Perhaps this is audacious: Our world order is being shattered, war hasn't been this close to us in a long time, and a choreographer puts thirteen white clowns on stage and sets poetry against the cynicism of the babblers and conspiracy theorists. Yoann Bourgeois has developed a Fantaisie mineure with the St. Gallen dance company, and this little fantasy, a little fancy in a minor key, is a poem of a dance piece: quiet, finely chiseled, concisely structured, enchanting. It is the first part of the evening Beyond and plays on and with an installation of various blue staircases that run here and there and end somewhere illogical. In the middle is something that looks like a small lake or pool — but bounces back. Here lies the crux of the piece: the tool of the famous trampoline virtuoso Yoann Bourgeois.
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St. Gallen on tour
Yoann Bourgeois, Hofesh Shechter Beyond
The artist has now trained the St. Gallen dancers in a light fall, turning them into thirteen bounce-back Pierrots who tumble over the steps or disappear into them entirely. First, one or the other casually falls into the middle, springs back, and continues on with the others as if nothing had happened — a small fantasy like a flickering will-o'-the-wisp. But then they let themselves fall, from this staircase and that, flashing back onto the steps, and their white robes flutter eerily in the night wind, as if the sad Wilis had returned from the enchanted forest of Giselle and had upgraded themselves a bit with contemporary technology along the way. The audience holds its breath.
A wake-up call after the prosecco: St. Gallen dance director Frank Fannar Pedersen has paired Fantaisie mineure with a revival of Hofesh Shechter's well-known piece Contemporary Dance 2.0 from last season, and after the interval, he'll let the evening Beyond explode. It will tour Switzerland until the end of the year.
Back in St. Gallen, 2, 4 April; Chur, 29 April; Gossau SG, 22 May; Lucerne, 18 June; Basel, 13 September; Aarau, 17 October; Geneva, 9 November; Morges, 21 November; Bern, 15 December; www.konzertundtheater.ch
