A key element of Carte Blanche’s performance ‘But Then We’ll Disappear (I’d Prefer Not To)’ is the meeting between people. It questions how we meet other people – and how difficult it is to find one’s place in a community, and explores issues relating to the individual, ‘I’, and their place in the group, ‘we’.

The dancers are already on the stage as the audience take their seats. They move seemingly unaffected by their surroundings. The costume design ensures that each dancer stands out from the crowd. Suddenly the choreography begins, and dance and music fill the space.

The dance and movements become more intense, in step with the music that lies like a blanket over everything that happens on stage. They perform actions that are never completed. Interruptions and repetitions make the bodies jerk and twist – as if they are dancing to lines of songs only they can hear.

The stage is rearranged using lighting, sound, costumes and scenography. The nature of the choreography changes. A carpet is rolled out, the dancers gather on the sofa, and the microphone is switched on.

Canadian Frédérick Gravel takes a cinematic and musical approach in his choreography, and is known for turning the structures of choreography on their head. He sees a choreographic idea as a melody, and his work can be compared to a concert where he composes lines that the dancers perform in their own voices and in their own key. For Gravel, a performance is born in the meeting between people, and the stage becomes an arena for an artistic and social experiment in which characters are developed and erased.

Behind the title But Then, We’ll Disappear (I’d Prefer Not To) lies a hidden desire to emphasize the individual’s role in a world full of contradictions where guilt and celebration are two sides of the same coin, in hopes that everything has a plan.