Think of Diavolo as the "Cirque du Sartre."
This California-based group – not really a dance company, more of a performance art troupe – made its Oklahoma debut Tuesday at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center, brought to town by Choregus Productions.
The 10 members of Diavolo (five men, five women) put on an extraordinary, dazzling show, one of the most impressive displays of things the human body can do that you're likely to see.
Performers routinely went soaring through the air, catapulting themselves off the structures that are at the heart of the art they perform. They demonstrated feats of strength, precision, stamina and balance that often seemed to defy biology and physics.
In fact, it seems that the only thing Diavolo can't do – to judge from the four pieces the group presented Tuesday – is create a real emotional impact.
Make no mistake: the talents and abilities of the performers of Diavolo are exceptional, and they performed in what seemed a full-out, totally committed way.
The problem is that Jacques Heim's choreography (if that's the best word for the company's unique blend of dance, acrobatics, gymnastics, martial arts, yoga and any other sort of movement style you can think of) never comes to a point. Each piece ended up by circling back on itself, or leaving the performers stranded in some doomy tableau.
You almost expected the theatrical smoke that wreathed the stage in the military-themed "D2R" to smell like Gauloise cigarettes, and to hear someone say in a heavy French accent, "Ah you see? All is futile."
"Foreign Bodies" had the dancers' body parts, then bodies, slowly wriggling out of the holes on the large on-stage cube. Once free, the dancers began breaking down the cube into triangles and pyramids, and their interactions became more frenzied and violent. Think of it as a stylized, condensed, and altogether bleak view of human development, which ends with the cube reassembled with a bang at the final note of the Esa-Pekka Salonen score.
The "love duet" of "Knockturne," which featured Becca Greenbaum and Ken Arata contorting in front of, around, through and over a doorframe, had moments of humor and playfulness to it. And perhaps it would have had a greater impact in the context of the large piece from which this duet was excerpted. But the only moment of real intimacy came at the very end, when Arata gathered Greenbaum up in the tradition bride-and-groom-crossing-the-threshold pose. Yet the couple were standing precariously on top of the door – as if to show that this romance had nowhere else to go.
The final piece was the most effective, because the sheer spectacle of "Trajectoire" easily obscured the lack of real meaning. It was fascinating to watch, certainly – a gigantic half-cylinder that evokes a wooden ship rocking back and forth in time with the performers' movements. This was also the piece that the audience responded to the most – some of the blind leaps the women made as the set piece nearly rocked on to its side, and the deft way the men on the ground caught them get more than a few gasps of shock and surprise from the crowd.
The way performers kept appearing and disappearing during the course of the piece made it seem as if Heim and Co. were endeavoring to make some kind of statement about human endurance, to bring the evening to a close with a glimpse of hope. But again, the existential impulse took over. Where once there were human beings, now there is nothing.
I would no doubt go to see Diavolo perform again. I just would plan on it being a visually stunning, but emotionally cold, evening.
