Legend Lin Dance Theatre, Maison de la Danse, Lyon

Movement as sculpture: Legend Lin Dance Theatre

It looked like a clash of civilisations. When Legend Lin Dance Theatre took to the stage in Lyon this week with the meditative Song of Pensive Beholding (Chants de la destinée), they were met with a concert of coughs and a little restlessness among the audience. Could the performance really be this slow? What for? For many reasons, the Taiwanese company seemed to say quietly, and by the end nobody seemed to mind the radical change of pace.

Song of Pensive Beholding is all serene harmony, and with this series of unhurried tableaux, which took nine years to create, choreographer Lin Lee-Chen completes a trilogy inspired by Taiwanese traditions and devoted to the relationship between Heaven, Earth and Man. This 2009 work is drawn from a mythical story: a spirit, the White Bird, is engaged to be married to the Earth but instead betrays her vows with one of two Eagle brothers.

Symbols abound in this ritualistic, sparse production, set to atmospheric music and live drums. The women are covered in white body paint and the men in bronze, with tribal costumes. Some in the ensemble carry sheaves, others candles, like servants of a mysterious god as they shuffle around the hieratic main characters.

For western audiences, it is a beautiful challenge. Where we yearn for a familiar structure, all the elements in Song of Pensive Beholding are given equal importance: transitions unfold as slowly as narrative scenes, no step is rushed or curtailed. The dancers spend most of the performance walking ever so deliberately, half-crouched or bent slightly forward, their upper body completely still. Time occasionally threatens to grind to a halt, but it’s the price you pay for the mesmerising geometry and austere beauty.

The love scene between the two main protagonists is worth the wait alone. As they edge towards each other, the White Bird grazes the man’s arm very slowly before reaching out to him. They come together like yin and yang, their bodies interlocked in slow-motion, sculptural poses, the very abstract erotic tension given away only by their fluttering fingers as their arms intertwine. When they part, as deliberately as they have danced, their encounter leaves white stains on the man’s painted torso and the woman bears corresponding bronze marks, blemishes that speak volumes in this immaculate world.

Lin’s dancers lead this meditation with extraordinary control, and the only change of pace comes with the brothers’ final combat, a tense scene in which they mirror each other’s movements without fighting directly. Song of Pensive Beholding ends with a woman slowly laying the pebbles she picked up at the very beginning on the floor, as if to recreate a sacred river. An ascetic, disorienting journey, but one worth making.

maisondeladanse.com