Empreintes Review – Jess and Morges go off the rails at the Paris Opera and Marcos Mourao swings the chandelier | Dance

WIt was a pleasure to find Jessica Wright and Morgann Runacre-Temple in full operation of their luxurious Chateau Garnier. The flamboyant duo from London, known as Jess and Morgs, bring their bold mix of choreography and live photography to an engaging new creation, Arena, with video design by Jakub Lech. It culminates in a bravura sequence in which Loup Marcault-Derouard leaves the stage and appears on a huge screen, racing around the halls and stairs of the majestic opera house. Arena gives the feel of choreographers in a candy store, taking over the real estate newly available to them following the tech-focused 2022 reboot of Coppélia for Scottish Ballet.

The piece begins with a simple rhythmic cool and shadows of the chorus line – a graceful team athletic with individual and collective confidence. “Next please!” The voiceover barks and the camera operator slides into the queue, snapping beady eyes, beating chests, and glistening with sweat. In the age of Instagram, dancers are always ready for their close-ups, and here port de bras often results in tightly framed faces – but Arena exposes the dangers of online culture’s chronic desire to compete, compare and conform. There’s a wrestling element to Annemarie Woods’ costumes, but this is a dystopian contest that also seems rooted in the present day.

Marcault-Derouard’s character is given a number, not a name, and as his world unfolds, he finds himself alternately torn into frenetic solos under a red filter (lighting by DM Wood), torn between the wire (with a driving score by Mikael Karlsson) or isolated (in a revolving interrogation room on Sami Fendall’s set). When we catch the flashes of other dancers’ camera phones, there’s a feeling that we’re all now subject to the prying eyes of the paparazzi.

If a piece could have greater cohesion and emotional impact, it would pulse with ideas and style. Despite the ominous setting, there are wonderful bursts of Jerome Robbins-style enthusiasm, and Arena turns the relationship between performers and camera operator (Nine Seropian) into a thrilling duo. They share a more compelling dynamic, with a better overall balance between on-screen and stage action, than most shows filmed live.

Arena was paired with Étude by Spanish choreographer Marcos Mourão, in an evening titled Empreintes. They translate as “fingerprints” and both use The Wire to explore the concepts of leaving your mark on the Identikit community, with Morau pushing towards foraying into Body Snatchers territory. Gustav Rudman’s music initially suggests an orchestral warm-up, but Mourau, who has a knack for upsetting convention, opens with a finale when soloist Loren Levy raises the curtain. With a rictus smile and a cyborg’s emptiness, she holds up her bouquet and implores us to applaud. When the corps joins her, they are all wearing the same stiff miniskirts, and Mourao finds an oddity, not a uniform beauty, in their resemblance to the factory line. Despite the sweep of the orchestra, their Buryats sound desperate, the folds eerily spidery. The overall effect is sinking, not fluttering.

Mourão abstracts the piece from its place of creation, evoking the bar rehearsals that imprison the dancers and allow us to hear them prepare the music. But it also reflects the brilliance of the final product, where Max Glenzel’s set design makes the broader ballet iconography as exotic as Mourau’s choreography. A huge model of the ballroom’s chandelier is lowered onto the stage like a mother ship, whistling and swaying and holding the dancers’ gaze to ask what keeps us enslaved to the splendor of the ballet’s chocolate box. Like Arena, Étude takes full advantage of the deep stage and acknowledges the rest of the building as well – directly suggesting that the dancers’ disruptive behavior is our own.