Everyone's here, walking in in slow-motion. The ultimate party girl, the colour of her hoody matching the one of the drink-can she's holding. The I don't care how I look (Can't you see? Why can't you see!?) guy. The merry group of friends on a night out. The bully and the shy (gay) guy. The hipster-skinhead (with well attended hair, of course). The others. “Crowd” is a deconstruction of a party and although no words are heard, there's plenty of dialogue going on between the characters – mostly visible through their actions but also silently uttered. And the music! It's 100 minutes of pure electronic pleasure (tracks are mostly from the 1990's and many of them by Underground Resistance). What Gisèle Vienne does, however, is not letting the music set the rhythm of the performance, using slow-motion and move and freeze choreography throughout, thus showing the insane amount of events that occur during a moment, a move. Although the lighting and positioning of performers on stage does sometimes point to someone specific, it's usually for the audience to discover where the new sets of events arise. When the first shirt is taken off (spoiler alert: it's the bully), a punch is about to be thrown, an affection is born … “Crowd” demonstrates the multiplicity of a single movement – for example, grabbing someone's hair while attacking him looks, when frozen, as a testimony of passion. And then, the party is about to end. There's the girl all ready to go, holding firmly her hand-bag and waiting for her friends to finish. The guy who isn't even sure if he wants to hit or fuck someone. The kissing couple in the back-corner of the dance-floor (spoiler alert: …). And the last song – not because it's announced to be that but because everyone feels and knows that this is the culmination. Bodies still moving but the mind that was switched off walking in, now slowly re-awakening as the dancers leave the stage. In slow-motion.
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