The Daily Telegraph 28 de APRIL de 2006
The Daily Telegraph
London, United Kingdon
28/APRIL/2006
By Elena Seymenliyska
Tied and emotional
?How delicious are these implements of torture,? wrote Marquis de Sade. Knot, the latest from the Brazilian choreographer Deborah Colker, would have had him salivating in no time.
The light is sepia-toned, the music a dissonant throb. A woman stands, shackled by her wrists and ankles, as a man adjusts and tightens her stays. They appear to be naked, save for dark patches over erogenous zones.
When the dancers bend and twist, these patches seem grow, exposed by a leg raised over a shoulder or an arm thrust through a crotch. From the ceiling hang 120 ropes, gathered together at a central point, a tree of life through which more dancers writhe and twine, one moment sinewy with pleasure, the next taut with pain.
Colker, a former psychology student and professional volleyball player, took her 17-strong company to philosophy seminars and sailing-knot classes in preparation for this energetic exploration of desire. The result is exhilarating, intense and, at times, uncomfortable, a highly charged expos? of sexual dynamics.
Nowhere is the made more explicit than in the scene in which a man makes a handle or rope round a woman, picks her up by this handle, puts his head through it and walks off, her body both a tight knot of submission against his chest and a heavy weight of dominance.
The most overtly erotic moment is a female duet. Stage left hangs a hairy cluster of ropes, matted like dreadlocks. The women circle it and each other, then swing it back and forth, then twist themselves round it, all the while stroking the curtains of hair, occasionally parting them to reveal their moisture-slicked faces, eyes glassy with arousal.
There is a lot more going on here than simply dance. Looks and touches are exchanged, at one point a playful slap on a bottom, making voyeurs of us all. The second part of Knot builds on this. A see-through box replaces the forest of ropes and bright light throws a harsh glare on the proceedings.
Now, the dancers? costumes are picked out in tacky red, their faces glowing with pure lust. A flame-haired man leaps on like a grinning satyr. There is pole-dancing of sorts, a sleazy 1970s jazz score and much pressing of bodies against the clear plastic. It is all a lot more hard-core. By now, even de Sade might have lost the appetite.
