Marco da Silva Ferreira
Bisonte
Elverket c/o Dansens Hus
October 2-3, 2024
Marco da Silva Ferreira Bisonte © Marta Ankiersztejn
Marco da Silva Ferreira’s Bisonte - put a bit oxymoronically - begins low-key with a high note at once, with the choreographer himself offering vocal chops with a tender and harmonious rendition of what will gradually strike you as the quintessentially nostalgic Lambada by Kaoma, just as the gradually emerging choreography peafowls him into arm-swaying "postur-ing", and 90’s Eurovision song contest diva mode.
I say "postur-ing" as a play on words, because there is a great element of "fraudulence” cemented in this piece; of deliberately and transiently giving off air of being something much more formulaic than it factually is, only to cunningly "Pied-Pier-of-Hamelin" you into full realization of how great and epic it is, running the full course past the finishing line, until there’s nothing left not to equate as epic. It begins earning my ”scornful” look at yet another display of a troupe clad in the Berlin Tempelhof flughafen look; sling bag and midriff, and ends in making me cathartically cry. Yes. I’ve never cried seeing contemporary dance, or maybe it happened that one time, I can’t remember, but either way that’s a full 180 degrees' arc in terms of the response it generates from me, from point A to E (end). It’s so mesmerizing; in parts beautiful, or "beaut”, which is how I’ve abbreviated this adjective much recently.
As you suspect the 60 minutes might be coming to an end, ”HUH-HUH-HUH” is heard after birds’ song; you know "HUH-HUH-HUH", that sound you make before warming up to start singing from your diaphragm.
Marco da Silva Ferreira Bisonte © D.Matvejevas
Before further ado, I instantly and unsuspectingly connect the sudden sound to Laurie Anderson’s O Superman from her seminal album Big Science. What ensues directly after the birds, and following my whiff and sensation of Anderson, from the joint voices on stage now forming a choir? You guessed it. ”Here come the planes. They're American planes”. Heart-wrenching, and yet marked by so much humour. If it extracts a full 180 degrees sine curve wave from me, then it churns out a 360 spin of dance history; Can-can, ballet, lindyhop, ”Kriss Kross will make you - jump jump!", flamenco, tango, duck walk in voguing; it’s all there, and the reason it works so well, again, is humour. Humour to go around. At times the register of intense facial gesturing makes Bisonte point towards Opera Buffa. You suddenly remember how humour in contemporary dance needs not literal humouristic moves; it suffices with facial gestures fired off by performers who exhibit unyielding sassy confidence and an air of having so much evident fun on stage that they edit out the notion of there even being a choreographer to begin with, blurring such lines, and passing the threshold where they cease to appear "merely” diligently trained vessels mediating someone’s vision.
In contemporary pop music there is the division we now have learnt, between ”performers” and ”singers” , which has been put to the fore notably through the existence of half-assed singers who’ve commanded larger than life (also known as ”epic”) careers like Britney Spears and Jennifer Lopez (who incidentally sampled Lambada for her autotuned hit On the floor). Spears precised the other and more supreme category as ”advanced vocalists”, on her dance-infested Instagram. There must be an analogy in contemporary dance, obviously, only this is a troupe who then would be neither one before the other; they’re all of it. Each exuding some individual personality like a cast designed for such. They sell each move as a pro wrestler sells their as though unchoreographed.
Marco da Silva Ferreira Bisonte © Marta Ankiersztejn
It makes me think of Alexandra Bachzetsis’ recent Exposure on this same stage, and serves up another reminder, that of how ”sexy” in contemporary dance needs not emulation/simulation of sex; a wiggle can easily be very sexy. It goes without saying, but sometimes needs saying and some stressing. For the longest time the ”sexiest” thing that happens in Bisonte is ”unsexy”; i.e. the "happy baby” posture of my Bikram yoga being performed, with only very faint allusions to, umm, shebopping.
Decidedly, Bisonte is among the best things seen all of this year, not just on local dance stages like MDT, weld or Dansens Hus, but among the best anywhere, period. It’s an elevation, a revelation. I call my brother feeling euphoria having been dispensed.
Ashik Zaman