The Pretty Things: Finding yourself when you’re in a crowd
The status quo is a drag in Catherine Gaudet’s dance. Show some attitude. Find some style.
Project Arts Centre - Upstairs, Dublin Dance Festival
★★★★☆
They say people can feel alone in a crowd, that being in the presence of others can make you feel detached and isolated. But isn’t it the case, in the ferocious liberations of individualism, that the crowd can get a person down?
In a play, no less than a society, everyone’s playing a part – whether they want to or not. All the world’s a stage /And all the men and women merely players,” says Jacques in As You Like It, as if the adverb in that sentence were designed to sting. We are only participants; there is something larger and out of our control.
In her absorbing dance The Pretty Things, choreographer Catherine Gaudet finds an ingenious conceit for a day-to-day reality stalked by an omnipresent playbook. The opening moments, wherein the repetitive extensions of a woman’s arms coincide with the voices of Antoine Berthiaume’s electronic music, twist together an invisible metronome, the time measurement of which persists throughout, like some trudge of reality.