Mixed blessings

Labelling is an annoying trait. The practice, instigated by some highbrows for their own pleasure, has rapidly spread among dance-goers, generating irritating generalisations. ‘It’s post-modern stuff,’ commented a young thing last Monday at the end of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s 2006 D’un soir un jour. Whether the comment was intended as praise is difficult to say. What is certain, though, is that the dance student’s comment epitomised the arbitrary pigeon-holing that underscores today’s dance culture. After all, the debate on what is post-modern dance has been going on for more than two decades in the vain hope of finding an acceptable definition. And while the debate continues, some claim that post-modernism is either long dead or never existed. I only wish whoever taught that teenager had been more careful.

Indeed, if we are to go by the definitions found in any of the available ‘What is postmodernism?’ manuals, Keersmaeker’s works have several conventional post-modern features, such as pastiche, irony, satire, multimedia and quotations. Take, for instance, the opening sequence in D’un soir un jour. Set to Debussy’s well-known score, this new take on Nijinsky’s 1912 ballet L’Après-midi d’un Faune is packed with quirky quotations and provocative interpolations. Gender, another post-modern favourite, plays a significant role, too, for some of the movements that in the 1912 ballet are assigned to the male protagonist are performed here by female dancers and vice versa. As a whole, it is a stunning opening, in which revisionist choreography mingles with new, powerful movements, which stem from a thought-provoking new reading of the score.

It is unfortunate that such vibrant ideas are then followed by an unbearably long series of unimpressive dance images that stand stylistically in-between some diluted, old-fashioned modernism and a tired regurgitation of Keersmaeker’s own work — sharp, angular and angst-permeated movements.