How can a performance containing only formal beauty reach a fullness, unexpectedly offering a whole new dimension, and beyond aesthetic? Mystery? Not completely. While contemplating « Fresque, femmes regardant à gauche», a Paco Dècina choreography, one feels vaguely that if the piece projects so much poetry and meaning, it is the result of years of maturing, a thought process one hundred times over. Inspired by Antique Rome and age old discoveries from Pompeii or Herculaneum and now exhibited in the Museum of Naples, Italian Paco Dècina opens the doors to an eminently mysterious world of melancholy, a world where time fleets and escapes us. A world where eternity is beyond us. Watching this beautiful choreography, watching the scenography and the projected images which are just as elegant as plain (Serge Meyer and Frédérique Chauveaux), while enjoying the remarkable lights (Laurent Schneegans) and capturing the sound effects whose discreet yet imposing nature enhance the mystery (Frédéric Malle), while finally savouring the magnificent way in which the choreographer apprehends space, we penetrate into a world of diffused sensation (a sensational world) - all marvellously aide the subject.
Do you remember the two thousand year old frozen faces on the Antique frescos so surprisingly close and yet so desperately far, expressions still full of life but belonging to those departed for thousands of years, of these breaths from the past which rise to the surface and disturb us? Do you remember Fellini’s striking images in « Roma » where human shapes were plunged in silence and darkness for centuries and then suddenly excavated by the brutality of bulldozers, only to faint upon the first breath of fresh air …. ? We find the traces of all of this in « Fresque, femmes regardant à gauche », who, despite the title, as dry as a museum cartel, is in fact an intense poetic piece. As the choreographer admits to his obsession with fleeting time and the past far-gone, we understand perfectly that a long journey of maturing could give birth to such a sensitive work.
Ah to breathe! What a feeling of relief, to slide into the soft, calm gestures of Fresque, femmes regardant à gauche, Paco Dècina’s most recent piece. Running since January 19 at the Théâtre de la Cité internationale in Paris, this seven-dancer piece unfolds slowly on the stage to a pace as steady as sand in the hourglass. It gives the feeling of both a physical and ocular massage, very rare in today’s setting, is striking by its originality, and makes you feel good. But the eye never stops fluttering. With the dancers positioned from the back of the stage to the audience’s feet, the stage is like a layer cake that one surfs in and out of in order to evaluate its thickness. Each of the dancer’s movements is echoed and deferred by the gesture of another, spreading out a prism, and constantly shifting. The lines of the arms are overlaid with those of the legs in surprising visual harmony.
Le regard pourtant n'arrête pas de voltiger. Avec ses danseurs distribués depuis le fond du plateau jusqu'aux pieds du public, la scène ressemble à un feuilleté dont on explore l'épaisseur en surfant entre les corps. Chaque mouvement d'un danseur se fait l'écho différé du geste d'un autre, déployant un prisme sans cesse mouvant. Les lignes des bras se superposent avec celles des jambes dans des accords visuels surprenants.
A BARE CHESTED QUARTET
The pictorial and sculptural tendency in Paco Dècina’s work takes on here a stronger tone than usual. The texture is multiplied. There is more flesh and muscles shimmering in the silvery lights created by Laurent Schneegans. As uncluttered as they may be, there are more forms inflating and deflating in the semidarkness. He couldn’t resist using the bare chested male quartet wearing beige underpants and black kneepads, playing the cliché card of virile and muscular erotica. The Prince Charmings of yesterday have undressed, leaving way for wrestlers.
The question of beauty, deserted by the majority of performances, surfaces here relentlessly. The harmony, each dancer’s accuracy in relation to himself and to the group, the invention of gesture always so finely renewed by Paco Dècina for over 20 years of his work, all contribute to this sensation. Right up to the interactive video effects so in trend today, by which he projects timeless images in black and white.
Fresque, femmes regardant à gauche is inspired by a picture of the Antique site of Herculaneum near Naples. Without actually being visible on stage this fresco allowed the choreographer of Napolitano descent to renew with his past. This symbolic strike of youth, just as the new blood of these young dancers made way for him to make changes. Stated contrasts between the pictures, new speed, hip-hop influences, acrobatics laid out on the floor… all inject a different intensity to the waking dream, which is Paco Dècina’s touch.