Compagnie Marie Chouinard
UNC’s Memorial Hall
Saturday, Jan. 16, 2016
Carolina Performing Arts has presented two provocative co-commissions from the French-Canadian dance ensemble Compagnie Marie Chouinard, Orpheus et Eurydice in 2009 and Gymnopédies this month. The INDY sent two dance artists, rather than dance critics, to the latter, on a bill that also included an older Chouinard piece, Henri Michaux: Mouvements. They came back with a lot to say.
Anna Barker is the founder of the company real.live.people.durham, which had its local debut in 2014 with the sold-out Motorco performances, presented by Durham Independent Dance Artists, of it’s not me it’s you, a dance-theater duet with Leah Wilks.
Wilks is a co-founder of DIDA and of the multimedia dance company Vector, which presented Habitus at the Cordoba Center for the Arts last year. In the video below (check out an excerpt of Gymnopédies afterward), Barker and Wilks delve into their mixed responses, as choreographers and dancers, to Chouinard’s conceptual terrain, where pain and violence leaks out of various romantic configurations.
