An image from BROUHAHA (photo: Alberto Ruiz Soler)
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a brouhaha is ‘a noisy and overexcited reaction or response to something’, but the opening of Lola Maury’s BROUHAHA prompts an opposite reaction; as we sit on three sides of the stage at The Place waiting in the dark for what we think might be the beginning of the performance, nothing happens. Has something gone wrong? Then as we accustom our eyes to the darkness and our ears to the silence, we hear a prolonged whistled note from somewhere in the auditorium, and then another with eerie harmonics and the sound of Big Ben chiming in the fog. A sense of relief ensues as the notion of a beginning takes formal shape; the whistled harmonics are like reeds blowing in the night and from a single corner light we can ascribe their source to a trio of performers (Juan Corres Benito, Laureline Richard and Alexander Standard) arriving slowly on the still-overcast stage with rasping intakes of breath. What sounds come from the performers and what are embedded in Alberto Ruiz Soler’s ruminative, diaphanous score is difficult to tell, but Maury and her team seem to be setting up a theme of acclimatization that tests not only our senses but our expectations of what a performance might be. What we hear evolves into what we see: three evanescent figures flecked in silver slowly evolving under a brooding light. The trio naturally draws our focus but it is the scenic interplay of form, sound and light that vies constantly for attention. Ben Moon’s lighting corroborates Ruiz Soler’s growling collage of sounds while the layered forms of Cesca Dvorak’s gender-neutral costumes shroud the body in mystery.
Maury’s description of the work as ‘a multi-layered experience; a sometimes chaotic, sometimes harmonious mess of sonics mashed, spliced and woven which chimeric sequences of movement’ seems almost too defined. The smooth articulation of the performers is independent of any known narrative and defies any recognisable relationships; whether it suggests amoebas expanding their reach in a protoplasmic effort to survive or simply an imaginative deconstruction of formality, the very ambiguity of the spectacle spawns inevitable attempts at interpretation that are never allowed to coalesce into a cogent frame. At one moment one could imagine three children playing in a field at night or be reminded of the tidal interaction of waves; on a more comprehensive scale, we might think of the work as relating to space and time in an era before our definitions of such notions began to measure, control, change and transform them. Or is Maury channelling a response to the Anthropocene by layering corporal landscapes, seascapes and cityscapes on to one another in a brouhaha of vertebrate chaos?
While it is usual for dance movement to guide or be guided by the rhythm and melody of a score, Maury enlists Ruiz Soler’s soundscape to influence the dynamic shape and volume of her choreography. Integral to his rumbling leitmotif is the muscularity and vitality of extrinsic sounds — be it a music box, traces of ritual chanting or spoken word — entering the space as swirling matter that the performers imbue with their own articulation. But the relationship between performers and sound is porous; voices within the score imperceptibly manifest in the voices on stage and vice versa so that aural stimuli never appear long enough or clearly enough to generate a specific picture or image. It’s as if Maury and her creative team are keeping their own interpretive involvement as neutral as possible to allow the audience to see through the sound and to hear through the movement. BROUHAHA is clearly the fruit of a rich, organic collaboration and in bringing together its diverse threads, meanings and significations its performance is an acutely meditative experience.
Having taken us on this journey, it is the performers who assume the responsibility for resolving the brouhaha by vocalising, as it were, their own demise until the stage empties and falls silent. The audience’s applause is an abrupt reminder of space and time.
Lola Maury, Two to Tune, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, June 24
James Morgan and Laureline Richard in Two to Tune (photo: Richard Davenport)
“The value of the theatre consists not in proclaiming rules for human behaviour, but in its ability to awaken, through this mirroring of life, personal responsibility and freedom of action.” Rudolf Laban (The Mastery of Movement)
Choreography is already a participatory art, both in its process and in its performance, so when Lola Maury — Visiting Alumni Artist at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama choreographing for their Brink Festival — adds participatory game concepts into the choreographic mix of Two to Tune, it is the game that gives the work its unique character. Rather than a linear narrative the work consists of a succession of gestural images, improvisational in quality, that form a physical dialogue between the two players, James Morgan and Laureline Richard. It is a game in which mutual understanding and acceptance rather than winning are the goals, which gives the ludic nature of the work both a physical and a spiritual aspect. In this I am reminded of Charlie Chaplin’s description of a dancer as a cross between a nun and a boxer, though Richard in particular has the lean muscularity of a long distance runner. Costume designer Clare McGarrigle concurs, giving the players shorts and singlets that speak of both sport and of stylish comfort.
Two to Tune is a small-scale work with abundant energy and a pared-down aesthetic that needs the intimacy of a pared-down theatre for us to read the expressions and catch the details. With the limited rig in the Webber Douglas Studio lighting designer Agostina Califano has sculpted a perfectly scaled underground tryst where Morgan and Richard spar. The game is divided into seamless acts, starting with a prelude in stillness as the two stand side by side looking out at the audience with a gesture of hand over heart as if listening to an invisible umpire reading them the rules. The score by Alberto Ruiz shrouds the freeze-frame actions that follow in neutral sound but as the game develops he incorporates the voices of Igor Urzelai, Moreno Solinas and Eleanor Sikorski into a choir that sounds as if it was — convincingly for the setting — recorded under a bridge at night. It provides a vault of sound in which attention can focus on the interaction of the two players and their gestural references to wrestling, swordplay, boxing, dueling and perhaps to arcane arts. The way Richard articulates her gestures gives them the appearance of a spell that Morgan deftly parries, but the way she comments on her gestures with her expressive face gives her the upper hand, whether curling her lip in distaste or transforming a biking gesture into a narrative of tough individuality. Morgan is more neutral in his use of facial gestures but his endurance keeps Richard on her toes as she finds ways to wear him down, reducing him at one point to a pummeled, willowy adversary to her boxing.
The nature of the game is unclear until the very end; we are left to deduce the rules and the goal from the actions of the players. In this way, Two to Tune relates as much to the tuning of Morgan and Richard as to the tuning of the audience into the nature of their contest. They appear to be stalking each other in a game of strategy, less on the level of a board game (though they make carefully considered moves and react to the moves of the other) as on the physical gestural game of scissor/paper/rock but there is also an ominous, intangible subtext that the brooding score captures. Gestures develop in intensity and complexity, sometimes resting in mid expression then continuing as if in the process of declaiming a speech or waving an arm in defiance. Between Morgan and Richard there is also a sensual, sometimes tender, element to the game, an unspoken attraction and repulsion as they strive to enter the each other’s comfort zone. The speed and space of their moves increases until they are running to the rolling, pounding drumming in the score; they come close to colliding but one of the rules of the game appears to be they cannot touch even in close proximity at high speed. It makes for an exciting dynamic as they constantly test each other, learn about each other and tune in to each other. The way the game resolves, quite suddenly, as they come together in partnership is quite magical, suggesting everything that has happened in the prior 35 minutes has been working towards this moment: the accord of two instruments. It is also a resolution for the audience: we share in the harmony and are reminded of the origins of gesture and dance.
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here:
Cookie Policy
