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On Langfelder's website, I read all about the show - including professional and audience reviews - and I watched the video trailer. I feel it's a must-see only insofar as 'wow, she made it to the National Arts Gallery, so we ought to know how our work is different, so we can promote that ours is the work which people need to host/see.
Review
[J's note: This review bores me.]
Translation
of radio review, RCF (France)
26 september 2001
Senile Swing
With her deeply moving choreographic theatre piece, "Victoria", Quebecer Dulcinea Langfelder offers us a chance to look upon old age with much humanity and pleasure, without trying – as europeans do – to avoid or deny it because it smells like death. The old woman she puts on stage and interprets, based on an original idea and texts by Charles Fariala, is cloistered in a hospice, cared for and at the same time damned and loved by a courageous orderly (the excellent Eric Gingras). The world created by the choreographer, in which the set is limited to a series of huge curtains which are magnificently exploited, oscillates between reality as we see it or think we see it, and the imaginary, the memories, the impressions of Victoria, who’s imagination becomes a formidable creative power: "Memory is never a simple recording or reproduction, but rather a process of re-categorisation, reconstruction, imagination, determined by our own values and perspectives", according to the postulate of Gerald M. Edelman (quoted by Oliver Sacks in the program notes). With the old woman, so fragile that to blow on her could make her sway, we move between poetry and decrepitude of the body, between flights superbly danced by Dulcinea Langfelder – who knows how to transform a wheelchair into a prop worthy of Mary Poppins – and permanent memory failure. With a trembling voice, Victoria tries to tell us her story, recuperate bits of childhood or love, unable to resolve herself to the loss of her cherished cat. She keeps us spellbound and reminds us that one day, sooner or later, we will all be reduced to this modification of body and mind. Life is a theatre in which the curtain will close upon all the protagonists. At the same time, the work and compassion of the orderly is saluted: in spite of what he says, he knows that this shattered and disconcerting life is life, all the same. The choreographer interprets with talent the ambiguity between the old body and the once young one, and a discreet eroticism accompanies us all along this path full of humor, tenderness, emotion and astonishment (eros and thanatos, we know the story …). We are spared nothing, however, in this terrible old age, not even the diapers and the excrements, since it is often said that old age resembles the first years of life: it’s caca, chaos, a connexion already made by James Joyce … it’s the human being sinking in strange quicksands.
Dulcinea Langfelder, with the help of Ana Cappelluto (set and lighting), Yves Labelle (video), has us enter into the mysterious world of a troubled memory through shadow play and formidable special effects. At times this world is gothic, fantastic, nearly terrifying: Anguish invades us when Victoria’s double, in a haunting saraband looms with force from her unconscious. At times it is endearing, like when she remembers a first bicycle ride. And what a metaphor for escaped memories; birds flying out of a locker …
To sweet jazz music, at one point inviting a comical tap dance, with the Piaf song, "Padam" which takes on a whole new dimension, or to the electroacoustic creations of Christian Calon, Dulcinea-Victoria charms us, amuses us and troubles us: an original challenge, and successful.
Laurent Bourdelas (et Marie-Noëlle Agniau)
