There’s a resolute formalism at work in Boris Charmatz’s 10,000 Gestures, which sees 22 dancers perform individual choreographies for an hour, with no movements repeated between them. Charmatz, director of France’s Musée de la danse and the newly formed troupe Terrain, calls the piece, originally commissioned for the 2017 Manchester international festival, “an ode to the impermanence of the art of dance”. But with dozens of disparate gestures flying every second, variety is as much a theme as ephemerality.
Early moments suggest high drama: a frantic, gasping solo; a sudden entrance from the ensemble, unleashed en masse like a swarm of bees. The show cycles through angry, grave and goofy moods alike, defying the dignified notes of Mozart’s Requiem in D minor with yelps that echo across the Tate’s Turbine Hall. It’s a disorienting storm of activity, devoid of the stylistic patterns that normally bind a work of dance. Performers scoot, tumble, swerve and vogue; they bellow pop lyrics and pretend to jerk off; they jeté and slap themselves and clamber into the audience, some with more courtesy than others. Promising glimpses of ballet and breakdance evaporate in the crush.
“Choosing each dancer’s gestures wasn’t about what looks good or bad, but what’s different from what the others have done and are going to do,” Charmatz explained during an accompanying lecture demonstration. The tactic prompts some interesting questions – how pedestrian can you go and still call it “dance”? – but also has the effect of neutralising the more virtuosic moves.
Over at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, it was all gory theatrics in Arthur Pita’s The Mother (2018), which twists a grim Hans Christian Andersen tale into a horror show of maternal sacrifice. Pita has long embraced the macabre, perfected in 2011’s The Metamorphosis, but his latest piece of dance theatre approaches new heights of gruesome, leaving its protagonist bawling, bloodied and barren.
This surreal confection is brightened by the star power of Royal Ballet supernova Natalia Osipova, cast as a bone-tired mother trapped in a night terror with Death. Jonathan Goddard is our baby-snatching grim reaper, devilishly camp as he slips between disguises: a gothic mistress who crucifies her with roses, a ghoulish fisherman who plucks out her eyes. The pair reprise the fizzing reciprocity that propelled them in last year’s Flutter by Iván Pérez, moving in harmony even as they do battle in the netherworld.
The production hits some familiar Pita beats: fairytale motifs, phantasmagoric effects, a canny live score from Frank Moon (joined here by Dave Price). Yann Seabra’s rotating set catapults us between hellscapes, while creaturely caws pierce the soundtrack. The mise en scène oozes with creepy details, often overegged but always lushly conceived.
Osipova has pursued a parallel contemporary track for some time, and this role pushes her to simmering levels of emotive intensity. An early solo to birdsong is a highlight, a slow-burning swivel deepened by her quivering brow. I’m less convinced that it optimises her extraordinary technique. She sparkles, of course, doling out silken chassés and fearsome extensions, but the choreography is fitful, halting, concerned with spectacle above all else. We get glimpses of her dexterity but few chances to luxuriate in it.
Star ratings (out of 5)
10,000 Gestures ★★
The Mother ★★★