the legends of jil & yill
choreographic poem
for hands, percussion, and water

This quite recent contemporary dance work, the opening night of which was presented in the unusual set of the Biosphere, on the Montreal St. Helena Island, is a little uncommon in the milieu of the Montreal dance. The choreography is full of surprises. The invented language sequence, the use of the mnemonic syllables of the oral music tradition, the choreographer's provocative texts, the excerpt from "The Days of the Eclipse", by poet Paul Bélanger, and, above all, the hieratic postures contrasting with the flow of body movements and hand gestures makes for an intense feeling throughout the piece.

Merging the music, the dance and the theatre with a consumed art, this visionary work is driven by a figure similar to that of the Coryphaeus of the Greek tragedy or the Sutradharaha of the Sanskrit theatre. The central character draws the course of the piece through five intense and coloured episodes of movement to music for percussion and the Kathakali drums. Sequences excerpted from the amazing Kathakali dance-theatre are superimposed on the dance and the narrative with video projections on large screens, to suggest the overwhelming flow of time. The work ends up with the surprising transformation of the dance character that comes out from the unconscious as an unqualified figure.

On a mood, sometimes light, sometimes serious, three characters share the scene: the guide (Richard Tremblay), the dance character (Sophie Janssens), and the percussionist (Bruno Paquet). Text, movement and percussion music give life to this enthralling dance.

Jil et Yill is a simple work, one of quality, with clearly delineated atmospheres, complex rhythms, and evocative images. While inescapably resorting to Kathakali, which is their meeting place, Richard Tremblay and Bruno Paquet provide an insight into the work, which is at the same time Eastern and fully contemporary. Of roughly an hour, and intended for an audience of general culture, this production is a sensitive and inspired integration of the text and music with the matter of the dance.

excerpts from the text
- Read or recited -

I saw two white butterflies fluttering over the mustard flowers under the lively and contrasted light of the summer last few days. Having contemplated for a moment their whirling, in perfect duet on the singing of the cicada, and the movement of their slow and continuous ascent in axis so vertically pure that it seemed to attract them infinitely upward, I asked myself how we, human beings ...

to a sleepless companion
Use bay leaves... Instead of collecting them to make a crown, scatter them with moderation in one's infusion of tea.

no weight
We are told that, one day, Einstein was witness of the spectacular accident of a construction worker; fallen from a building of several floors, this last one had miraculously survived. Einstein hurried to visit him at the first opportunity, because he had an urgent and very precise question to put him. The question of the physicist was the following one: "What did you feel by falling, dear sir "? The answer of the worker was as remarkable as the question of the physicist: " I felt, sir, that I had no weight "...

prescription for a choreographer
Every day at dawn, stare at the sun beams if possible during five minutes to clear up the sight.

letter to the friends (paul bélanger)
... Time expels us from its sphere, seasons cancel each other out. The low walls of solitude become blurred, become transparent, the words, these lost words require somebody. They run and fly in front of one another...

For upcoming events, see the performance history