With Borderline Company Wang Ramirez explores dance on the ground and in the air

Founded in 2007 in Perpignan in the south of France not far from the Spanish border, Company Wang Ramirez continues to evolve a choreography that, like its founders (Honji Wang and Sébastien Ramirez), is diverse and wide-ranging, requiring dance that is not only technically disciplined but also exploratory and risk taking. Their latest piece, the 70-minute Borderline was presented by Cal Performances at Zellerbach Hall this past weekend.

Choreographers and artistic directors Wang and Ramirez were accompanied by three exceptional b-boy (and -girl) dancers – Saïdo Lehlouh, Louis Becker and Johanna Faye – in a series of events that used hip hop tempered throughout with aerial movement. Alistair Mazzotti acted as the counterbalance in the aerial work, using rigging developed by Jason Oettlé and Kai Gaedtke.

Two large schematic cubes by environmental artist Paul Bauer acted as markers within the space. They were the world the dancers moved in relation to, hanging first like silvery planets in the dark atmosphere of the upper stage, then transforming into home or cage or shelter as they floated into different positions on stage.

The music was composed by percussionist Jean-Philippe Barrios, aka Lacrymoboy, and it layered rhythms with fragments of spoken voice. The stories told were testimonies to the difficulties of poverty and the unthinking cruelty of those who wield power simply because they can.

Borderlines begins when one of the large cubes floats down and is placed downstage right. Wang and Faye appear, harnessed to long rigging that reaches up into the flies at the back of the stage. The two women crawl, leap and strain against their leads. Even as they move forward, the tension in the lines drags them back. They are like animals struggling to reach some far shelter. At last Wang reaches the cube. There she puts on a turquoise Korean hanbok, with flowing floor-length skirt and an upper garment of full sleeves and long coat strings that tie around the body. She moves lyrically across the stage, the cube moving with her.

Ramirez and Lehlouh appear upstage and move diagonally toward her. They are leaning into each other, almost at 45-degree angles. Wang who is now sitting on stage, is pulled towards them by an invisible line. She passes under the bridge the two men’s bodies form and disappears into the darkness upstage, while they continue to perform a duet in which they are both prop and weight to each other’s precarious angles. The cube floats off.

In one of the more gorgeous sections of the piece, Ramirez and one of the cubes perform a duet: the cube hangs suspended at an angle and Ramirez, harnessed to a line above the stage, floats above the cube, tilts it, soars in and out of its sides, tilts it again, drops to the floor, re-maneuvers, soars again. It’s breathtaking, fulfilling the promise of dance and the human desire to escape gravity – to fly in angelic weightlessness.  

Some down-to-earth humor followed, with the women dancing, unbelievably, in four-inch heels, their bodies curved back in a cartoon arch as if they were counterbalancing themselves on their precarious shoes. Lehlouh and Becker watch them, lounging in the now-earthbound cube. They follow the women’s synchronized dancing with some very impressive b-boy moves.

Breaking out of the mute world of dance, Lehlouh tells the audience the story of a Japanese scientist who put three bowls of rice on a table and asked people to talk to the bowls with emotion. Bowl number one was told “I love you” and bowl number two “I hate you.” After one month, the first bowl was still edible. After one week, the second bowl was no longer edible. But the third bowl, which had stayed on the table alone, rotted after one or two days. “Indifference kills,” he concludes.

The piece ends with a haunting duet between Wang and Ramirez. Wang is suspended in the air on a long harness, and is wearing a long satiny skirt-like costume and a beige leotard. Ramirez is in red pants and bare-chested. The cube is down stage, and in it Mazzotti manipulates the rigging, pulling it up and down as if it were the rope to a bell, making Wang fly upwards or sink downwards. The stage is dark except for the spots on the individual dancers. The duet promises intimacy, but each time Ramirez pulls Wang into an embrace she flies up and out of his arms, her long white skirts trailing and ephemeral. Is she a ghost or a dream of love?