En
Fr“Tender Anger”, a great and beautiful piece that holds up a mirror to humanity.
Christian and François Ben Aïm have created a great and beautiful piece of contemporary dance. A play on the power of bodies, music and light to explore the contradictions of the human being.
A feeling of collective strength emerges from this creation for ten male and female dancers. And yet, the mischievous Ben Aïm brothers take the time to set it up with a prologue in the form of a tender, burlesque duet in the proscenium. Then comes the image of a group lined up at the back of the stage, from which rises a very country a cappella voice… You’d almost expect a line dance to emerge, but it’s something else altogether, something more serious, more profound: an extraction of solos, as if driven by an inner necessity, that occupy the entire space of the stage. Simultaneously, bodies meet in duets and trios, in an uninterrupted flow of gestures and crossings.
The dance invades the space in an infinite continuum that nevertheless allows the eye to linger on events. Here a lift, there a fall, elsewhere a gathering that breaks up; the quality of movement that transpires in these virtuoso bodies impresses, in constant imbalances where the back bends, goes over backwards before recovering in spirals or counter-races. From body to body, the dance forms a moving mass, with the sensation of a collective power gradually taking shape, supported by the hauntingly sonorous electronic music. Gestures flow in a constant balancing act between centripetal and centrifugal energy, between abandonment and overflow, but always in the direction of a common friction.
A landscape of sensations
With this piece, Christian and François Ben Aïm have successfully taken up the challenge of the group and of writing for an ensemble, well aware of its vital energy and collective aspirations, but always quick to attach itself to the Other. Tendre colère features large dance sequences built around moments of rupture: an explosion of smoke that leaves room for all possibilities of micro-collapses and forms of salutary bearing; a surge of grotesque postures that offers a carnivalesque escape where you can scream or dance your heart out; a touching monologue that calls for an awakening to counter violence; a pounding of boots that summons up another imaginary world… The bodies and their variations explore a rich palette of states that are not simply the materialization of the play’s title, but offer a landscape of sensations full of contrasts, like a mirror of humanity, between seriousness and gravity. Special mention must be made of Mossi Traoré’s costumes: while they possess their own movement, they also know how to accompany the movement of the bodies with their timeless lines and breaks… right up to the folkloric hops and the final open-chain farandoles, which are so many calls to reinvent our being together.
Nathalie Yokel
