the game.

Tags: performing arts

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Posted on Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 at 12:26 pm. Follow comments through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comment or trackback.