It goes without saying that the art of dance is an integral element of people’s culture. Indeed, while the rest of forms of artistic expressions are rather stable, dance is something that miraculously shape-shifts every single moment, creating a chain of ideas and images that fall into their places in the course of the performance. Two of the most innovative dance groups in the present-day world of dancing, Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal and Zero in On are well worth being considered as peculiar specimens of the way dance can convey messages to the audience without a single word spoken.
Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal exists owing to a number of people, each of whom plays an important role in its mechanism. With the help of its artistic director, Louis Robitaille, the group makes a unique impression on the audience with the costume designs and the settings. Meanwhile, Gayetano Soto is responsible for the choreography.
In its turn, Zero in On owes its magical choreography to Wei Wei Wang, whose Oriental vision of the world allows to interpret the most original ideas in an innovative way, quite unusual for the western public. Christina Bodie and Antonios Bourgiouris, the dancers, have had enough experience to convey the most subtle messages to the audience with the help of their elaborate movements and sophisticated manner of dancing.
Modern dances are, all about breaking the rules. Making the classic merge with the modern and enthralling the audience with fantastic movements that are much more eloquent than words and filled with hidden innuendoes, modern dances offer the viewers a whole lot of new impressions. For instance, the dance performed by Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal was an experience which is really hard to forget. To start with, the minimalism of decorations and accessories that was used in the performance allowed to focus on the dancers and their movements. The outfits which the dancers had on were also quite striking and added of the atmosphere. Wearing skin-tight suits that made the dancers look much like as if they were in their birthday suits. Filling the dance with a specific meaning, the performers have managed to tell a story without saying a single word, the dance movements being their only way of conveying a certain message. The dance, with the key emphasis on the battle of the opposites, the light and the dark, is worth more than a million words.
As for the second performance, it was just as provocative and impressive as the previous one. However, it seemed that in the case of Zero in On, the message is not as big as in Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal. While in the latter, the battle of the opposites was viewed from almost every single perspective, starting with the color palette (back and white) and up to the difference between the feminine and the masculine, in Zero in On, the focus is mostly on the relationships between a man and a woman. However, even though the meaning of Zero in On seems a little less wide than the one of Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal, both dances are still worth watching and admiring, for they offer not only aesthetic pleasure, but also a plenty of food for thoughts.