Almost imperceptibly, the back wall fades from blue to creamy white. The soft, springy carpet in front of the dancers remains blue. It looks comforting and offers shelter. Apart from the soundtrack by DJ Gary Shepherd, the dance space arouses great silence.
Designer Theun Mosk must have been inspired by the two writers who dance in Microcosm, a danced conversation: Arnon Grunberg and Charlotte Van den Broeck. It is as if the danced space is their writing place. This idea is confirmed by the entrance of the two author-dancers. They enter the space unaccustomed, look around, hesitantly start their movements as if they are writing down the first sentences. Gradually there is momentum and inspiration. Their bodies sway over the floor like dancing pens.
How it began, two authors on the dance stage? Van den Broeck and Grunberg performed together at the 2016 Buchmesse, when the Netherlands and Belgium were "spearheads”. They started a correspondence in which shame and fear were the key words. In response, Van den Broeck suggested that they should start dancing, 'to be seen as a wordless body’. After some searching at, among others, the Nederlands Dans Theater (in vain), they found choreographer Nicole Beutler willing to turn their physical voyage of discovery into theater.
Beutler made a great find for Microcosm. She thought that she should give the two authors an experienced dancer as accompanist, in the persons of Liah Frank and Rob Polmann. This produces beautiful harmonies and contrasts. The experienced dancers are a shadow of the unaccustomed, untrained, debutant mock dancers.
And so, for an hour, the quartet enters into a joyful and intimate relationship with each other. Not that Grunberg (50) and Van den Broeck (30) are just doing somethin, on the contrary. Beutler has practiced with them for a long time, Van den Broeck has a powerful presence and Grunberg has something special about him, as if he keeps an eye on his partners and does or imitates what they do. That works well.
The physical language of dance seems far removed from written or spoken language. But that is appearances. Actually, on that soft plush of the dance floor, the dancing writers do the same thing: their movements are like sentences, sometimes long, then short, angular or fluid. They trust each other completely and collectively build beautiful sculptures. They run and lie still on the floor, making the leg split (Grunberg!) or support each other's feet on the other's (Van den Broeck!).
It's exciting when Grunberg catches an almost horizontal, forward leap from Frank with arm and even chin. And then suddenly there is talk. Did something go wrong? Did he miss? Grunberg does a fine game of aerial tennis, and in another scene he clings to the wall, as if on a barre. There he does his exercises, with a cheeky, disarming look into the room, like: 'Look at me.' Van den Broeck, also because of her professional outfit, looks quite advanced. There is also an interesting play with the costumes, by Jessica Helbach. The dancers start dressed in blue, gradually perform naked and end in a more colorful design.
Perfection is of course often the goal in dance. The body in full light is viewed, from the dark, through countless eyes. Here, perfection is not so much the primary goal, but rather the path to it. You recognize primary dance exercises, such as keeping balance and making turns. That makes Microcosm recognizable and playful.
In the end, something goes wrong, or so it seems. The dancers seek contact with the audience, as if they want to invite a single spectator to come on stage as well. But that does not happen, so that something indefinable lingers. That's a shame, now the performance lacks a clear marking at the end.
Read the original (Dutch) article here: https://www.theaterkrant.nl/recensie/microcosm-a-danced-conversation/nicole-beutler-projects/