Ramona Depares finds that ŻfinMalta’s contribution to this year’s Malta Arts Festival, Je Tiens La Reine, can go a long way towards helping contemporary dance find a strong hold among mainstream audiences.

What a stunning premiere for ŻfinMalta’s latest ouevre, Je Tiens La Reine, at this year’s Malta Arts Festival.

I will start off by saying that this is in no way meant to be a technical review – this newspaper has already reported extensively on the technical merits of Malta’s recently-formed national dance company and, of course, technical prowess is almost to be taken for granted when writing about dancers at this level.

But technical prowess forms only a portion of what dance is all about – the rest is down to emotion, imagination, the sublime achievements that can be reached by the human body when it allows itself to soar with the music.

Mavin Khoo and his team of dancers. Photos: Matthew Mirabelli

And this is what this review is about, because on all fronts, Je Tiens La Reine – which is the company’s first full-length piece – succeeded and then some, in delivering a stunning one-hour escape from all that is mundane.

It is an oft-heard complaint that contemporary dance is not easily accessible, except to the few of the ‘inner circle’, so to speak. But both with this new work, which was choreographed by Mavin Khoo and scored with a composition by Renzo Spiteri, and with their earlier collective of choreographies, Erbgħa, I believe that Khoo and his team of dancers have proven otherwise.

It is now up to the public to put its money where its mouth is when it comes to matters artistic and cries for accessibility.

Of course, not every aspect of the arts need to be accessible to the masses. Some genres will always, due to their very nature, appeal only to the few.

After all, if there is one thing that the arts should have no truck with, that is the needless pandering to populism.

However, I am also a firm believer in encouraging potential audiences to reach outside of their comfort zones – and there is no better vehicle to help achieve this than the Malta Arts Festival.

This year, I believe that the whole festival in general made good strides towards offering a number of very valid events that ought to attract diverse audiences.

And, Je Tiens La Reine should have been the crowning glory, a kaleidoscope of evocative music and lithe movements that tugged at our most primeval instincts in an extremely engaging display of technical prowess and emotive acting that the audience could enjoy at any level.

An extremely engaging display of technical prowess and emotive acting

The fact that the audience consisted mostly of familiar faces, dance students and others who are somehow part of the local artistic milieu – and that there were very few new faces – reflects not on the production itself, but rather on the public’s lack of inquisitiveness and lack of eagerness to experience something new.

This is, after all, the same public that consistently contributes to Malta’s abysmal score on international culture surveys. It is sadly evident that more work needs to be done in this area.

The blurb that accompanied the performance entry on the programme explained the concept, an adaptation of Mallarmé’s L’Après-Midi d’un Faune and Debussy’s Prèlude a L’Après-midi d’un Faune that depicts the story of a faun’s encounter with the Ogygia-based Calypso.

However, in truth no ex-planation was necessary. The strength of both choreography and music was such as to allow the viewer to build his own reality to interpret the events unfolding on stage at will.

This was helped, in no small measure, by the contribution of dramaturg Giuliana Fenech, whose narrative adaptation helped give the piece structure, removing it from the plane of pure dance to a more multi-disciplinary effort.

In fact, there was as much emphasis on the storytelling aspect as there was on the choreography itself and this fact certainly went a long way in engaging even those who were relatively new to the world of contemporary dance.

The work itself stimulated an intense wave of emotion that ebbed and flowed together with the beat of the music and the movements of the dancers, the light projections being used to evocative effect.

It was an hour that must have taken it all out of the dancers (who were joined by Khoo towards the end, in the only part that I believe could have done with some shaving, timewise).

The choreography started out mellow enough, but did not take too long to become frenetic in keeping with the primeval theme of the piece, with particularly intense moves that, at times, gave the dancers the appearance of helpless puppets, their own limbs manically moving under the control of a mysterious force that was pulling the strings.

It takes a huge amount of physical control to successfully re-arrange your body so as to make it look out of control.

In short, performances like Je Tiens La Reine herald a new approach in Malta when it comes to the contemporary arts, an approach that is to be lauded not only for the high standards achieved but also for paving the way towards making the discipline more accessible across the board.

Now it’s just a matter for all of us to put our money where our mouth is and actually attend.