Starting at age seven, Mourad Merzouki began his training in the circus school in Lyon, France, and, at age 15, he discovered hip-hop, which propelled him toward dance.
He founded his first hip-hop company in 1989, and, now in a new century, he has incorporated technology. Merzouki thinks and works across categories: circus, martial arts, hip-hop, and technology. He brings them together into new life, a French inflected spectacular that defies categories, and, in doing so, he thrills and inspires his audiences.
In this initial performance of an international tour, he takes advantage of the unique new capabilities of the Ted Shawn Theatre, including a stellar sound system and lighting and staging capacities, to carry us into a wonderland blend of the old and the new: centuries of circus, 50 years of hip-hop, and a new era of auditory and visual technology.
With dancers whose bodies appear to defy the laws of biology and physics, we are transported into the new world of “Pixel.”
The glories of technology created fountains and raindrops of light, changing as the dancers moved, sometimes as though the dancers were drawing their own atmospheres and dancing through and within that atmosphere as it changed again and again into sparkling and ephemeral forms.
At the end of this dance, the whole audience sighed, “Ooooooh!”
“Pixel” also brought some unexpected and delightful surprises: Two robots that looked like tiny cabooses occasionally rolled across the stage, blinking a spotlight on whatever was happening dance-wise, then, apparently having had enough, turning around and rolling off the stage.
Another surprise was the majestic Ibrahima “Ibou” Mboup on in-line roller skates. The fluidity of moving on wheels coupled with his grace and virtuosity as a dancer not only brought the robot back on the stage, but took the collective breath of the audience away.
Later, Mboup on roller skates joined other members of the company in dances that incorporated large hoops into the movement, including Julien Seijo stretched like Leonardo’s “Vitruvian Man” inside a hoop rolling along the floor. Hip-hop with roller skates, hoops, bubbles, robots, and showers of light all served to extend the possibilities of the body and the imagination.
The one female in the troupe, Nina Van der Pyl, an extraordinary contortionist, was described in the program as a former graduate student in astrophysics, a demanding academic discipline to which, indeed, she may return when, inevitably, her body no longer permits her to continue such formidable exertions. Here, she was pictured solo and flirting with—but ultimately eluding—the amorous advances of her male colleagues. In microseconds, it appeared, she was able to turn on and off her adorable sexuality.
The dancers’ extraordinary physicality and gymnastic strength was displayed in gorgeous individual and choreographed floor work and low lifts, as well as handstands, head twirls, flips, and, at one point, throwing a dancer high in the air and halfway across the stage to land perfectly in the arms of his colleagues. This was a tour de force of dance and spectacle. But, on occasion, repetition—if not boredom—set in. Walking out of the theater, we heard an audience member exclaim, “Too much, already.” On the other hand, how can you have too much of such a good thing?
In the latest number of Times Literary Supplement (August 11, 2023), there is an impressive commentary on the lessons of travel by Professor Irina Dumetrescu of the University of Bonn that reminds us of how we felt during this performance—and why this was not too much of a good thing.
“On a recent family trip to Rouen we walked aimlessly around the city after dinner. Even though it was late, a small crowd of people was staring at it expectantly. I was confused for a moment, then it clicked: they were waiting for one of the sound and light shows so popular in France these days. We waited, too, and before long the cathedral that Claude Monet painted more than thirty times in the [1890s] was bedecked with QR codes inviting us to ‘paint’ it by placing animated dots on its on surface. It seemed gimmicky, but my son loved it, and soon my innate cynicism gave way a quiet wonder in the technology.
“The feeling increased in awe when the light show began. We watched the theater melt, burn, turn into a series of impressionist paintings, take on the colour of jewels, turn into an ocean and a Renaissance map, explode into fireworks. Again, for a moment I wanted to scoff at such an obvious tourist trap. Then I thought of Suger, the twelfth-century Abbott of Saint-Denis in Paris, whose love of brightness in directing the mind from the ordinary cares to a neoplatonic understanding, one approaching the purity of heaven. On the doors of the church he refurbished he had verses inscribed (in Erwin Panofsky’s translation): Bright is the noble work, but being nobly bright, the work should brighten the minds, so that that they may travel through the true lights.”
We believe that this performance, with its over-the-top exuberance and its exquisite use of newly available technology, serves to uplift the spirit and brighten the mind, so that we, too, travel with light.
