Photo by Svetlana Atanasova
Women's Bodies
by Élaine Charlebois
This past Thursday night, Monument National hosted two short performance pieces by Tangente. First came MISS, a piece created by Jade Marquis and performed by Joannie Douville, which follows a dancer searching to establish her persona as a performer while maintaining a sense of female empowerment. Douville does well to fully use the intimate space of the venue, travelling slowly through the audience as she delivers an interesting take on the nature of the dance scene. While my choice to sit in the balcony section of the venue hindered my visual experience of the piece, causing me to lean over the railing in order to get a shot of Douville entering the room from under me, the piece nevertheless had its effect. MISS managed to raise questions regarding our notions of the female image in dance culture while at the same time displaying the various personas females can take on when performing. Although I did not grasp the meaning surrounding all of the projected images accompanying Douville’s performance, the piece as a whole was intriguing and at times thought-provoking.
