The Daily Dance

| 13 Aug 2014 | 05:55

    The sights and sounds of the city are always in flux, the inhabitants perpetually on the move. But for 30 consecutive days beginning Friday, a lean, rugged man will be found in the same place each day at noon, performing a stark, purposeful half-hour solo. With no musical accompaniment aside from the neighboring sounds of that particular day and hour, Paul-André Fortier will stake his claim to One New York Plaza, as the lunchtime passersby observe, ignore—or possibly interact with—him.

    Whatever happens, he is prepared for it all. He first performed Solo 30×30, as the piece is titled, in March 2006, and New York is the 12th city in which he has set up shop. He has endured bitter cold in Montreal, excessive heat in Japan and enjoyed the feeling of being surrounded by a crowd holding open umbrellas while it rains. “It’s always 30 days, at the same hour, rain or shine,” he said last week from Montreal, where he has been an active and influential member of the dance scene since 1972  “It’s a bit like a pilgrimage. It is…” he searches for the word he needs in English, “a challenge. You have to engage yourself and be totally focused on what you are doing.”

    These performances of Solo 30×30 are the first in an American city, and they mark the first time that Fortier, 62, has performed in New York since the 1970s. Back then he danced with Groupe Nouvelle Aire, an adventurous Montreal contemporary troupe. In 1979 he formed a company of his own, but these days Fortier Danse-Création is his base for solo and other smaller-scaled projects. Just before this interview, he had been in Marseille, performing Cabane, a performance/installation that is his most recent work.

    Solo 30×30 is a choreographed work, not an improvisation. “I do allow myself small variations, but it’s a set piece.” His initial idea was to perform over 365 days in Montreal. “It was an experience I wanted as a performer, to expose dance to the weather over a full year.” That eventually evolved into the concept of doing a 30-minute dance every day for 30 days. “It’s about a man trying to find his place in the concrete, where you have to fight for your space, and there is a point where it becomes very difficult. It’s really about how you find your space within the city.”

    As he has performed the work in cities as varied as Ottawa, Newcastle, Rome and Yamaguchi, Japan, he has made of point of choosing locations where people do not expect a dance performance to take place, where an element of surprise comes into play. In Nancy, France, he went through his focused, deliberate paces atop an industrial shed in the midst of a vast parking lot. His required space is simply demarcated with white tape, and then he begins. He acknowledges that with New York’s River to River Festival, which is co-presenting his performances with The Joyce Theater, creating performance venues all over Lower Manhattan, his appearances in the Plaza may not be quite as surprising to the populace. But he is pleased with the location—if a bit apprehensive about New York’s steamy summer weather. “I like the esplanade of One New York Plaza, because I’m a small man against a big tower. It will really be about the city. I also think that the two rivers meeting there, it’s quite strong. I’m very pleased with that space.”

    By now, he has experienced everything from rapt attention to outright rudeness. “When I performed in London, I was at the exit of the Liverpool train station, in the heart of the city. It was so busy, and people working in that area are extremely obsessed with their cell phones,” he recalls with a robust laugh. “They’re working 24 hours a day. So some people would not even notice that there was a man doing something, although I was surrounded by people. They would cross my space, talking on the phone! And for the people watching, this becomes part of the performance.” Occasionally, teenagers have been a source of rudeness. “Sometimes they would mock me, say nasty things. But it never lasts very long. Also, the seriousness with which the other people watch the piece makes them look so silly that they just go away. So I’ve not been really annoyed.

    “It’s been a real learning process. What surrounds me does change every day. People watch me, but they also watch the city, and they watch the people watching me. It’s something that is very alive.”

    [Solo 30 X 30]

    July 16 through Aug. 14, [One New York Plaza] (Water St. betw. Whitehall & Broad Streets), 888-391-FEST; daily at noon, Free.