An Empty Packaging

“Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève” (“Noetic”/“VÏA”)
Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève
Forum Ludwigsburg
Ludwigsburg, Germany
January 12, 2024

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2024 by Ilona Landgraf

Nothing in last weekend’s tour of the Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève reflected the name of the company. It did not present ballet, and the two pieces that they performed did not represent in any way the significance that the theater claims. The first – Noetic (2014) – was choreographed by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, former artistic director of the Royal Ballet of Flanders, who has held the same position at the Grand Théâtre de Genève, Switzerland, since 2022. VÏA is a 2023 creation, which the Morocco-born Fouad Boussouf choreographed for the company.

Noetic (from the Greek noēsis, meaning inner wisdom, direct knowing, intuition, or implicit understanding) opened promisingly as Shogo Yoshii silently stepped behind his Japanese Taiko drums and hammered out a forceful staccato. It called the dancers – ten men and ten women, one of whom was clad like the men – into the light-gray box that the stage had been turned into. As they assembled in groups of three, standing motionless back to back, they reminded me of the triple formations of German federal police when securing the train station against traveling football fans. Noetic’s dancers weren’t uniformed though. Tom Notte, designer of the fashion brand Les Hommes, clad the women in black pleather dresses and kneepads; the men wore black pants and black vests over white shirts. As the trios dispersed, new groups assembled, all of them engaged in soft, floating movements. The dancers lifted and carried one another around before forming a U-shape. Szymon Brzóska’s music (of which we heard a record) indicated drama, but nothing special happened except that the dancers squirmed as if a fist had hit their stomachs. Their constant flailing and swinging of arms together to the throbbing drums made me think of Native Americans performing a ritual in a Winnetou movie until all of them froze in awkward poses. A dreamy solo was followed by four men supporting one another in flight as if weightless. Ana Vieira Leite’s singing of Carpe Diem couldn’t prevent the music from sounding as shallow as the soundtrack of a soap opera featuring a heroic crew on their mission to save the world. At times, Yoshii played the kokyū (a Japanese stringed instrument) or the fue (a Japanese bamboo flute), adding substantive sounds. The dancers continued to glide softly across the stage, their torsos bent forward as if diving into other spheres before they lay randomly on the floor like sleepers.

Thirty minutes into Noetic the piece switched gears. While a female voice lectured us via loudspeaker about numbers, the dancers demarcated squares and rectangles on the floor, using long carbon fiber rods. Movements were reduced to walking and geometrical arm and hand positions. Further lectures about “number doubling,” “the energy that keeps us alive, the beating heart of all existence,” and “patterns” sounded as if taken from an esoteric script. For the remaining time, the dancers were mainly occupied with bending and assembling the rods into arcs, circles, undulating waves, or a cupola. At one point they seemed to gesticulate messages in sign language, then one couple was seized by a fit of tremors. After sixty lengthy minutes, all stood motionless around a pudgy globe of rods while sweet violin sounds suggested a happy ending.
On a side note: The website of the Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève says that “Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui is a globally celebrated figure like few others in dance today: a brilliant auteur-choreographer” … whose “oeuvre overflows with memorable productions.”

VÏA exploited color and light effects while keeping the amount of dancing low. Gwladys Duthil designed three-layered costumes, the outer layer of which was strawberry red, floor-length robes, some of them hooded. The dancers peeled themselves out of these robes to reveal casual blue overalls. The fabric of their flared trousers bulged with every hop. After much cumbersome winding and wriggling, the dancers doffed the blue outfits as well, exposing yellow pants and tops. In the meantime, the backdrop’s colors alternated between various shades of yellow, blue, and bright red, creating garish contrasts to the costumes.
Boussouf kept the choreography simple. He arranged the dancers in one or two lines, which moved as one entity, gathered them in a bunch, or scattered them randomly across the stage. The perpetual patter of their small springy steps followed the monotone rhythm of Gabriel Majou’s (recorded) music. One routine that was often repeated consisted of hops, forward bends, kneeling, and standing up. VÏA dragged on for around fifty minutes. Its numbing monotony was hypnotic.

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