Avna

Avna like animal or airplane, an advance or an adventure, adoration or abhoration. It is a purely invented word in a language of verbs and gestures from some set code. This freedom of meaning, open to fantasy and interpretation, to recognition as to distance, Michèle Noiret had wanted total. Her chosen form is such that "one must be able to go into a dance performance without reading the program". It is a sort of virginity of the spectator facing the myriad paths of creation.

In the beginning the light is so low that one has almost to sense the body entering the stage like a phantom's profile, arms arching backward like a regret. And then another woman appears. They follow and the cross. Wandering bodies. They are still far away from the audience, and from themselves as well. there is fantastic impression of space, and at the same time an oppressing height, which lessens proportionally as they come forward.

To the sound and music constantly in rupture by Garrett List and under the lighting both discrete and fundemental of Xavier Lauwers, their shadows strech and deform uneasely. Parallel life. The extraordinary movement precision of Karine Ponties and Michèle Noiret - a kind perfection in imperfection - both reassures and disturbs. Their gestures are a little awkward. They hesitate as if being stopped by time and yet are never stuck. Urgency and distress are the source of their mobility.

"The rituals of everyday are undone and another time shall invent itself" writes the choreographer in the introduction to the performance. The time: gathered, dense, almost palpable, is the knot which contains, and in a volatile way, supports their movements, their rivalvies, their complicity. "Two women in time" - forms pure, hair short, costumes dark, the simplicity allows an explosion of detail: the shadows are beautiful like an offering. Their jerky gestures touch the senses and the mind attaches itself to the angles of the bodies. Written into the moment which unveils itself, Avna is vivid."