Beyond Human: The Montpellier Dance Festival presents one achievement after another | Dance

toLaunched in 1981, the pioneering Montpellier Dance Festival changed the face of contemporary dance in France and beyond. In 2024, the face of the program changed when Jean-Paul Montanari, who had served as long-time president, was succeeded by a four-person directorship of Hovesh Schechter, Jean Gallois, Dominique Hervieu and Pierre Martinez – although currently the program continues the spirit of spreading dance throughout the city, mixing dance with folk.

Galois’s Imminent is aimed squarely at a general audience: an hour-long dynamo of six women that is never ambiguous and always eye-catching—if not always subtle. Her signature device, the long structure, comes from the beginning: the women lean on each other in delicate pairs, then gradually merge together into an increasingly dynamic and mobile ensemble, linked by interconnected arms and synchronized energies. It is supported by a crescendo of sound, and a group of lights that end up glowing as if powered by the tremendous effort generated by the dancers.

Some scenes change the tone: jerky, isolated solos within a cone of light; an almost machine-like sequence of flailing arms and inflated torsos; A collection in which women’s gestures suggest purification, and even purification themselves. But the general feeling is that the fierce women work together energetically and burn off their own energy; And if it is sometimes engaging – more stimulating than substantive – it also attracts its audience.

Landing somewhere prettier and deeper is Le Pas du Monde from Collectif

The towers of bodies built in the opening section are impressive achievements, and also evoke a sense of people collectively reaching for the heavens—and of the transience, even the futility, of such earthly aspirations as undoing of constructions, or, more dramatically, of collapse and collapse. Another scene, in which each performer holds someone else high on their shoulders while others lie on the ground, is not only physical but also metaphorical: we support some people while trampling over others.

Le Pas du Monde’s images go far beyond the human, though: there are surrealist segmented creatures with strange protrusions, a scene that looks like a forest in motion, and movements and compositions that appear to be buffeted by the wind or tossed by the sea. Long before the end, the piece has already become a kind of tangible, physical poetry that transcends the mind to touch the body and soul.

Every contemporary dance season there are works that confuse you – or is it just me? – And Montpellier is no exception. Among these, it’s worth noting Belgians Lisbeth Gruwez (dance) and Maarten Van Cauwenberghe (music) Tempest which starts out that way, with Gruwez hacking and slashing her way around an icy stage like a battery-operated toy, to the constant beating of drums – but ends with a dizzying array of flashlights, rotating shadows and saturated sounds that you can’t help but surrender to, even if you’re none the wiser.

Quite more humane, in purpose, scale and story, is Tunisian-born, French-raised director Hala Fatoumi’s “Twama Paradise,” a duet — at times almost a solo — with the Tunisian actress and dancer Sondos Belhassen. By recalling scenes and memories from their separate but parallel lives, he variously positions the two elderly women as twins, partners, rivals, ghosts or reflections. By mixing Arabic chants with French songs, and undulating curves with ballet lines, he avoids simplistic cultural references to construct a more nuanced portrait of a life intertwined through popular music, design and decor, and experiences of femininity, aspiration, and aging. Mature work on many levels.