Through the Grapevine

Through the Grapevine is a choreography for two dancers that focuses its research on the complexity of the human body structure-pseudo-symmetrical with respect to the vertical axis-and its proportions.

With this production, Alexander Vantournhout and Axel Guérin - longtime collaborators and, in the show's credits, choreographer/creator/performer and creator/performer, respectively - embark on an exploration that combines careful formal research, which is exquisitely choreographic in nature, with an in-depth study that is able to shed light on the connection between the form of the human body, its capacity for movement and the relationship with the other that from this originates and derives from.

It is a finely chiseled choreography studded with virtuosity that establishes a carnal relationship with the organicity of the body observed from the perspective of anatomy, its possibilities and limitations. Thus we witness to a dance that, athletically, evolves by deepening, even in an ironic key, its starting point: the study and mise en jeu of the body and its formal proportions. It is certainly no coincidence that, when he told me about the genesis of the show created to straddling the various lockdowns of 2020, Alexander Vantournhout immediately referred to Leonardo's Vitruvian Man from Vinci.

Proportions are understood by the choreographer, who was born in 1989 and graduated from the PARTS school of choreography in Brussels founded from Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, as the underlying and yet implicit axes of body design and its movement in space. These closely interconnected elements represent the focus of her research and can be traced throughout her productions. According to his perspective, the body seems to be able to be understood, first and foremost, as the main tool for accessing the world and understanding it, but also as an original medium capable of establishing relationships with other individuals and the environment. Looking at the path traced by Vantournhout's creations to date, a dozen or so proposals produced through his not standing company, one can see how his can be described to all intents and purposes as a dance that clearly focuses on the body, its possibilities, capacities and functions.

In his first production, the autobiographical solo Aneckxander (2015) created together to Bauke Lievens, the body of the choreographer-dancer was explored in relation to to a selection of objects that - thanks to their shapes and sizes, and by integrating with the body itself as shoes do, for example, when worn on the feet - allow for the extension of movement, for its modification and for the increase or decrease, with tragic, grotesque or comic effects to as the case may be, of the possibilities of movement itself. If proportions are the object of Through the Grapevine's research, similarly, the possibilities of movement that arise from a social gesture such as the handshake are the driving force behind Snakearms (2021). These are two of Vantournhout's choreographic researches that are "adjacent," thematically and chronologically, and focus on the outcomes of investigations that arise from anatomical dynamics. More recently, however, the direction taken by the choreographer seems oriented toward the study of the concept of imprint: the focus is no longer on something that is an integral part of the body itself, but on the effect of its presence and being in a state of movement. In Contre-jour (2021), in fact, the research gives way to to a more contemplative dimension, where the trace is that left from five dancers on a carpet of sand that covers the scene and is "traced" by the movements of the choreography.

The uniqueness of Through the Grapevine lies in the choice to consider the body both as an object of study - with its infinite, mysterious geometries - and as a subject, capable of observing itself and measuring itself in relationship with the other. For the choreographer, it was not a matter of focusing on himself and his own body; it is not a merely autobiographical approach. On the contrary, the physical structure is tested in a pair virtuosity that knows how to dilute with sincere irony the game of similarities and its effects. On stage we find neither the application of a rule nor the search for ideals: the body is not elected to absolute measure, but is treated as an organic matter available, flexible and always contingent. In this sense, the presence of the other is what continually prevents to a measure, of any of the sections of the body, from giving itself as an absolute and as an ideal and definitive parameter. The body here is treated, through choreographic writing, as a modular architecture, a system of movement that reveals what is beyond form. Finally, the body is not proposed as a load-bearing anatomical structure from which humanity simply allows itself to be enveloped or represented, but to starting from which it shows itself and unfolds.

Dance, like the body, is a playful field of experimentation and research. In the choreography, the two dancers on stage glide through an endless and dizzying game. The choreography, writing-of-the-body, takes shape, literally, in the vertigo of the unclosing of the mystery of the geometries inscribed in the human structure, and in the almost sacred interdependence of the relationships each part has with the whole. The forms that the bodies carve in space then serve to to reveal what to at first glance does not appear: the two dancers have a presence to all respects resembling, yet all it takes is a centimeter less in the length of an arm to make the accounts not add up. The rules of the game of similarity and difference are the object of inquiry and the engine of dance. They challenge the body, shape it and, above all, reveal it from a surprising point of view. Quintessence of the work, like a precipitate in which it is possible to read "what remains" of a research that was born formal, is the relationship and all that the co-presence of two male bodies can tell to the observer.

Alexander Vantournhout and Axel Guérin seem to be absorbed in the maelstrom of secrets that each body conceals, each of their movements opening a potentially new scenario, thus pressing the dramaturgy created together with dramaturg Rudi Laermans and musical composition by Andrea Belfi. Thus presented and experienced, the body, individual in itself, makes a transition that could almost be called "status": from unit of measure of a singular world it becomes a lens of observation and a key to access its surroundings and the other. One can perhaps imagine that in the search for similarities and the observation of proportions Vantournhout is showing us how, in the very organic structure of each body, it is possible to give peace and to welcome all diversity.

Gaia Clotilde Chernetich