Like the original title of the Magritte painting (Ceci n’est pas une pipe) that suggested the theme and title of this piece, Raincoat investigates La trahison des images, the treachery of images in our lives.
We hide behind our images, our painted representations, our raincoats. But the raincoats aren’t raincoats, or not merely. They are masks covering what we are underneath.
Most people don’t want to go naked without their covering, without a protective hood.
RAINCOAT careers between free-wheeling whimsy, assertive conformity, and self-discovery.
Is it, perhaps, a piece about youth? — a time of experiment, of trying on what it’s like to expose oneself, of living without a raincoat, of seeing one’s true self without a mask?
Clear sight is not so simple as it seems, though, in life or in dance. We are what we wear to some extent. For many, perhaps most, the raincoat becomes part of them.
But bit by bit, one or two decide that what they really are is an open, unguarded self.