Truth or Consequences, Brian McCormick, Gay City News January 2007
Martine Pisani's performers charm the pants off in Bande à part.
People are what they do, not what they say, an old adage given refreshing treatment by the four men in Martine Pisani's "Bande à part," seen January 18 at Danspace Project. Theo Kooijrnan, familiar from last season's winning sans, serves as the evening's emcee. He is the sad sack, the philosopher, the ringleader, and one of four characters that inhabit the role of performer in this highminded and playful riff on the solo form.
With the word prologue projected above the stage, Kooijman stands before the audience, fully clothed, and tells us he will strip, talks about how nakedness is uncomfortable, for viewer and performer alike. He begins to disrobe, describing each action, embellishing more as he goes on, but it is a verbal striptease only; the clothes never leave his body. His actions warn, "What you see is not what I say."
In French film maker Jean Luc-Godard's most accessible work Band of Outsiders, Odile and Arthur decide to dance, and then must decide what dance they will do. They use their fingers to indicate the steps on the table in front of them, and agree to do the steps Odile has shown. Then they perform a dance routine.
Pisani takes this premise and layers the exercise of performance collective over it. using the four as one, also having them provide the score or act as sound operator. Titles are projected, displayed on cards, and physically scrolled across the stage on an obstructive banner.
Kooijman exits and re-enters along with Christophe Ives, Eduard Mont de Palol, and Olivier Schram. Ives lies down center stage. He is replaced by one, and then another, each adding movement, moving progressively faster and forward. A comb is introduced into the sequence, which Schram concludes jumping backwards and falling to the floor.
In the next chapter, "The Soloist's Story." Ives reads what just happened, adding on what has yet to pass. The others use plastic strips, cups, and water bottles to make a score: they also sing and make vocalizations. A portable cassette recorder and sound mixing board are also used, mostly to play lounge music.
Mixed in with the absurd, engaging. silly, hyper, childlike activities, Pisani gives her men movement phrases that repeat, cycle down, and re-emerge. Schram gets up, checks his pulse, makes a twisting motion with his torso, bounces from foot to foot, and falls again, as the three move in to take over. In another set, Ives swinging his arm continually, sinks to one knee, gets up and repeats, until finally he lies down, his arm and leg flopping occasionally. Meanwhile the others tap their shoes and run in place. Every so often, Schram proclaims. "Et voilà!"
Kooijman returns to the narrator's role, beginning a string of existential movement experiments heralded by the statement, "Now I will lose myself for 60 seconds and find myself in three seconds." with varying intervals, all less than a minute. He wraps up this round of contagious self-amusement-that includes some zombie walking and the Charleston-by stating, "and to finish, I will cry."
He makes a sad face and the surprising Mont de Palol, a real clown up to this point, steps in to take his place. He rubs his eyes as if he has just awakened. He rubs his arms and hands, he waves to the audience. He raises his hand to the side... and then he really cries.
The quartet pass on the theme of rubbing, using it as a path to striptease, which they now take up with abandon, rubbing the skin of their body parts and wafting the dusty air with their hands toward the audience, as if to push their smell toward us.
Dressed only in their skivvies now, Ives stands center stage with a cup of water to his lips, as the remaining trio put on each other's clothes. He, of course, is filled in for by Mont de Palol, who drinks the water, replenishing his tears.
The piece ends with Mont de Palol quoting from Hamlet, "Why does the drum come hither?"
After some consideration, a quote from Godard's film seems the best answer - "A few words chosen at random."