February 11, 2008

FORCE MAJEURE: Lise Vachon, "Bliss"

Essay by Ryan Tracy
Photos by Chris Woltmann

Lise Vachon created "Bliss" in conjunction with Chez Bushwick's "FORCE MAJEURE" program, which is designed to foster international dialogue in dance and performance by offering residencies to artists from around the world.  These residencies, which will be fulfilled from September 2007 through May 2008, culminate in free public presentations of the work created by the artists-in-residence.  Lise Vachon's performance was presented on Saturday, November 3 at Chez Bushwick in Brookyn. The production is co-produced by Compagnie Michèle Noiret/Brussels and Chez Bushwick.

You hear footsteps swishing across the floor. Lithe, hurried swipes, then nothing.  Then they start up again. The dense darkness before you is the smallish studio space of Chez Bushwick. You believe the moving person must be choreographer Lise Vachon, but you can't tell for lack of light. Then you hear a woman's voice speak.

This is "Bliss," Ms. Vachon's work in progress presented as part of Chez Bushwick's artist-in-residence program, FORCE MAJEURE.  This, the second of nine residencies, brought Ms. Vachon and her collaborators from Brussels to Brooklyn for four weeks; just enough time to figure out your surroundings, find your materials, and present work.

To say "Bliss" is about light isn't entirely accurate. The work is more about controlling light-designed and directed by Arnaud Gerniers and Benjamin van Thiel-and allowing our reliance on illumination, and the crisis that occurs when light is in limited supply, to shape our experience.  For when you first hear the swishing sounds through the darkness, even without sight of eye, you glean certain information just from listening. You can tell there is, mostly likely, a person making that sound; a biped.  You can also guess the general weight and size of the body.  You can also determine from where in the room the sound is coming.  So when the sounds move from left to right, you can follow them, and your mind triangulates the position and gives you a three-dimensional awareness of space.

Eventually, and so subtly that the shift is imperceptible, you realize you can see something. What, you're not sure.  White.  A shape.  Is it moving?  Or is that just a trick of the eye?  For indeed, it is Ms. Vachon. She appears as a specter, a cloud of white that reverberates through the meticulously controlled din. Now you start to ply your two senses together, sight and sound, in order to build recognition in your mind. You recall her voice.  The event teases your brain.

Gradually-so gradually-you can see more and more.  Suddenly you recognize a branch of arms, like an apparition. Yes, you recognize a body, and you recognize that it is a woman's. It is difficult to tell exactly what signs are giving you this information, because the controlled light retards the speed with which we normally receive this kind of information; the process of recognition is prolonged, sometimes to frustration.  It elicits a very primal fear of not being able to figure something out; all the more threatening if the thing you're trying to figure out is a moving body in front of you.

Music, by Stevie Wishart, is added through this tensile gradation. Faint tones emerge through the easing darkness.  Minor intervals, dark themselves, color the event in a new way, adding yet more dimension to the performance.  Through the meditative music, you see the pale body move into a crouched position. It looks like a shivering cocoon.

Soon the lights have risen to a dimness that allows you finally to perceive the space. A single roll of gray paper runs from the front of the stage to the back, then climbs up the wall continuously (the material explains the scraping quality of the footwork).  Ms. Vachon is in a short, pale dress, designed by Patricia Eggerickx and fashioned from sophisticatedly patched swatches of flesh and gray tones.  From one angle, you see the dress define her torso.  In the instant she turns the other way, she appears to be nude. Again, your mind struggles to find an answer.

Music by Ligeti develops into the score. The methodical atonality begins to fracture the space, breaking up the unified somberness of Mr. Wishart's electronic score.  Now Ms. Vachon's movement becomes more swift.  Her body finds an array of asymmetrical poses. Her hips and shoulders are almost always at odds, or at least at odd angles.  There is briskness to her movement; a sprite-ish delicacy that makes her appear as if she barely rests on the ground.

Other shifts in light emerge and recede.  A trapezoid of light creates a stage within the stage.  Then she is lit from behind, another technique that masks the surface of things; for a moment, her shadow fuses with the form of her body, creating an eerie, corpuscular entity.

As the Ligeti score recedes, electronic music returns, and gently, side lights rise and breathe a rich, orange glow across the studio.  Ms. Vachon stands in the middle of them, as if she has projected herself at night onto the landing strip of an airport. It is an arrival.  But only for a moment, as the side lights, like every other element here, are transitory.  They fade.

As the work finds its end, the curve at the base of the paper wall is illuminated gently to make it look like a subtly graded cylinder, wan and ephemeral; decaying.  Ms. Vachon vanishes into the impossible vastness of the little studio. We have returned to darkness and silence without, somehow, ever feeling that we know for certain what we have seen or heard.

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