The constant search for change makes Maguy Marin a ‘resistant’ choreographer, not only to time and events but also to life itself. For her, to resist means to create, constantly putting herself in question and urging the audience to do the same. “A performance,” she likes to emphasize, “certainly cannot change the world, but it might change those who watch it.” Thus, in her vast repertoire (around fifty works, many of which are masterpieces), ranging from pure dance to Tanztheater, to quasi-theater and installation, the common denominator remains speaking about humanity, about the individual in relation to the group and society.
BiT is her latest creation made for the Biennale de la Danse in Lyon 2014. The piece marks a return to movement, to a tight, almost obsessive relationship with music. It all begins with a focus on rhythm, exploring how each person's rhythm relates to that of others. This is a ‘political’ question for Marin, even though the performance does not emphasize it. How do masses form? How do solitudes arise? What mystery regulates these flows?
The performance is a sort of struggle, a resistance to death for seven performers obsessed with rhythm, swept away in an incessant farandole that drags them into the void. This journey into the abyss, into the inability to detach from the pace of society, unfolds to a persistent techno music created by the young Toulouse musician Charlie Aubry. The stage is bare, featuring only six inclined platforms on which the dancers climb, jump, and slide. Below, there is an unending chain of dances that evoke folk tradition and tribal ritual. An insistent senselessness of bits culminates in uncontrollable sexuality.
With masterful clarity and unparalleled poetry, Marin outlines the infernal circle of postmodern society, a humanity reduced to a refrain of sex-fun-nothingness from which there is only one way out: escape.
