In the scorching heat, into a garden adorned with a fountain, stumbles a knight dressed in full armour. She starts stepping clumsily around, moving as much as her medieval gear allows, opening a comical sequence while exploring her surroundings: touching plants, stones, playing with the audience, stealing a hat, pushing a stroller. There is something Pythonesque about her physicality, absurd, playful, a meticulous timing of every interaction. As the armour gradually falls apart, Lakhtani is revealed beneath, in sculpted sportswear. We have access to her facial expressions, as she quickly inhabits figures such as flexing bodybuilders, pop stars, action-film spies, drawing bits of choreography from videoclips – a flipbook archive of instantly recognisable images, executed with precision and comic flair.
Despite the rhythm of this constant transformation, the proposition eventually flattens, remaining a smooth stream instead of generating friction between images. Maybe the performance is a bit too sleek to fully embrace the potential of putting contrasting figures in relation. Although the choreography succeeds in making old and new archive material visible with intelligence and humour, working with the body as a site where images are produced and transmitted, it stops short of allowing them to collide, or truly misbehave. A promising apparition that feels on the verge of greater depth. ●
Marie Pons’ trip to Montpellier was supported by Agora, Cité Internationale de la Danse
