Mathilde Monnier

2 / 5 stars

Queen Elizabeth Hall, London
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Mathilde Monnier

There were no assurances in the programme for Mathilde Monnier's Signe, Signes that the two live birds in the show were willing participants. On Tuesday night, the smaller one was certainly hopping with some agitation as one of the performers filmed it in its cage. The bigger bird, meanwhile, was playing dead, perhaps to avoid the same scrutiny. And when it was lifted out of its cage, its distaste for the limelight was evident in the alacrity with which it flew to the wings.

If the show didn't make much sense to its feathered performers, its point would also have eluded anyone in the audience who was not a dance insider. Signe, the first piece, was conceived in oblique homage to the dadaist wit of Merce Cunningham and John Cage, and references to their work were littered throughout.

Just as the two Americans incorporated chance into their work, so Monnier had her dancers navigate the uncertainties of bird behaviour and the improvised music of the on-stage DJ. Within the musical mix there were echoes of Satie (the only classical composer Merce has ever used), and the choreography had echoes of Cunningham's meticulously shaped steps.

For those in the know, it was fun to pick out all these elements, but it was the fun of deconstruction, not of a stage event. Monnier's choreography never attempted to match the dense invention of a Cunningham work, nor delve its emotional secrets. She gave us the bones of a theory without the flesh of theatre.

For the second piece, the men in the company performed a 30-minute study in the art of partnering. They lifted each other, mirrored each other's moves and lightly kissed. The dance community fell about as one man submitted his partner to an aggressively touchy-feely session of body alignment, accompanied by a cliched commentary.

There were fleeting references to the erotic politics of people dancing with each other but as a whole the piece felt as sparsely furnished and distanced as its companion. Monnier is a choreographer who makes precise choices, and one of those is not to include her public.