The Compagnie Hervé Koubi achieved a rare feat: its week-long residence at the Joyce is completely sold out. Whenever this Chelsea theater that specializes in modern dance is sold out, one wonders what the fuss is all about. And indeed, the auditorium was packed. The ovation at the end was loud and boisterous.
This was my first time watching the French Algerian choreographer’s work. What The Day Owes To The Night, is an hour-long piece that combines acrobatics with hip-hop dance. Thirteen exceptionally handsome and talented men do series of back flips as if they were tumbling on floor exercises, they spin like tops except upside down with their heads on the ground rather than their feet; they will climb on top of each other and then one will do a blind drop backwards, trusting that their fellow dancers will prevent a crash. Other times they’ll dive face first and rely on the dancers to catch them. Their formations are dramatic: the group throws themselves on the floor, they gallop across the stage like a flock of caribou.
It’s all very hyper-kinetic and thrilling. Koubi’s choreography combines genres seamlessly. It’s part street dance, part modern dance, part gymnastics. The dancers have unflagging energy. The shapes the dancers make as a group are striking. The costumes by Guillaume Gabriel were loose white culottes that flattered the physiques of the very chiseled men. The head rolls and spins garnered immediate applause. Whatever the Compagnie Hervé Koubi was, it was not boring.
At the same time, it was hard to discern much structure or meaning in the hour-long dance. In the program, Hervé Koubi wrote: “Going on the quest of this day to give it strength and form as one goes in search of The Truth or more exactly of a truth. Lace is above all by definition a way of creating ‘the day’, the day in a fabric, the day in a material. The day in my history and why not, without appearing too ambitious and even less pretentious, in history.” Raise your hand if you can understand what he’s saying, because I can’t make heads or tails of it.
The mish-mash of music (from Bach to electronica) just reinforced the idea that this was more of a showcase for the talents of the dancers rather than any vision of the choreographer. With truly great works, what you notice is the voice and style of the choreographer. With Compagnie Hervé Koubi, you notice all the cool tricks.
And no doubt about it, the tricks are really, really cool. But at the end of the day, lasting works of art do not depend on tricks. They depend on steps, musicality, theme, mood. It doesn’t have to tell an explicit story, but it has to be about something. It can’t be just a collection of ‘wow, how’d they do that?’ moments.
Compagnie Hervé Koubi’s What The Day Owes To The Night was more about tricks than that something. As a result, the evening was very entertaining, but in a Cirque du Soleil way.
