It opens with such promise. A vast circular playground of scaffolding dominates the stage. As the machine starts turning, propelled in roundabout fashion by foot, an ominous creak and a figure running counter-clockwise on top of the structure whirr this French dance theatre production into action.
Then things unexpectedly get stuck in a rut; the rest is a frustrating wait for something to gel. Projected subtitles, translating from French, condense the tale of Thomas Sutpen, a deep south American tragedy inspired by William Faulkner's novel Absalom, Absalom! But this rendering of incest, civil war, love and hate is spare and disjointed. Like the novelist, choreographer François Verret enigmatically employs the perspectives of different characters to reveal both plot and psychology, adding movement and drawings by Vincent Fortemps to the mix. It's a laboured complexity that adds little illumination.
This is La Compagnie FV's second visit to the festival. In 2003, Chantier-Musil also employed the architecture of scaffold and words, coupled with the athletic gravitas of Verret's accomplished troupe, with more successful results. Contrecoup slows things down. Dance is held back, kept strangely to a minimum: the seven dancers often literally hang around. They could be attempting to portray the sluggish, claustrophobic climate of the story - but don't.
With all the professional will in the world and Verret's undoubted creative talents, Contrecoup's ambitions fail to take off.
