Stunted growth

Eonnagata
Sadler’s Wells Theatre

Twelfth Floor
Queen Elizabeth Hall

Has dance-theatre given up the ghost? Judging by the two performances I saw last week, Eonnagata and The Twelfth Floor, it would appear so. Not surprisingly, one may add, given that, after more than two decades, the provocative, elusive, multilayered, postmodern genre has exhausted any chance to renew itself. Yet I am not sure whether Eonnagata would have made a different impact 15 or so years ago. Its flimsy narrative, which draws upon the mysterious life and the ever more mysterious gender of the Chevalier d’Eon, is as lame today as it would have been in the Eighties. At least in the heyday of dance-theatre, issues of gender, transgender and sexuality would have been addressed more boldly. Here, everything is tamer and more sanitised than in family shows such as Victor/Victoria or La Cage aux Folles. It matters little what the poor Chevalier might have gone through, being forced to end his life as a woman at the king’s behest. His drama is never explored in depth, and his story is told in an utterly boring, detached way. The various events in his life merely provide a series of closed numbers that follow slavishly what are now trite, overused and unbearably typical dance-theatre formulae.

In my view it is the overuse of performing clichés, such as the ritualistic theatre, choreographic stillness, quotations from non-Western theatre practices, gratuitous visual sensationalism and straightforward storytelling that castrates — forgive such an intentional metaphor — the performance, thus preventing any dramatic growth. As for the three performers/authors — controversial ballerina Sylvie Guillem, provocative theatre maker Robert Lepage and cutting-edge dance-maker Russell Maliphant — there is little to say. In line with the tediousness of the performance, they contributed little or no gravitas, whether intentionally or not.