Choreographer Eric Languet feels like he has experienced the full weight of joy when he sits down to answer questions about his new contemporary dance production. It’s been a full day of gruelling rehearsals for Weight Of Joy , which premiers in Chennai as part of Bonjour India 2017-18, a four-month long celebration of Indo-French partnership.
Dancers Mariyya Evrad, Sarah Dunaud, Brice Jean-Marie Luce and Cedric Marchais are from Reunion, where Languet’s Compagnie Danses en l’R is based. The others — Chandiran Rajendiran, Deivamani, Sruthi Sriram and Anish Babu — are from India, of whom two are hearing impaired.
Languet is no stranger to working with differently abled people. An inclusive choreographer, he has created several pieces that include people with disability since 2004, most famously, two duets with wheelchair-bound athlete and dancer Wilson Payet.
Conflicting terms
Weight of Joy was devised exploring the title’s seemingly contradictory ideas — weight and burden, paired with lightness and joy. Languet asks, “What is the price to pay for a joyful moment? For there are both pure moments of bliss, and others that can harm people.” He began by “asking each dancer for his/her definition of not happiness, but joy. Then my interest lay in the conditions of emergence of joy, where does it come from”.
He brought to the table his own culture, adding, “It was good to confront it with the Tamil culture and the deaf culture. From these frictions came the piece, that is very much related to each performer.” The Indian performers with whom he worked here for two-and-a-half-months were very open to his process, “always willing to push themselves beyond their personal boundaries”. Most of the music has been composed by Chennai-based composer Paul Jacob.
Experience matters
In a career spanning 30 years as dancer and choreographer, Languet has danced with the Paris Opera Ballet and the Royal New Zealand Ballet, where he was also resident choreographer, and has worked with DV8 physical theatre. As a teacher, he has developed integrated workshops, inspired by the seminal works of dance artist Adam Benjamin.
Creating ways to enable disabled and non-disabled people to dance together, Languet explains, is about moving away from preconcieved notions of a so-called standard model of movement for a normal body. Instead, he gives “everyone tools to develop their own repertoire of movement. It is about re-assessing what can be beautiful.” During his stay in Chennai he organised workshops every Saturday at Vidyasagar, an institution for differently-abled people.
Languet promises Chennai audiences a performance that is funny and thought-provoking. It will combine movement with text within a set inspired by the colours and flowers of India. Will it also include Languet? “I am not dancing in this production, this is too much work to create the piece; and I am getting old!”
The show premieres tomorrow at 7.30 pm, Sir Mutha Venkatasubba Rao Concert Hall. Free entry. Parvathi Nayar is a visual artist and creative writer
