Photo by Patrick Fabre. Courtesy of MAPP International.

The performance opens with two dancers- one male, one female- standing still on a darkened stage. The plain-white-box set is expanded by projected images of tropical foliage on the rear scrim, while the sounds of a rainstorm in the forest roll through the theatre. The dancers begin to move, very slowly, in a simulated courtship that ends in a blatantly sexual embrace. The stage goes dark, the next act begins.

It’s a promising beginning, but the next hour disappoints. Performing in alternating acts, dancers move to Stravinsky’s music on a plain stage, and then to Benoit De Clerck’s blaring soundtrack of found sounds against a projected backdrop of Benoit Dervaux’s film short film clips. The original score is as repetitive and monotonous as the film, and the choreography follows suit. Dancers run forward and back, continually; mimic throwing stones; and shift their weight from foot to foot. The piece’s climax features a single male dancer at the front of the stage who seems to be trying not to vomit, as he clutches his stomach with one hand and curls forward, his other hand held over his mouth. This is repeated interminably, as the audio blares the same burst of sound, and blurry film of a horse lurches on the upstage scrim.

The idea is interesting: modern Lagos juxtaposed with Stravinsky’s music; urban hell versus Edenic nature; universal archetypes giving lie to superficial differences. Unfortunately the execution quickly becomes tedious. Scenes of mob violence, rape, or human sacrifice are depicted with short, jarring, repetitive motion, a tactic which quickly plays itself out. Once the initial dramatic impact of a sequence wears off, the choreographic vision seems shallow and droning. Even the ritual sex was dull and one-dimensional.

Maalem’s “Rite of Spring” is literal to the point of being accidentally obscure. Deliberate ambiguity is one of the pleasures of dance, challenging the audience to delve deeply into the intellectual aspects of physicality. Maalem left nothing to the imagination, and so stripped his dance of meaning and interest.