'Traces': A Visual Spectacle

Dance is a complicated art form, to say the least. It is in some ways the forgotten medium of Western art: while it once held a proud place as the centerpiece of Greek tragedy, it has been in a long, slow decline from prominence. A mere 100 years after the golden age of tragedy, Aristotle practically ignored dance in his “Poetics.” While the prestige of ballet in the 19th and early 20th centuries brought a certain amount of aesthetic coherence to the art, it is fair to say that only a fraction of the thought that has been devoted to poetry or music has been devoted to dance. It is then perhaps no surprise that modern dance tends to lack clarity as to its own purposes.

The show “Traces,” which is being put on by Quebecois dance company les 7 doigts de la main at ArtsEmerson through Oct. 12, is no exception from this confusion. On the one hand, under the choreographic direction of Gypsy Snider and Shana Carroll, it is a technically magnificent show, filled with arresting images. On the other hand, it is a near-complete failure as a narrative, which is what it purports to be. The program crows, “‘Traces’ takes place in a make-shift [sic] shelter, an unknown catastrophe waiting outside the doors of tarp and gaffer tape. The five characters constructed this clubhouse to live to the fullest what they believe could be their last moments.” It goes on to discuss how the characters “tell stories of their past.”

Minimal biographies are given for each of the dancers at the beginning of the show, but otherwise, the narrative component is very attenuated. It is unclear in most episodes what sort of plot is supposed to be extrapolated from the dance. For example, a dazzling solo aerial performance by dancer Naomi Zimmerman, while flawless in its execution, was entirely disconnected from the apparent action in the scene preceding it (a performance with aerial manoeuvres launched from a seesaw) and following it (a game show parody, closing the show). This raises the question of what exactly this scene was supposed to be telling us, and its dramatic relation to the rest of the show. Efforts to introduce the thematic darkness hinted at in the show’s description—a drawing of a tsunami on an overhead projector, audio from a report on nuclear testing—generally feel facile and silly. The set, featuring hanging rags, various pieces of ruined furniture, and a piano elaborately made up to look as if it has been made from driftwood, adds little to the performance and occasionally distracts from the action.

In spite of this dramatic incompetence, the skill of the dancers and the beauty of the choreography is undeniable. In the mixing of classical and urban dance styles that distinguishes modern choreography, the arrangements are ebullient and transcendent. A satire on ballet, featuring gross exaggeration of the stylistic tics of the form, is followed by an incredibly coordinated and impressive arrangement using basketballs. In another sequence, ostensibly set in a prison, dancers jump from bar to bar while performing heart-stopping aerial techniques. Execution on the part of the dancers is nearly flawless, and errors were recovered from gracefully.

In the face of such beauty, one is compelled to ask why the narrative element is necessary at all, and, if the narrative element is necessary, why it should not be made more lucid so that viewers can appreciate the relation between what they see and what they knows is happening. “Traces” is, in some way, symptomatic of a great flaw of modern art: we want everything to mean something, but we do not want to tell anyone what anything means. We are uncomfortable with things that are beautiful but have no clear purpose, and we are scornful of things that are transparent and easily understood.

“Traces” is worth seeing, but not for anything other than its visual glory. As a storytelling mechanism of any sort, it is a failure, and indeed, to regard it as a narrative is to diminish from its magnificence.