Falling in love with a choreographer is a bit like falling in love full stop. You realise you have shared interests and tastes. Perhaps you note a few imperfections, but that doesn’t take anything away from the joy and interest with which they fill your lives.
I have fallen in love with Trajal Harrell – and Paris shares my passion. This year’s Festival d’Automne is presenting a month-long portrait, encompassing nine of Harrell’s creations. Based in Zurich, the 50-year-old American choreographer is hugely popular on the continent and the US and has toured relentlessly this year.
Tambourines is a new piece inspired by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850), a book about one woman’s complicated resistance to the forces that make her wear the letter A on her bodice, as a visible sign of her adultery. At the start, the dancers encourage the audience to read the Wikipedia entry for the novel, yet what unfolds is not a telling of the story but an imaginative act of meditation on the puritanical structure that encases the protagonist Hester Prynne, suggesting a freedom for her that she never found.
In the first act (Fornication), the dancers of Schauspielhaus Zürich Dance Ensemble, led by Harrell himself, swirl in rapid circles, hands raised above their faces. In the second (Education), they sit in a row, in brown robes with white collars, their hands now open as if reading books. In the third (Celebration), they dress in ever wilder outfits, processing down a spiral drawn on the bare stage.
It seems like nothing, but it is everything, the precision of tiny movements, inflections of head and arms communicating the repression of a conformist society and the desire to break through. The emphasis on clothes as a means of expression perfectly suits Hawthorne’s theme; the music is a tapestry of feeling and possibility. Harrell is a unique talent.
