A veritable Noah's Ark accompanied France's Compagnie Montalvo-Hervieu as the troupe returned to the Taipei stage last night with their surreal On Danse, a unique blend of circus, dance and video that is almost guaranteed to have audiences bopping in their seats and fighting the urge to get up and dance themselves.
The company, founded in 1985 by Jose Montalvo, the group's conceptual artist, and Dominique Hervieu, the associate choreographer, was last seen in Taipei in 1998, with their production Paradise.
Like Paradise, On Danse is dance-theater: a clever blend of multimedia and live dance, as an endless parade of life-size animals — and some larger than life — gallop, walk and prowl across the back of the stage.
Sometimes there are real humans mixed in with this virtual zoo, like the man who appears to be carrying an oversized white cockatoo on his wrist. Just a man taking his pet bird out for a walk — what could so strange about that? Perhaps it is that the bird appears to be larger than the man.
Horses, zebras, lions, Bactrian camels, storks, baby elephants appear and disappear — not to mention the two baby chicks large enough to give those with alektorophobia nightmares for weeks.
The upper level of the split-level screen shows an array of clouds floating by. Sometimes there are animals amid the clouds and sometimes the sky is filled humans bouncing around like they are playing on a celestial trampoline; other times there are cupids falling through the air as if they have been expelled from paradise.
PHOTOS: COURTESY OF COMPAGNIE MONTALVO-HERVIEU
Just like at a three-ring circus, sometimes it's hard not to get distracted by all the animals to the point where you ignore the show that's right in front of you, in this case, Montalvo-Hervieu's amazingly gifted troupe of young dancers who whirl through a joyous blend of ballet, jazz, African dance, hip-hop and even some belly-dancing.
The smiles are certainly real enough; as are the "see if you can top this" looks the dancers sometimes give one another.
The company is based in the multi-ethnic Parisian suburb of Creteil, and that diverse world is reflected in the make-up of the troupe. It's another Noah's Ark with dancers of varying shapes, sizes, colors and dance backgrounds, but the world they create on stage is a dizzying celebration of both diversity and the melting pot.
The fast-paced choreography, with its very modern flair, is set to, of all things, the Baroque opera melodies of the 18th-century French composer Jean-Phillipe Rameau. It's another example of Montalvo and Hervieu's very own world, made out of different genres that should be clashing, not blending together.
Montalvo and Hervieu have been quoted as saying they were first struck by Rameau's spirit of sheer joy when they worked on a production of his opera Les Paladins at the Theater du Chatelet in Paris.
"Rameau bends the rules, in a spirit of sheer jubilation," Montalvo is quoted as saying in the program notes. "His music is a hymn to 'present joys.'"
In Rameau, Montalvo and Hervieu certainly have found a kindred spirit, whose energy, imagination, sense of humor and love of fantasy matches their own, despite the centuries that divide them.
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