Review: The Holy Body Tattoo & Godspeed You! Black Emperor

PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, Queen Elizabeth Theatre

The dancers stand on small podiums, still. Time rises from the band behind them.

The Holy Body Tattoo is a Vancouver-based dance company, founded in 1993 by Noam Gagnon and Dana Gingras, who haven’t performed in ten years.

A repetition of hands, bodies scratching at themselves, at wrists and necks, inching toward frantic.

I can’t see the musicians, there is a tall cloth screen obscuring them. An image of a wind turbine spins on the screen.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor is a confrontational Montreal post-rock collective, formed in 1994 by Efrim Menuck, Mike Moya, and Mauro Pezzente, who make a point to perform under the low light of film projections.

The bodies are still but their hands and arms are quick, repetitive motion.

Every so often one person will break loose from the conformity of the group. Could be as slight as a suddenly fluidity. Could be emotion. Such darkness and joy.

When the house drops the screen to reveal the band, I notice the dancers are taking the place of the film projections, shielding them from the crowd’s direct gaze.

The band leans heavily on “Providence” from 1997’s F♯ A♯ ∞, which begins with a field recording of a man in the street: “The interest is up, the stock market’s down, you guys gotta be careful walking around here this late at night.”

Disembodied voice is a character in the sound of the band.

From where does this extreme movement emanate? It is corrosive. Dancers bend violently at the waist, thrusting their arms forward parallel to the ground. They fight and love and clash exuberant limbs.

Over the music I can hear the dancers’ rhythmic breath and the stomps of their boots on the stage.

Guitars weave melody into intricate patterns of plectrum and delay.

After a long anxious build, one woman is silent in the middle of the stage, looking at the floor. Her hands twitch and grasp at her own body.

To the side, another woman feels the anxiety and moves to her, takes her carefully in her arms, and tries to calm her, holding tight until the movement stops.

Is it a calm in the middle of this modern chaos? Or death? Maybe it is simply feeling like there is one other person out there to help quell the loneliness in the world.

I cry in the theatre and I wonder if the stranger sitting next to me is watching. monumental isn’t simply a concert or a performance, it’s a triumph.