Marie Baudet
GESTURE AND SCORE IN A NEW DIALOGUE
The stage of the Theatre Les Tanneurs, entirely cleared produces an increase of perspective upon which the piece will draw a good part of its flight. From the arches comes rain from translucent bags of water; suspended, a menace or a promise. To occupy such a space is to join to the moment, and sublimate all that you come into touch with. Olga de Soto’s piece (created last June at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and in its Belgian première Tuesday and Wednesday in Brussels) combines these challenges with the one, dear to the choreographer, to install a dialogue between dance and music; one which escapes the desire to make a common body of them. Three dancers (Vincent Druguet, Edith Christoph, Florence Augendre) and a violist (Garth Knox) give concrete expression to the enterprise, marrying movement and touch to the compositions of Salvatore Sciarrino (Sicily, 1947).
A distant sound, coming from the wings, mixes with a trio made of impulses and the muted sound of bodies – dressed in Technicolor – falling, roughly segmented. The light diminishes, the musician appears, the darkness comes. Hearing melts, sharpens itself, slides over the elusive notes in the blackness – a singular alchemy from which is born an immaterial gold. As it dissipates, it awakens sight, reveals four different regards and soon re-launches the dance. A diffuse softness, an underlying humour, and above all the tensions, audaciously pushing the bodies to the limits of their articulations within a strange calm, impossible positions held until there is no force left – all while the music ceaselessly approaches the shores of silence. Flesh and notes, choreography and composition: Olga de Soto continues to explore the poles of a reflection which winds itself from time to space, from vision to hearing. There are in "Éclats mats" a waiting and an impatience; transience and certainty; drive and action; personalities and the masterly generosity of the sobriety.
Marie Baudet, Geste et partition en dialogue inédit, La Libre Belgique (BE), January 17, 2002