schrit_tmacher justdance! Festival 2025

A distant view into new territory

The Fabien Prioville Dance Company creates powerful images in their ‘Power Moves’ at the Stahlbau Strang factory in Aachen. But is that enough?

By: Harff-Peter Schönherr

Deep darkness that is only dimly lit. Emptiness that only fills imperceptibly. Five people pace a square, as a group, again and again. They freeze in positions of attack, of defence. A voice comes from off-screen, talking about a mission that seems clandestine. Distant rumblings that come closer. Loudspeaker announcements where it doesn’t seem to matter whether they are understood.

The opening of ‘Power Moves’, productively enigmatic, is full of atmosphere and possesses impressive power. It seems like a promise. Like the beginning of a story that one would like to know how it continues, how it ends. Like an exposition that can be built upon.

And Fabien Prioville builds on it. He shows scenes of the constriction of the individual by the collective. Scenes of struggle that are also scenes of affection. Scenes in which we think we see people mutating into zombies. Scenes that show robotic convulsions, lascivious self-exhibition. Scenes that show how dominance and submission are created. Scenes in which figures freeze, moving as if in fast motion, as if in slow motion. Scenes in which voices and sounds overlap to such an extent that a cacophony is created that seems like a reflection of our modern age.

These are powerful moments. We think we can hear glaciers bursting. We see figures who, as if they were depersonalised, walk paths that are so geometric that it hurts. Bodies merge in a Laocoonesque manner, arms become aortas. Powerlessness and agony appear, fear and disgust, and when this happens, it is so quiet that you hold your breath. At one point, one of the actors stands in a deep yellow cone of light, as if overflowing with colour.

POWER-MOVES©TANZweb.org_Klaus-Dilger

The only problem is that these moments end quickly. And they don’t connect. They don’t tell a story that could continue, that might end inspiringly before our eyes. What we see does not arouse any emotions, does not make any offer of identification. Those who ask themselves what characterises the figures we encounter, who they are, why they do what they do and why we should watch them do it, are left without an answer.

Maybe it’s the subject. Street dance is a world of competitive, often very artistic juxtaposition, of athletic and acrobatic outdoing each other, a world of a sequence of individual performances that are as virtuoso and physically impressive as possible. Forms are what count here, gymnastic skills, even if they are the expression of an attitude to life that also recognises rebellion, social protest.

Prioville endeavours to gain a togetherness from this opposition. He tries to offer more than a sequence of numbers. He tries to show the street that underlies it all, the inner conflict. If he succeeded, it would be a real power move.

Unfortunately, his framing is weak. The story it could have told remains untold. The social commentary that it could have woven in as a second track does not materialise.

POWER-MOVES©TANZweb.org_Klaus-Dilger

The attempt to scrutinise the stage action for its thought content quickly reaches its limits. Five dancers demonstrate body control and technical dance expertise. But their moves, whether performed with self-irony or with serious drama, often seem arbitrary, meaningless, without a point. The power of their battles is exhausted time and time again in muscularity.

Sometimes one is the centre of attention, sometimes the other. They show themselves and their skills, watched by the rest of the group, who wait and judge. This produces mosaic fragments of great appeal. But it doesn’t create an overall motif. Hip-hop styles could merge here, but there’s not enough heat for that. Without losing their individuality, the protagonists could free themselves from their isolation and enter a new level of effectiveness, a new self-efficacy, but these boundaries only fall indecisively.

Prioville hints at a lot. A lot of right things. A lot of promise. Much that can be developed. But his interpretation points far into the future.

‘Power Moves’, originally born out of an interest in the Southeast Asian street dance scene, is already a few years old. The fact that a ‘restage’ has now been added to the title, making the piece, once slowed down by corona, a ‘world premiere’ once again, is also due to its content: Prioville has rewritten the ending, his new cast brings new impetus, and the visuals of today are different to those of the past. In addition, the fact that the second start is not just a second start is likely to have opened up funding that would otherwise not have flowed.

Prioville’s ‘Power Moves’ combines hip-hop with contemporary dance, and this builds up stylistic tension. This could have given rise to very unique battles, with very unique power moves, very unique fusion and new territory potential. But this opportunity is only touched upon.

What remains is the image of a dynamic that is often nothing more than restlessness. Opponents come and go, go and come, and the suddenness with which this happens can be interpreted as a battle calculation, but has a distractive effect.

‘You couldn’t have a better audience,’ Rick Takvorian, the artistic director of the festival, told Fabien Prioville before the start of the premiere, in front of the audience. It was a bold prophecy.

But Takvorian was proved right: An hour later, there were frenetic standing ovations. Which raises the question: what kind of applause would the audience have given if they had seen more than a sequence of powerful moments?