DANCE AND MUSIC REVIEWS : Ironic View of ‘Paradise’

Dominated by dream logic, arresting film-noir references and cinematic editing, the ironically titled, 50-minute duet “Welcome to Paradise” received its first West Coast performances over the weekend in the Keck Theater at Occidental College.

The work was danced by creators Joelle Bouvier and Regis Obadia, founding directors of L’Esquisse (A Sketch), one of eight modern dance companies chosen in 1986 by French national and regional governments to be given permanent homes. L’Esquisse is in residence in Angers.

Seen Friday, Bouvier and Obadia met on a desolate landscape undefined except for a rope harness and a desk chair. There they re-enacted a series of sexual encounters in which the man tended to dominate, but both characters appeared to be fighting against their own drives--tender as well as aggressive--as much as against each other.

One coupling resounded to the grand vistas Brahms provided in the opening measures of the C-minor Symphony. But such grandeur was undercut by being followed by Marilyn Monroe singing “I Want to Be Loved By You.”

Patrick Roudier was responsible for the sound collage, which also incorporated music by Janacek, Shostakovich, Verdi, Arvo Part and the soundtracks of several Hollywood films. Marc Oliviero created the moody lighting.

The whole was framed by funereal suggestions--both the opening and closing evoked a graveyard, not exactly a hopeful prognosis for modern love. But the energy, commitment and clarity of the dancers’ movements, plus their fluid, free-fantasy invention, kept the work consistently engaging.

To complete the program, two short black-and-white films by Bouvier and Obadia were screened. With its stylized postures of nine socially repressed, sexually frustrated women, who eventually get rained on and roll on the dirt floor, “La Chambre” (The Chamber), the second film, made obeisance to the obsessions of Tanztheater of Wuppertal director Pina Bausch.