words rachel mok

Shape shifting and an old Chinese game inspire a modern French choreographer

Aurélien Bory should have become a scientist. He graduated in maths and physics from university, but then, instead of moving into scientific circles, he branched off into the arts, to found the dance troupe Compagnie 111. That, though, didn’t mean he totally abandoned his education: ‘I studied maths and physics, mostly interested by their beauty. And when I started my art work, I was interested by geometry. We can put it this way: while studying sciences, I looked for art, and now doing art work, I look for science.’ His trilogy, IJK, Plan B and Plus ou moins l’infini is an exploration of volume, planes and lines. But the work he has brought to Hong Kong for Le French May, Les Sept Planches de la Ruse (The Seven Boards of Skill), is inspired by the ancient Chinese tangram as well as by the mathematics of shape. ‘My work is based on geometry because theatre is above all a space – that’s why I often call it the art of space – and if it is true that space is ruled by mathematics and physics, theatre can’t escape from those principles. It is the case for the human body too, in relationship to gravity, experiencing its own weight or the weight of objects,’ he explains.

Bory has always liked games of skill and has been familiar with tangrams – themselves dating back as far as the Song dynasty – since his childhood. ‘With seven pieces, you can make more that 2,000 patterns,’ he says. ‘That means that with very little you can make a world. It is really a beautiful game, a perfect form. But it was only recently, when studying it for the show, that I really discovered its geometrical logic.’

In Les Sept Planches de la Ruse, the seven shapes of the tangram are large blocks, each weighing several hundred kilos, which acrobat/dancers of the Dalian Opera School continuously manipulate in a combination of circus arts, dance and visual art. They create what Bory considers a poem of geometrical metaphors. ‘The show is about continuous transformations,’ he says. ‘The elements are the same, but the world is moving endlessly. So the process of the book is, as the process of the show, movement: movement of the blocks on stage, of the light, of the people.’ And as everything is always moving, the variations of shape and relationship emanating from the seven pieces of the puzzle are infinite. Yet the show depends on a high degree of meticulousness. ‘I have written all the movements of the blocks to a model,’ Bory points out. ‘Without this first step, it would be impossible to try in real size. The writing and the show are very precise, but the manner it is done, in terms of timing and tempo, evolved a lot during the first 50 performances.’

And if now seamless fluidity has flowered from the concentrated work of the dancers and Bory’s central theme of change (the Book of Changes, the I Ching, and Chinese notions of ying and yang also inspire the performance), the show’s nevertheless firm foundation was set when the dancers first took to the stage. ‘It was really a huge work to build all the constructions with the blocks,’ says Bory. ‘In repetition, a single moving architecture could take more than a day to raise. Another difficulty was to assemble everything from beginning to end in a pure logic of movement – in this show there is nothing but the seven blocks and 14 people.’

Bory was first introduced to the Dalian Opera School in July 2006, when producer Jean-Luc Larguier wanted to him to meet some of the artists Larguier had worked with over the previous two decades. At the opera school, Bory was fascinated by the wide range of talent – from people with a Beijing opera background to retired acrobats, actors and singers from 45 to 60 years, still very good despite their age. ‘You can’t find artists like that at the same age in France. From the start of the auditions to the premiere of the show, they have been very interested in participating,’ he says.

After he returned to France, his work with geometry and dance took on an Asian character as he tried to find a fit with Chinese culture: ‘That’s why I chose the tangram, which is pure geometry as well as an ancient Chinese game connected with Chinese philosophy.’ He spent six months developing the tangram model and 12 weeks working with the artists before Les Sept Planches de la Ruse premiered in Dalian in December 2007. From there it went on to New York, London, Paris and Bory’s home, Toulouse. ‘For [the artists] it was something very new,’ he says.

For audiences as well – London’s Guardian newspaper noted ‘The abstract choreography of gravity, mass force and equilibrium is riveting.’ But Bory’s collective has created more than just a play on an ancient Chinese game that is a pleasure to watch. The New York Times said the impact of the show creates ‘suspense, fright and even emotional engagement merely by the movement of shapes’. Which is the kind of reaction Bory was seeking. ‘I like it when you can watch something that allows your imagination to make connections with your own experience or understanding. It becomes, at that moment, something closer to your perception, to your feelings,’ he says. As the performers construct abstract landscapes with the blocks – a steep mountain or a lonely city perhaps, they provoke viewers to revisit their relationships with nature, society or even politics. More profoundly, the performance even becomes a metaphor for mankind’s mistaken idea that it controls the game of life, even while the game is beyond control. But like most artists, Bory doesn’t think he needs to be explicit about what he is trying to express. ‘It becomes personal, and I think art should be that. I don’t necessarily look at what creation means exactly, but I am very aware to see what it does to us.’

Les Sept Planches de la Ruse won’t be Aurélien Bory’s first sortie into Hong Kong’s artistic life: His work IJK was a feature of the 2004 HK Arts Festival. In coalescing his French background with China’s rich and sophisticated culture, how does he avoid using oriental elements as mere gimmicks in the name of cultural exchange? How does he create a truly culture-blending work? ‘I tried to come to Dalian with an open mind, and not with prejudiced ideas,’ he explains. ‘To discover new forms, it was important not to know what I would do. I just tried to build a process of creation that makes sense – and I tried to keep that from beginning to the end.’

Experience Les Sept Planches de la Ruse on May 15 and 16 at 8:15pm at the HK Cultural Centre Grand Theatre. Tickets are $390, $290, $220 and $150 from URBTIX, 2734 9009.