dominique pétrin’s show was probably good based upon the shouts of applause that came at the end. her costumes were drop dead gorgeous. but what i saw mostly were feet and black stockings.

the conditions of viewing. a hot room. the « stage » is a concrete floor marked off to give a small margin surrounding it. two rows of people sitting on the floor at my end, and three rows of people (i think) along the other edge. about 9o people packed in to la centrale’s small gallery space.

a gallery is not a stage. there is no incline in the seating, hell, there is no seating. if you put your viewers on the floor they are going to see feet. if you put many bodies or objects on the floor they are going to block the view of the other bodies. if you expect people to sit on a concrete floor for any length of time you have to expect that some of the people are going to get cramped or sore asses. if you cram as many people as possible into a small space the room is going to heat up and the people with cramped legs will have no where to move.

do you, as the performer care? can you control the conditions of viewing? if you know the conditions suck what can you do about it?

for me, this was not so much a performance as a show. it begs to be seen on stage. there is the desire to create a spectacle that others view. enormous attention went into the costumes, made of paper, a mixture of egyptian mythology meets black light art. the sound track was loud. many performers were on stage. i think a ceremonial ritual was performed (but i couldn’t see it.)

what i did see was the initial slow procession of one performer at a time entering the stage, and then because one performer stood on an elevated platform for awhile i could see this performer. i saw people moving around in a dance. then i saw the slow procession out of the space.

was i happy? no. did i feel the conditions of my viewing were taken into consideration…i.e. did i feel like a valued spectator? no. did i think the performer should have altered her performance for the space? yes. did i think this could have been a possibility? yes…the performance space could have been smaller, the number of performers could have been drastically reduced. chairs could have been provided. in an effort to bring as many people in to the gallery as possible, yet to not alter the performance for the conditions imposed by the space, the performer destroyed my reception of her performance. and that is too bad, because like i said at the beginning, based upon the shouts of applause at the end it was a good performance.

dominique pétrin: http://www.rcaaq.org/html