Last Friday I had the opportunity to watch a performance of Do Animals Cry?  which is a work by Meg Stuart, performed by her dance company, Damaged Goods.  I was very unsure of what to expect, “controversial” being the word I heard most often associated with Stuart.  I chose to do no research on Stuart or her work before attending the show, so that I would go in with a completely open mind.

Now, a few days later, I’m still trying to process everything I saw performed.  There were many things about the show that were not easy for an audience, and challenged both the audience’s patience and its comfort level.  But I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing.  The show was two hours, with no intermission and no re-entry into the theatre.  This alone was hard for many audience members to absorb, and I think led some people choosing to exit the performance within the first hour.  They missed out, however.  Throughout the two hours of Do Animals Cry? we were given view into the inner workings and inner musings of  the five dancers on stage and the characters they were inhabiting. 

In doing some reading after the fact about Meg Stuart, I learned that she likes to challenge ideas of privacy, memories and exposure onstage.  Lying beneath much of her work is an examination of the failure to communicate, and that can definitely be said of this show.  We’re lead to believe that the dancers we see in front of us are members of a family, but as the show continues it becomes increasingly clear that we don’t really know how they all relate to each other.  Family they may be, but there’s also dances between “family” members who move as though they don’t know each other, or, in some cases, don’t trust each other.

Perhaps most challenging about this show is the way the show pushes the boundaries of what many people consider to be dance.  Stuart does self-describe as someone searching for new forms of cooperation and intersection between the art forms of dance, theatre, visual art and architecture.  She likes the tension that exists between dance and theatre, and that was highlighted in the show.  There were several moments that made the audience cringe, be they suddenly angry confrontations between dancers or seemingly heartless behaviour towards one another.   Often these moments involved little or no dance movement – some featured extended periods of facial expression, others the dancers all standing still for long enough that the audience questioned if they would move again.  Neither of these are experiences typical to watching a dance performance, and so challenged the audience’s expectations.

The two-hour long show was not an easy one for its audience, but I think well worth it for those who waited and allowed themselves to follow the flow of the performance on stage.