Provoking all the senses, Weathering by the American Faye Briscoll and presented in Montreal on Monday evening as part of the Festival TransAmériques (FTA), is a radical shock work that breaks down the boundaries between bodies, and thereby questions our relationship to the latter, to our perceptions and to the world.
First, the sound. Thin voices, of uncertain origin. In the audience, above our heads, amplified by a microphone? “Teeth, skin, guts, mouth.” The nomenclature expands, like a hymn sung to all those parts that make up the whole of a body. “Oh, touch. Oh, sweat,” the performers continue in their delicate voices, extending the description beyond anatomical. One by one, they climb up and then down from the padded pedestal installed in the center of a stage made circular, with the addition of platforms on it, at Usine C.
The view, then. The parade finished, here they are gathered on their square promontory, dressed casually, as if they had just gone out for a race, some with a backpack or handbag, suddenly motionless. Silence. Waiting.
Pedestrian statues, for what seems an eternity, their faces frozen in a stunned grin, their gaze haggard, their limbs in tension. The relationship with time is fading. Until the eye realizes that the scene before and that of now, imperceptibly and less and less, have changed. The hands, the legs move forward, the heads turn, the torsos twist, in a slowness so dense that it requires superhuman physical effort from the dancers, while the moving human sculpture becomes more and more perilous in its entanglements. .
Finally, the sense of smell. Two stage technicians come to slightly rotate the mattress, thus changing the point of view on the stage, then they spray a fragrant liquid on the 10 performers and the audience located nearby. Citrus? Or is it a mental decoy, as one performer bites into a dripping orange, while another coats her companions with a lubricant… Unless it is that recognizable smell of talcum powder, which flies into the air after a clap of hands, or that eucalyptus that a performer rubs on her chest?
The senses, stimulated, intertwine, and perceptions of the environment become sharpened in a funny way. By thus blurring sensory boundaries, by affirming that our bodies are a “climate system in themselves”, the American artist Faye Briscoll – who has a reputation for disconcerting the public and critics – is doing an act of awareness which wants radical. An awareness of the extinction of all things, perhaps. And which takes place by pushing the physical and mental limits of the performers, but also of the audience.
Astonishment, disgust, discomfort, fascination follow one another as one of the performers happily drools or bites another, leaving a red mark on their back. Fingers slip into mouths, breaths brush against each other, hands grab and remove clothes, always in this strange and uncomfortable dance whose slowness makes the muscles tremble and sweat and tears flow, while a choreography arises. of breaths, moans, pantings of which we cannot say whether they are the expression of enjoyment or of suffering. Or both.
Fayes Briscoll herself, who is standing near the stage, intervenes, pushes, picks up objects, wipes the increasingly dirty and wet floor, her gestures gradually more frantic, almost worried, precursors of a storm. In the air, the vocal harmonies, increasingly strong, take on a religious, sacred air.
We feel it, coitus is near, but when it explodes, nothing could prepare us for this bestial, explosive, nuclear charge which surges like a tsunami. This is without doubt one of the most dangerous moments I have seen on stage; However, the performers do not perform convoluted pirouettes. But the violent charge of this final scene, under full sail, punctuated by screams and gasps, on this swirling scene out of control, will undoubtedly mark your mind for a long time. From my privileged place on the stage, when I turned to the other spectators, I was struck by the stunned faces and the wide-open mouths of pure panicked amazement.
And when the bacchanal finally subsides, when the semi-naked, red, sweating, scratched bodies, at the end of their breath, let themselves fall, almost everywhere here and there and on the spectators, we feel it, even in our skin, this immense thrill, this border which momentarily no longer exists, between these bodies and ours, between us and the rest of the world. Brilliantly powerful.
