Verska uses choreographic matter from Versants, one of the company's previous works (a piece which marked a turning point for MéMé BaNjO). Though its construction remains abstract, Lionel Hoche suggests how human relationships are woven. Cruel relationships that reflect reality. Abstraction is omnipresent but more implicit than in his preceding work. Hoche constructs his universe using the music as a strong stimulant, enabling him to work a number of different levels.
In Verska the movement is carnal, sensual, even brutal sometimes. Having said this, it brushes a disturbing portrait of our time, our questionings, our mistakes. Human relationships are scrupulously analysed thus unveiling a certain state of our world. Figures loom, moving in obscurity, like shadows. Halation of light, penetrating music, these souls search, but cannot find. The dancers walk, legs rise, arms spring to better bend and settle again. Bodies mingle and tangle, run and leap. Bicephalous sculptures, carnal dances. Human form is made matter, relationships are wired. The spiral is predominant here, bodies, like vibrating spinning tops, are tossed about by magnetism and speed, carried by momentum. The rhythm in turn accelerates to better die down... this is how life is depicted here.
The vocabulary is less abstract, thereby capturing emotions. A palpable humanity. More organic and wild. The dance is clearly embodied in the performers. Gestures become violent through contraction and release, like an archer who tightens and suddenly sets his bow free. Accelerations, immobility. The music, both rhythmical and atmospheric, creates a peculiar atmosphere, vaguely throbbing, distressing, which reinforces the impression of uneasiness. Masquerade of our world, the tricks of life.
Verska, created for the company's 10th birthday, conveys a dark, wild society which takes refuge behind delusion, setting its codes aside to better side-track, tearing one apart. Disjointed bodies are recomposed like a jig-saw whose pieces have been jumbled. A dark perception, without being pessimistic, violent without being provocative. Quite simply pertinent.
Gallia Valette-Pilenko
translation Adam Vidovic

Lyon Figaro

"The evening began with Verska by Lionel Hoche. (...) Techno sound-track, seventies-inspired costumes and a succession of movements triggered off by others. A rogue dancer constantly propelled by the touching of her foot by another dancer. This piece also explores moments of suspended time (...). The choreographic language is clear, built in an architectonic manner. And Lionel Hoche makes a noteworthy entry during a solo, where his presence is immediately felt."
Agnès Benoist, 15th June 2002

Petites Affiches Lyonnaises

Hoche is top notch "Lionel Hoche has just celebrated his company MéMé BaNjO's tenth birthday. He took this opportunity to create Verska, a very emblematic opus of this multi-faceted choreographer (...).
"The very sophisticated movement, (though not overly so), privileges the weight of the body, the release and permanent oscillation between balance and disequilibrium. Verska explores the body's various possibilities, showing the audience (and making it feel) the disorder in the world. Alternating calmer sequences with more forceful passages, this short piece, elegantly constructed, does not use overly-extravagant sets or costumes. Sober and magnifying the body, Lucy Carter's light-design contributes to sculpting this environment dear to Lionel Hoche without sinking into excessive aestheticism (...). A delicate and refined world worth taking time out for."
Gallia Valette-Pilenko, 1st-7th June 2002