photo by Yi-Chun Wu
~ Author: Oberon
Thursday February 1st, 2018 - French-based Compagnie Hervé KOUBI making their Joyce debut with this series of performances of What The Day Owes To The Night. French-Algerian choreographer Hervé Koubi created this striking piece as a reaction to his father’s deathbed revelation that Koubi’s family originated in Algeria - rather than in France as Koubi had been brought up to believe.
The choreographer explained all this is a charming pre-curtain statement, and he further spoke of the fact that all the men in his Company had started out as street dancers. As I've come to know over the years, street dancers are often true poets of movement; and thus it was tonight.
The house went dark, and for an hour we were transported to some desert outpost where a brotherhood of thirteen men performed fantastic and sometimes improbable deeds of physicality whilst communing in a celebration of the masculine spirit. Drawing on capoeira, martial arts, break-dance, and contemporary movement motifs, this dream of a dancework summons up visions of Eastern/Islamic cultures whilst a hazy smoke hanging in the air speaks of incense and desert heat. Few danceworks I have seen draw us into such an exotic atmosphere.
From the start, every moment of What The Day Owes To The Night is enhanced by Lionel Buzonie's excellent lighting design, and by the costuming (Guillaume Gabriel) which gives the already flowing movement a captivating swirl. The musical collage ranges from traditional Sufi to Jean-Sebastien Bach, the latter providing a European connection.
photo: Yi-Chun Wu
Quiet bells herald the awakening of the slumbering men: they are bare-chested and clad in flowing white skirts. In a series of danced episodes, interrupted by long silences, the men leap and turn, partner and support one another, toss off dazzling mid-air somersaults, spin madly on their hands or on their heads, are tossed up into the air, or take flying leaps into the arms of their waiting comrades.
photo: Yi-Chun Wu
So much is happening onstage at any one time that the eye is constantly drawn from one fearless feat to another. As individuals, these sexy and self-assured men make us wonder about their individual stories; I wished at times to see them in more sustained solo or duet passages, but instead such fleeting moments are swiftly re-absorbed into the communal whole.
Near the end of the piece, the men join hands and circle or snake around the space in a state of fraternity. The hour has sped by, the vision fades, and the dancers face a barrage of cheers and applause as they bow to the excited crowd.
~ Oberon