In-the-know North American audiences do not miss an opportunity to see a Meg Stuart work, and her latest Do Animals Cry reminds why. Making their first Montreal appearance in over four years, Stuart’s Belgium-based company Damaged Goods goes to the volatile core of private family life to wrestle out two hours of visceral, unruly physical theatre.
Based since 1994 in Brussels, American choreographer Meg Stuart’s collaborative, genre-eclipsing performance works have made her a key ringleader of Europe’s dance avant garde. Do Animals Cry, created in 2009, finds her teaming up again with two of her favourite collaborators, German stage designer Doris Dziersk and New York-based composer Hahn Rowe, who contributes another signature ambient electronica sound score.
Stuart’s works are known for their evocative, architectural sets, and Do Animals Cry does not disappoint. The six-person movement play revolves around an imposing beaver dam structure that tunnels across the stage. It gets climbed over and upon, raced through and along, blocked up with junk; its myriad suggestions of wilderness, privacy, of insiders and outsiders are vivid. A family of humans in their natural habitat, quiet now as we watch!
From the stage’s opening darkness issue faint giggles, shuffling and dubious panting, before the six performers are caught by the lights in awkwardly joined positions, pyjama-clad. It is immediately known: We have trespassed upon.
Do Animals Cry is a stylish, coded and ultimately frank work that in its delivery captures all the discomfort and tragicomic voyeurism of walking into a family scene not one’s own. After introducing themselves by nickname (both affectionate and cruel versions), the family members continue seemingly from where they left off, confused in their roles but tackling them anyhow, with a few switcheroos. Familial encounters border on violence and eroticism: Smothering mother, jealous son, rivalling brothers, repressed daughter, flirtatious siblings, darkly stoic father.
Family members grab at, charm and manipulate each other with wild caprice, the quickie entanglements tending to cool or sour quickly. Kids and parents are systematically left out or sent to the doghouse (another set piece); some rebel or get even. Although largely derived from improvisation techniques, Stuart’s fleshy movement idiom is nonetheless stylized and given to vigorous, diaphragm-rocking convulsions, ragdoll limbs and wrenching contortions particularly of the torso. Partnering and floorwork is scrappy, sweaty, and rightly justifies the multiple costume changes.
The work’s most affecting scenes drill a pipeline into the awkward, fleeting moments of family life to mine its poignant, rough-edged truths. A suicidally boring dinner table routine is frozen into a series of candid photos (outtakes from the official album, to be sure), the elements of which – a sneaking glance, a misplaced hand, a head coyly tilted – take on Renaissance symbolism. Later, the whole family stands by sheepishly as the new dog, a prize for a neglected child, but also a taxidermic specimen, fails to play fetch. Painfully stretched out, the vignette is a brilliant tragicomic high.
As in the work of many convinced artists, Do Animals Cry could use some editing, as the piece persists past several (perfectly good) false endings and clocks in at over two hours, with no intermission. Extraordinarily committed and connected performances by Joris Camelin, Alexander Jenkins, Adam Linder, Anja Muller, Kotomi Nishiwaki and Frank Willens, however, keep us concerned. Wallflower Nishiwaki surprises at the end with a magnificent tantrum.
Stuart is a rigorously conceptual artist with a recipe that works, a penetrating eye for human behaviour and the restraint to never spell out its secrets. Do Animals Cry proves she is still on her game.
Photo credit: Chris Van der Burght
Do Animals Cry continues through tomorrow at Usine C. For tickets and information, 514-521-4493. Or visit the Usine C site.
