Photo: Mathieu Doyon
In Catherine Gaudet’s Ode, a sizable group of dancers spend an hour moving rhythmically and repetitively through an abbreviated repertoire of gestures, most of the time shouting “love” at their audience in metronomic unison. They step-touch laterally while sliding one upturned forearm forward and then the other. They dramatically toss up their outstretched hands, swaying their torsos, or push little palmfuls of air with rigid arms. It looks almost like they’re taking an aerobics class, copying the heart-pumping choreography of some instructor beyond the stage’s lip.
The image of an aerobics class both illustrates the main formal qualities of Gaudet’s piece — rhythm and repetition — and helps to illuminate Ode’s affective disposition. Aerobics is aspirational. It provides an instructive example of the sense of “collective fantasy” that Gaudet identifies as one of her choreographic interests. It evokes not only a search for physical optimization, but also the cultural and economic frenzy of its space-time of peak popularity — 1980s America.
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