Dance Performance under the Sign of the Mirror with Jeanne Alechinsky
On leaping while looking
Mirror, mirror, on the wall,
Who in this land is fairest of all?
That’s the prayer of Snow-White’s wicked stepmother.
The mirror’s answer shows her narcissism a pitiless mistress:
You, my queen, are fair; it is true.
But Snow-White is a thousand times fairer than you.
Jealousy, envy and spite thus stoked, narcissism leads the woman to, first, hire a killer and then, when that fails, and since a job is never done right except by one self, to twice try poison.
The mythic Narcissus, whose name has been lent as a synonym to “self-love” or “egotism”, looked into a pool of still water – there were no looking glasses yet – saw himself, fell in love, tumbled in and drowned.
Not just death, but, as Alice knows, perversion and chaos, too, are the price to pay for looking into the mirror.And if it’s true that a body can recognize a demon by its lack of reflection in the mirror, a body is most likely to find that out just before they wind up, like Miss Mina, Dracula’s first English girlfriend, a bloodless husk on the boudoir floor.
Look at yourself! is reproach, not kindly advice.
And twisting and pinching and squeezing all the above is what I liked about the plan of choreographer dance performer Jeanne Alechinsky’s new dance performance, On y allait quand même (“We went there anyhow”).
In On y allait quand même, she is using dance movement, live music and a set of mirrors – and the reflection of mirrors – to “show the invisible with the visible, console the shadows, encourage and acknowledge what is received and offer spectators a rich and joyful shared celebration”.
Alechinsky takes the mirror, looks into it and sees … “a symbol of celebration and reflection” of the individual. She writes, “The mirror receives, reflects, gives back infinitely”.
For On y allait quand même, the mirror is the “sign” under which become visible both the largely invisible ties of relationships with the world around and other individuals and the largely invisible depths and breadths of consciousness.
Demons are said to die when they look in the mirror, Alechinsky observes. Folk might do well to wonder about the demons and obstacles that keep them from looking in it.
On y allait quand même asks spectators, “How do we tie together our capacity to welcome the other and the world around us?” How do we acknowledge the strength in the ties between us and the environment? How do we give back the light we receive? How do we make progress real? What actions will help us do the rethinking and re-invention that is asked of us?
Notes on the Creation of On y allait quand même (“We went there anyhow”)
Jeanne Alechinsky was inspired to begin working on On y allait quand meme by a performance she made around Belgian artist Léonard Pongo’s Tales from the Source installation, part of the Moving Landscapes multi-disciplinary contemporary art exhibition curated by Jeanne Mercier and scenarized by Loo Hui-Phang at the Jeu de Paume museum early in 2026. Pongo imagines his created environments as personalities with whom visitors engage through a sensory dialogue with the environment’s complex and constantly evolving features. Using concepts and tools from Body-Mind Centering®, her body mobilization practice, Alechinsky scenarized her choreography around both Pongo’s creation and her own movement through a live public, using, notably, mirrors fixed to her chest and back.
Jeanne Alechinsky is a choreographer, dancer and actor for film and live performance. Her live work includes Mon vrai métier, c’est la nuit (2020), co-created with fellow choreographer-performer Yohan Vallée and Porte vers moi tes pas with musician Stéphane Milochevitch (2022). She set up cie Paramour to produce At first, I was afraid (2021), a duo with musician Jacques Salamaka and the trio GHOSTS (2025), with musicians Jacques Salamaka and Julie Appéré.
Cie Paramour, Jeanne Alechinsky: https://www.jeannealechinsky.com
Paysages Mouvants (“Moving Landscapes”): https://jeudepaume.org/en/evenement/jeu-de-paume-festival-moving-landscapes/
Léonard Pongo: https://www.lpongo.com; Tales from the source, contemporary installation: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/1DKu5gt-I7E
Notes on the Essay
Little Snow-White, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm: https://sites.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm053.html
Dracula (1931) – “Don’t Look In The Mirror”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iHw8ArJQyg