On stage during 'Microcosm', a poet and a writer look their ultimate sense of shame straight in the eye: dancing in front of an audience. Together with two professional dancers, they fearlessly expose their bodies. In the run-up, the two wrote a column series about the creative process - a generous contribution to the archives of contemporary stage dance.
27 FEBRUARY 2022
Upon entering the Paloni Hall of Theater Bellevue in Amsterdam, poet Charlotte Van den Broeck and writer Arnon Grunberg are standing on either side of the entrance door to welcome each of us, spectators, with friendly eye contact. Behind them dancers Liah Frank and Rob Polman are getting ready. They already provided support during the work process of 'Microcosm' and soon also on stage.
In the weeks before the premiere, the two writers took turns reporting this creation process in twelve episodes, in the newspaper De Standaard and on the website of choreographer Nicole Beutler. Their lyrics provide a wonderful insight by two language virtuoso non-dancers into the mores of the niche field that contemporary dance still is for many. They talked about unwavering discipline, about parking their urge to control and ego, about fatigue, but also about the emotion of close physical contact. A gem of an archival document for an ephemeral art form. We learn from their report that the two writers have performed together before in a literary context. That they wanted to go even further out of their comfort zone, towards ultimate shame. What kind of activity would cause them the most acute discomfort? So dancing, on a stage. They contacted Nederlands Danstheater, who referred them to choreographer Nicole Beutler. After all, she had experience with non-professional dancers.
This season we already saw an actress who dances – Jolente De Keersmaeker at the request of choreographer Jérôme Bel in 'Dance for actress' by tg Stan. Furthermore, the young Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe, who literally put dancing singers naked on the Madrigals of Monteverdi next to equally naked professional dancers. Bel's focus was on the personal memory of dance: an excerpt from a ballet lesson, a re-enactment from Café Müller by Pina Bausch and Butoh dancer Kazuo Ohno, linked to memories of the actress's father. Meirhaeghe was all about love, drawn out in timeless rituals around open fire and with magical powers in a moving scenic evocation of a cave.
Here in 'Microcosm', the focus is on looking, that's how I saw it. Looking at others as an incentive to look differently at bodies, at your own body. This is how the performance begins: the performers look at us, we look at them. Looking is an intimate matter in 'Microcosm'. The small tribune of the Bellevue Theater accentuates that proximity. Three walls of bare pine around the stage floor do the same. We go for natural, that decision also tells me, while I associate the blue of the floor with communication. Not any blue, no, royal blue because everyone on and around that floor counts for the full amount. Again: that's how I read it. Even the costumes are different shades of blue. At least, until the writer and the poet together gradually become more naked and only their underwear remains.
That this intimacy is not obvious to everyone is immediately highlighted in the first scene. On stage we see Grunberg on the left back to back behind Liah Frank, she facing the audience, he facing the back wall. He doesn't reveal himself yet. On the right Charlotte Van den Broeck looks back to back against Rob Polmann with a magisterial madonna mask straight into the audience.
On the soundscape we hear sounds like drops that the dancers convert into movement. So together we cautiously trickle into the performance, with the writers still watching carefully how the dancers are doing. That doesn't last long. A little later, it is the dancers who follow the movement of the writers with a second's delay. By the end of the performance, they will form a tangle of four organically moving bodies. Before that, together they go through all the constellations (solos, duets, trios and quartets) and degrees of dance technical ability.
The movement material, the writers stated in their texts, was created on the basis of a proven method in contemporary dance: improvisations that the choreographer then fine-tunes and records. Nicole Beutler created a clearly evolving performance from it. She also decided early on in the process that the two writers would not be alone on the stage. Uninteresting, was her verdict, so she placed two seasoned dancers next to them. Absolutely right, because within the set-up of "Microcosm," that choice deepens our view of what a body in motion or at rest can mean.
Because ultimately, in "Microcosm," you're not looking so much at dance phrases or where exactly they take place in space and the passage of time. Rather, it's about: what story do I read in each of their gazes, in each of their bodies as they move there very closely together in front of us. And: how do I relate to this, where exactly am I being touched?
Somewhere around three quarters into the performance, the performers reinforce this approach by briefly walking into the stands to make physical contact with the spectators. Watching here is a game of attuning to and touching each other, literally and figuratively: they hook their eyes into each other, touch us with their watching and movement conversations, we touch them in our shared space. Gary Shepherd's soundscape joins in, with echoes of breath and a heartbeat.
Together they move. The pieces of text that the writers bring to the performance are an extension of how they position their bodies on stage. Clever how Grunberg integrates Russia's military invasion of Ukraine the previous night, into his story. That we spectators nevertheless come and watch - who are you really, he then wonders? Pacifists who won't point a gun at him, and vice versa he doesn't think so either, that much is certain. But a friend of his knows: that audience of yours is 'just like people' just waiting for you to fall.
That worldview characterizes his body language: we see Grunberg's resistance to surrender; he prefers confrontations with a knee and a playful headbutt; in skipping steps or with a swipe; full of swagger to ironically keep the possible failure of his somewhat wooden writing body at bay. Next to him, Lijah Frank is perfectly cast with her cheerful, outgoing no-nonsense energy. She dares to be just as uncontrolled in her movements as he is hyper-controlled, to the point of physical cramping with the short steps of a professionally seated body. It's nice how Grunberg's theorems eventually fail. In the penultimate scene he is the only one who deviates from the blue tones by pulling an orange shirt over his head, while the lighting also glows orange as in a reference to the global fire, you see his dueling self melting away in a final duet with Polmann, when he slowly strokes his limbs with loving attention. The writer already said it in one of his texts: Polmann's look could convert him to gentlemen's love.
Charlotte Van den Broeck, for her part, was not inferior to Liah Frank and Rob Polmann in terms of presence. A real dancer was lost to her through poetry. It is in her gaze, the balance she finds between inside and outside. She tastes movement. From her body speaks the kind of focus and inner silence that she might also use for her poetry. In her text on stage, she talks about that writing process, the tricks with which she tames the words and her escape reflex. Her language to the audience is inviting, she juxtaposes her own experiences as an spectator, talks about the breath that connects us, and how we can let it descend deep into our pelvic floor. I see her writing from her toes. Next to her, Rob Polmann is equally hushed, soft and indulgent.
'Microcosm' transcends the gauntlet recorded on a blue Monday. We get to unashamedly read the intelligent bodies of two dancing language virtuosos with 'real' dancers as benchmark. A party.
Read the original (Dutch) review here: https://www.pzazz.theater/nl/recensies/dans/dans-voor-lezers