Primal instincts reign and the dancers contort, move and breathe to the pulse of Marie Chouinard’s distinct design, a choreography curiously guided by the intellect of the human body rather than the mind.
Etude #1 and Chorale lead the dancers in a solo and group performance that, through the notion of sexuality and divinity, searches to uncover a new way of approaching the inner body, of organizing it and of making it speak.
"Creation is happening when you try to tune the body in a different way," explains Chouinard. "Movement is the basis of finding a new way of approaching the body."
For the choreographer, creation stems from the interplay of sound and movement, and of breath and movement, which has become a unifying theme running through the 14 years of the company’s existence.
In the whole of Chouinard’s work, the pieces are always different from one another–the Rodeo audience will not recognize dance moves from Chouinard’s Cri du Monde from last year’s festival. Because there is no bank of dance positions from which the choreographer draws upon, she challenges her performers to stretch the physical limits of their art instead.
"The body is amazing. It’s a never-ending story of how you can reconstruct it," she says. "I am always willing to do something that is unknown to myself, or something from the unknown."
Etude #1 and Chorale, which first opened in 2001 and 2003 respectively, have toured internationally, and grace the High Performance Rodeo one night only, Sat., Jan. 31, at the Jack Singer Concert Hall.