In We Are Doing Great, Antonin Rioche spins a dance not of grand declarations or final gestures, but of the quiet, pulsing spaces in between – the moment just before departure, when time seems to stretch thin. It is in this delicate in-betweenness, this barely perceptible pause before the inevitable, that Rioche’s choreography finds its voice. The dancers (Antonin Rioche and Emilie Leriche), as if moving through water, glide in and out of proximity, never quite touching, never quite severing, suspended in a twilight of almost-leaving.
There is something dreamlike here, something unsettling, in the way the stage seems to hold its breath. The door stands open, yet untouched, its presence undeniable, a threshold neither crossed nor acknowledged, as if walking through it would snap the spell that holds them in place. And still, the dancers hesitate, circling one another like moths drawn to a dimming light, their movements imbued with the subtle, aching knowledge that this light is fading, that the time for choice is closing in.
Rioche, in this, does not rush. He allows the audience to sit in the tension, to feel the weight of the air between the bodies on stage, heavy with things unsaid, with the slow realisation of loss. The dancers, in their careful choreography, are both intimate and distant, as though they are already becoming ghosts to one another. Their bodies speak of the years spent learning the contours of the other’s presence, but also of the growing unfamiliarity that now stretches between them, the strange sensation of knowing someone and yet feeling them slip away, like sand through fingers.
We Are Doing Great, as the title so dryly insists, is a quiet farewell, a parting glance rather than a slammed door. It is Antonin Rioche’s last work for Korzo, a final moment, but one that does not demand attention or fanfare. Instead, like the dancers on stage, it quietly lets go, fades into memory, becomes part of the background hum of life. But in that fading, in that gentle, almost imperceptible release, it leaves behind the echo of something deeply human—the fear of leaving, and the fear of staying. Eva Lakeman 18th October 2024
