Nocturnes in Montreal

Deborah Dunn's dance piece Nocturnes, inspired by Wuthering Heights (check these previous posts for more information), is touring Montreal in Canada since last December. There are still a few chances to see the performances:

Trial & Eros Company presents
Nocturnes

Maison de la culture Ahunstic, December 11 8:00 p.m.
Maison de la culture Montréal Nord, December 16 8:00 p.m.
Maison de la culture Plateau Mont-Royal, January 13,  8:00 p.m.
Maison de la culture Frontenac, January 18,  8:00 p.m.
Le Centre Segal des arts de la scène, January 22, 8:00 p.m.
Maison de la culture Villeray-Saint Michel-Parc-Extension, January 28, 8:00 p.m.

The Globe and Mail reviews these new performances:

Nocturnes, involving six dancers representing Emily Brontë’s classic characters, will be presented around Montreal throughout January. Dunn had read Wuthering Heights many times, and always at the back of her mind was the idea that the complex personal relationships at the heart of the novel would translate readily into choreography. That is, until she actually began creating the piece with her dancers.
Originally, Dunn envisioned the three female dancers as young Cathy Earnshaw, married Cathy, and Cathy’s ghost. The three male dancers she saw as young Heathcliff, adult Heathcliff and Edgar Linton. These characters and their internecine connections formed the initial inspiration for the choreography, but during the creative process, the plotline morphed into elemental abstractions.
“Getting Brontë’s characters onto the stage proved to be very difficult,” Dunn says. “From specific people, they dissolved into generalized gothic archetypes. I just couldn’t get across the story. I was resorting to pantomime, and those scenes had to go.”
As art does tend to take on a life of its own, Dunn now sees the piece as representing the book’s symbolic nature. “Take Jane Austen’s characters,” she explains. “They are well defined. They function as real people in real situations. The more research I did on Wuthering Heights, the more it became clear that it is a long prose poem rather than a novel, that the characters aren’t really characters but ideas. Bronte was playing with stereotypes and archetypes.” (...)
Nocturnes is not the retelling of a story, but one conveying images and complex relationships through partnering. Rough-hewn, weight-bearing physicality is the modus operandi over refined choreographic architecture.
In fact, Dunn now sees the Brontë family itself in the dance. The three women are the Brontë sisters. The three men are the distant father, the weak, alcoholic brother, and perhaps the third male is Emily herself, the most masculine (metaphorically speaking) member of the family.
For the original score, composer David Cronkite deconstructed Chopin’s Nocturnes, which gives the dance piece its name. “I wanted a bilingual title that captures the heart of the dance,” Dunn explains. “The quintessence of the piece is gothic and romantic in the true sense of both words.”
Dunn defines gothic as being attracted to death, darkness, depression and despair. “Brontë saw nature as interacting with the story, and she projected the elements onto the characters. In the studio, elemental powers took over the story. I also found myself being influenced by the surrealists and absurdist humour. In Nocturnes, Brontë intensity is matched by Magritte irony.” (Paula Citron)

Progrès Villeray:

Trois couples, ou plutôt six personnages, se rencontrent et se fuient en de multiples géométries. La chorégraphe Deborah Dunn dissèque ici le rêve avec humour et fantaisie dans un univers surréel et une atmosphère teintée de romantisme « à la Brontë », le tout sur la musique de Frédéric Chopin, déconstruite et modifiée. (Microsoft translation)

Categories: Dance, Wuthering Heights