Knowing that Gisèle Vienne’s “Crowd” is about rave, you might expect crowds to move to techno music for euphoria. You wouldn’t expect most of your 90 minutes of work to be done in slow motion.
But the French-Austrian choreographer’s purpose with “Crowd,” which premiered Thursday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music as part of the Crossing the Line festival, was to open a window to all-night parties and people. not only. there. She wants to open the doors of her perception and bring us into an alternate time experience.
The show manages both the sociological and perceptual parts with skill. The stage is covered with layers of dirt and debris: water bottles, clothes. Patrick Liu lights this scene as cold as the moon or the stadium after the game. The music fades in and people with drinks and cigarettes arrive very slowly.
When it slows down, you have time to watch. There are 15 participants, and she dresses and moves like young people attending a rave, not professional dancers. Each one is a different individual and a character to follow. Friends and strangers lock their eyes in a crowded room, and a few minutes later your eyes wander, searching for stories and tales as their wordless interactions, whether hugging or not, are elicited.
Occasionally, all but one or two of the dancers freeze, and we momentarily seem to have gone into personal trips and hallucinations. Or the whole body mass swirls, all freezing or jerking every 4 or 8 counts, connected by music.
However, when the “crowd” introduces these modes, it stalls, reverts to slow motion, and profits diminish. The initial blast at normal speed is terrifying, but after that well-earned shock, production must resort to cheap surprises: sudden increases in volume, shaken soda bottles, and gunshots.
The lack of dancing in “Crowd” is a bit twisted. Chosen by electronic dance music icon Peter Lehberg, who passed away last year, the soundtrack samples his 1990s Detroit classics, including many of his Underground Resistance. But Vienne rarely treats this dance music as dance music, and even the footwork-less noodles of the raver allow the cast to keep up with its rhythm. For me, the most exciting moment of the show is the meeting of the two men (Jonathan Schatz and Philip Berlin).
But it is the violence that seems to excite Vienne. There are hints from the start, there are moments when a woman falls to the ground and a man pats her on the head with his boot or grabs her by the hair. One woman (Katya Petrovic) arrives covered in blood. The cut seems to come later, and is delivered by Gold’s Blissful Party Girl (Marin Shené), who was the most attractive character up to that point.
Petrowick’s whimsical personality takes general social anxiety to the extreme, and when she finally kisses another woman, you might be satisfied with her. While surviving and helping the unconscious woman get home, the “crowd” is ultimately more interested in death than life, or at least expanding darkness for strength. can sometimes look like zombies, and Vienne, a puppeteer with a sadistic streak, wants to roll them in the dirt rather than make them dance.
“crowd”
Until Saturday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. bam.org.