Raw Belgian Emotion

9 december

Citytheatre of Arnhem

You walk in, it is completely dark on stage. Without a single warning you awaken; loud drums begin to erupt, white bright lights flicker and a single female begins to move as if she is being chased by a fire. This is the moment reality hits you: this is not a performance where you can doze off.

The term: 'Nachthexen' was introduced during the second world war when a group of Russian women bombed German troupes at night. Jens van Daele decided to use this as an inspiration for making a series of performances about iconic women. The first performance out of the 'Nachthexen' series was themed: Jeanne d'Arc. 

Five dancers, one actor, one technician on stage, one drummer and one pianist. All females working in perfect harmony. Upstage there is an uprooted tree reminding the audience immediately of a funereal pile. The actress stands high on a metal cage with a microfone and speaks. Every sentence starts with: 'I declare'. This way she, the drums and the dancers tell the story of the trial of Jeanne d'Arc. 

Dance and speech begin confident. Control and power can be seen everywhere. Each individual dancer shows movements based on independence. Slowly everything intensifies. Dance becomes bigger, bigger and bigger. Control is slowly lost in speech and movement as the volume increases.
Each dancer loses more confidence as time passes, hinting at Jeanne d'Arc's confidence that was decreasing during her trial. Even more hints appear as the drummer lights up a match. The choreography was impressing as every element was carefully placed in sync with one-another.
Each hit of the drum was accompanied by movement and each movement was accompanied by words.

The performance was not perfect. Firstly, the actor spoke in dutch. Roughly half of the audience consisted of non-dutch speakers. They missed a tremendous amount of meaning since they could not understand a word from what was said. Moreover, even I, a native dutch speaker had a hard time hearing everything that was spoken. The drums were so loud that the audience missed at least a quarter of every sentence. 
Secondly, sometimes the movements from the dancers were so large that it became chaotic. As if the dancers were trying to perform movements so huge that they could not control them. Thus losing the articulation in the dance. It felt like they were mumbling instead of talking.

I must say the overall raw power and meaning in the piece made up for all minor flaws. My recommendation is to go and see this piece. I am certain that any lover of raw emotion and dance will appreciate this choreography. 

Tickets are still available at: Jens van Daele's Burning Bridges

Photographer: Jasmine Wolf Photography
Author: Mark van Drunick