I wanted to excel in failure', writes Arnon Grunberg about the plan that he and the Flemish poet Charlotte Van den Broeck came up with in their public correspondence. They wanted to do something to overcome their shame. And performing as a dancer was the scariest thing they could think of. For writers, professionally focused on the agility of their minds, the body is often no more than a vehicle that keeps the head, fingers and laptop connected for as long as possible. 'At the height of my neck, the many bending forwards are beginning to take shape', notes Van den Broeck in the run-up to their dance performance called microcosm. But for a spectacular failure, the duo came to the wrong place with the requested choreographer. Nicole Beutler gave the two office tigers each a trained dancer as a second. And what unfolds between the foursome is a sparkling, sensory narrative about freedom, the joy of dance and the celebration of physical differences.
Within a theatrical microcosm, defined by light and set designer Theun Mosk with soft carpet and a light wooden wall, the four performers explore their own and each other's physical possibilities. In step-by-step episodes, underscored by changes in the magical lighting and in the embracing soundscape of Beutler's regular composer Gary Shepherd. First there is standing in space, then the exploration of walking, after which the arms join in. In group scenes, they take turns posing amused as the star of the show, admiring each other's mini solos. There are danced phrases in which the skilled Liah Frank and Rob Polman, as the writers' shadows, lengthen and magnify their smaller movements, a breathtaking doubling where the writer's intention and the dancer's performance reinforce each other. The writers name the basic elements of the performance, which appear in typed letters on the back wall. 'Thank you for coming,' Grunberg says to the audience at the chapter 'audience'. 'Has the storm started yet? Has the war already begun? Van den Broeck is lifted to a microphone high above the stage as she lists the activities of a writer. Touching are the dancer's hands that take the writer's bodies in forgetting their clumsiness. The dancers lead the way in showing their bare torsos, followed by the writers, the wooden fence taking on the pale hue of the fragile flesh; it becomes a skin that surrounds them.
In alternating duets, all careful movements are given the same importance. And all of a sudden all the distinction disappears when the four performers form one organism of rotating bodies that briefly wipes away the storms and wars in the outside world. During the free dancing at the end, Grunberg imagines himself completely shameless as a ballet dancer at a barre. It is a demonstration of a 'carefree state that hardly happens to me when writing' that he discovered during rehearsals, as can be read in the diary columns that he and Van den Broeck kept on the Nicole Beutler Projects site. A victory of the mind over the body, and of the body over the mind.