The thing about She and the Other(s), artistic director Élodie Lombardo’s otherwise confusing piece centred on performer Chi Long’s life story, is that its obsession with identity is dubious. Embellished by intricate props, projections, sound design, and movement, the performance bridges memory and fiction, dragging us aimlessly into an eerie, unsettling one-person spectacle. An ode to immigration and trauma, it certainly succeeded in entrancing the audience, as whispered reactions trickled from the four corners of the black box all the way to the curtain call.

The Lombardo twins, who go by the artist name Les Soeurs Schmutt, are interested in developing an ethics of choreography anchored in a transdisciplinary collaborative framework. As such, the company’s artistic mandate aims to create as many dialogues between mediums and countries as possible. Looking back, I wonder about the mechanisms behind producing works built upon this co-creative model and if they succeeded in making the play more sincere. Yet, my scepticism prevails against me, and I feel compelled to scrutinize the repercussions of having such non-Asian individuals collaborate on creating a work that interrogates a heritage they do not have access to.

However, let us bring to the fore someone who does. Born in Australia to Vietnamese parents, Chi Long has been an established Montreal artist since 1990. Indeed, Long delivered a striking performance, intertwining dance and theatre effortlessly in the curves of her thighs. This show is about her story, or so I presumed. Whether the recollections were real or imagined, she took us through a mirage of fantastic visual landscapes and moments of much-needed comedic relief. In an interview, Long said that while this is her story, she and her collaborators have tried to make it universal. Alas, this attempt at quantifiable relatability diminished every grain of pigmented depth and resulted instead in an unsatisfying palette of blandness. I watched unfold before me, an autobiographical theatre production peppered with a hodgepodge of Asian object symbolism, political imagery, and incohesive cultural content. For instance, there was a moment where projections of archived scenes of the Vietnam War were stretched over a large bamboo diaphanous curtain, behind which Long proceeded to walk and manoeuvre paper lanterns. Another example was the opening scene where she tried on various garments (or skins) laid out on the stage, highlighting specific life experiences and cultural references: Think Bruce Lee’s yellow jumpsuit, a black latex bodysuit, Maggie Cheung’s silk gown, or a sparkly mini-dress. And the birds—a whole segment whose purpose I still cannot situate—aimed at educating us viewers on the wide range of birds that inhabit Australia… Although I found these tableaux evocative and aesthetically enrapturing, I didn’t sense sufficient coherence in the creators' choices. It seemed that the common conceptual thread was that of trauma and how it inhabits the body, or the different selves an immigrant person has to take on. But I was unable to grasp the weave.

Yes, identity can be ambiguous, but what I witnessed on that stage was messier than simple personal manifestations of spiritual catharsis. Perhaps the barriers of having white creators explore questions regarding an identity that isn’t theirs could be the cause of this ambivalence. Or maybe it got lost in trying to tackle too many big themes at once. Lombardo says that as we lay dying, we will not obsess over concrete facts, but rather the poetry of life and the world we inhabited. And so the show came to be, by virtue of its own insistence, about the concept of pluridentity, or dare I say, the absence of identity. I am left unresolved on the artists' intentions and the effectiveness of the combined efforts applied in elevating a performance and, by extension, the spectators' perception. And I can’t help but think that the line between poetry and dissonance is very thin.

She and the Other(s) was presented on Friday May 15th 2026 at the Maison de la culture Ahuntsic by Festival Accès Asie. For upcoming editions and programming, visit accesasie.com.