DanceHouse presents Compagnie Catherine Gaudet in Ode
Coming on the heels of choreographer Catherine Gaudet’s astounding Les jolies choses (The Pretty Things), the company’s new work ODE channels the industrial happiness complex into a stripped-down exhortation/exploration of group-think conformity and cultural collapse.
Eleven performers, moving in lockstep formation, chant the word love. Anthemic, at first, but soon spiraling into desperation and chaos. The iron-clad dictum of happiness, derived from therapy-speak, self-help books, new age Ted-talks, bland as pablum and inoffensive to the point of banality, begins to transform into something more disquieting. Relentless positivity as a form of social violence and containment is only one aspect; the work channels multiple interpretations: Incantation, procession, confession, and ultimately a form of secular prayer for a gentler world.
Perfect harmony becomes an ominous signifier of the danger of deviation from sanctioned social norms. Stray but a foot, and destruction awaits. But as the performers enforced unity begins to come apart, voices break, bodies stagger, the endpoint lurches into view. The brutalizing demand for obedience and orthodoxy crushes individual need and expression underfoot. Exhaustion is inescapable, but lingering at the edge is another form of being. Rooted deep in shared struggle, a slender blade of hope emerges, tender as a newborn.
*Tickets available as part of a DanceHouse subscription, available Apr 14. Single tickets will go on sale later in the year.
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