Created two years after his famous Joe, Nuit is one of Jean-Pierre Perreault’s landmark works. Admirably danced by an outstanding cast, this impetuous piece opens a window on the choreographer’s immense legacy.
The late choreographer Jean-Pierre Perreault (1947–2002) said, “Human beings are sensitive to two things: other people, and the space they occupy and that contains them.” The same impulse inspired Perreault to create the design, choreography, lighting and sound of all his works himself. His pictorial explorations led him to imagine large-scale “dance spaces”. In the half-light, eight “Perreauesque” figures pound the floor to the point of intoxication, to the point of exhaustion. Struggling with the vagaries of everyday life, they dance their loneliness, confrontation and fragility. Various tensions arise between materials, masses, volumes and configurations. Remounted in its original form on the initiative of Laurence Lemieux (who danced it in 2002) and her Compagnie de la Citadelle, Nuit conveys a vulnerability that is as disturbing as it is subterranean. A rare work of overwhelming beauty.
