Photo: Pierre Gonard
Greek choreographer Christos Papadopoulis makes his Montreal premiere in the Danse Danse series with My Fierce Ignorant Step, an unrelenting hour of incessant movement. The Théâtre Maisonneuve stage is bare, an expanse of blank space bordered only by a black strip running along its base.
Onto that stage, ten expert dancers (Themis Andreoulaki, Maria Bregianni, Georgios Kotsifakis, Sotiria Koutsopetrou, Tasos Nikas, Spyros Ntogas, Ioanna Paraskevopoulou, Danae Pazirgiannidi, Adonis Vais and Sevasti Zafeira) converge, performing mass unison movement for much of the piece. Dressed in T-shirts, pants, shorts, jerseys and, for some, headset microphones, they begin in small, measured, ever-shifting steps set to the almost metronomic tap of a drumstick, a pulse with something militaristic about it. Their heads snap sharply, almost inhumanly, as they stare blankly forward. The momentum of the group creates its own sense of scale. The dancers rarely engage with one another, yet their constant, pulsing motion sweeps across the stage. The pace quickens. Movement rises from the hips. Gravity pulls their torsos back, then forward. They twist and turn; there is a crouch, a leg extension. Everything accumulates.
Kinetic connections emerge through the insistent score by Kornilios Selamsis. A piano articulates a single chord in measured beats before giving way to strings, then brass and choir. Quiet breaths swell into exhortations. Small skips and jumps enter the fray. At moments, it seems as if a folk dance is straining to break free.
The work is powered by the endurance and stamina of the ensemble. Yet no matter how far the choreography extends or amplifies itself, the dancers' patterning remains curiously contained. Therein lies the rub. Papadopoulis continually raises the temperature without fundamentally altering the choreographic premise. The result is admirable as a feat of structure and endurance, but less compelling as an emotional or dramatic journey. There is little genuine joy or freedom in this minimalist constellation, only fleeting hints of release. The emptiness of the stage ultimately mirrors the bleakness at the heart of the work's proposition.
My Fierce Ignorant Step, Théâtre Maisoneuve, Place des Arts, Montréal, October 28-31, 2026
