1: SONGS

Nicole Beutler is a German choreographer, performer and curator who works in the Netherlands. Her work is difficult to categorize; in her creations she plays with the boundaries of dance, performance and visual art. In her previous pieces Lost my Quiet Forever and Les Sylphides, she tackled the older branches of baroque and ballet. With 1:Songs, together with the Serbian-born performer Sanja Mitrovic and the British musician Gary Sheperd, she created a multi-layered performance about an old theme from (stage) literature. Sanja Mitrovic greets the audience with a cool hello. Her cherry-red lips, high heels and tight-fitting dress give her a graceful, seductive appearance. In the background, on the steadily accelerating film stills from Rossellini's Roma città aperta, the Italian film legend Anna Magnani runs. In desperation she tries to grab back her deported fiancé from the Germans, but she falls. The yearning for that stolen love becomes a theme of this performance.

Behind five micros, Mitrovic brings tragic women from (stage) literature to life on an otherwise bare stage. One by one, the pitiful love victims appear to the melancholy tones of Shepherd's music. The background screen identifies the women by name and year. Mitrovic becomes Gretchen (1789) with all her body and limbs. Fragile, the young lady whispers and sings about the desire to kiss her lover again. A woman (1930) prays that her former husband would still ask her back. As they sing and address the audience, they sway to the music with an alluring innocence. After all, these ladies are driven by the fire of love.

However, where this fire burns, an unrelenting passion also blazes that drives them to death. The melancholy recedes and Ophelia (1977) goes berserk like a madwoman. Mitrovic becomes a vagina dentata, shrieking against the pumping and compelling rhythm of having all the world's cum in her womb. The frenzied passion is overgrown by an unstoppable longing for death: Antigone (480 BC) demands her death, she must die anyway. The performer falls to her knees, starts barking and suddenly lies lifeless. On the battlefield of dropped micro-tripods, Medea (480 BC) calmly resigns herself to her fate; her husband chose another, she and her children can do nothing but leave this life. This beautifully constructed tension throughout the whole, together with Mitrovic's lived acting performance, generates a special power. Nicole Beutler masterfully reworks the age-old eros-thanatos theme into her own contemporary language. In this way, the original setting of the past fades and these women become approachable creatures of today.

When Mitrovic has received the applause and suddenly starts a bisnumber, the viewer tastes a bitter aftertaste. After all, Beutler unveils the sober and powerful machinery of the theater with this; the turmoil you experienced is merely the result of a reasoned acting performance. Not that Mitrovic ever made it look otherwise. She never completely becomes one with her characters throughout the performance. She steps out of her role numbly and coldly announces the next figure with: next song. These women are not part of her. Mitrovic doesn't show even an ounce of affinity or compassion, she just steps them up. She even makes this delusion explicit halfway through the performance with a clumsy disappearing act. Vanish, the player hisses and then conjuringly jerks into the darkness. Blinding light stuns the spectator's retina and gives her a moment to run off stage invisibly but not silently. In this way, Beutler delivered a strong example of meta theater as a shocking display of power by acting. The spectator is left somewhat orphaned, because he feels seriously groped in his crotch.

A film image from "Roma, citta, aperta" (1945) by Roberto Rossellini in black and white, we see a bit blurry. Little by little, the dramatic image of the woman running away from an old-timer sharpens. A woman who runs after her beloved who is being deported. On the left we see soldiers who have pressed people against the wall. Their guns are pointed at them.

The strength of the image is the mix of fear and love that meet at the same time. Tragic characters from theater history are the leitmotif through the performance. From Marie (1836) to Gretchen (1789), a woman (1930), Jane (1847), Sarah (1999), Charlie (1940) and Medea (480 BC) are just a few of those featured in Nicole Beutler's presentation. She lets Sanja Mitrovic, who co-created 1:Songs, sing original lyrics in English on a bed of electro, whisper and then scream out again. Theme: love in all its facets.

Sometimes it is very depressing, as in "Meine Rug ist hin" from Faust by von Goethe, which Sanja Mitrovic performs in English. Mitrovic is solo on stage. Five micros in a row. Very effective, because it also refers to the propaganda apparatus from the war. She raises her micro-tripod very high when she sings "I didn't have the courage to die alone. Please God make him call me back". Trying to reach the unattainable in a very vulnerable form. Beautiful.

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Great women from (stage) literature such as Antigone, Medea, Gretchen, Marie and Jane occasionally appear in the cold black-and-white video images of a raid.

Where she previously gave her own twist to the baroque (Lost is my Quiet Forever) and to classical ballet (Les Sylphides), choreographer and director Nicole Beutler relates in 1: SONGS to characters from well-known drama texts and novels. They come to life through the voice and body of Mitrovic, who combines power with subtlety.

The stories of the (anti-)heroines are not brought up literally. In Mitrovic – sober grey-black dress, bright red lipstick – their essence comes together: their fiery and unrelenting passion for life and love, but also for death. To contemporary electronic music by Gary Shepherd, Mitrovic whispers, sings, speaks and screams their words, their suffering, into a new story.

Mitrovic is those fictional women from back then, but also such a woman in real life today. She plays her role(s) as fully as possible, but more and more often you forget those other women and you only see her in her steadily increasing crisis. Moreover, and this creates another layer of meaning, she frequently comments on her own playing. A heart cry like 'Alas, my heart is breaking!' comes from deep down, but at the same time pokes fun at the vehemence with which pop and rock stars let emotions flow into the microphone.

1: SONGS is a pleasantly contrarian concert in every respect.