Tanzquartier Wien

In the piece Please Please Please, choreographed and danced by La Ribot and Mathilde Monnier, the only thing that remains rigid is the large, snake-like animal made of pipes and wire mesh that divides the stage in a curved line into a front arena and a place of retreat behind it. In contrast, the arms and legs of the dancers, the images and associations arising from the episodes they recount while dancing, as well as the time levels between a catastrophic end point and a future promise that is being negotiated, are in a continuous, circular, dynamic flux.

The circular structure of the three-part dance piece makes it possible to begin with the end. A mother promises her newly born child to take care of it forever. But the stubborn infant, already able to speak, calls this monumental promise into question, and with it, the contract between generations. The generation driving the planet to collapse dare to vow eternal care? Seriously? Speaking in foreign tongues, the baby turns out to be a tough negotiator and inquires about the definition of the speed of light. The mother states that she has knowledge of this in principle but is currently unable to pass it on. The tricky contract between generations may yet be concluded. But there is not much time left. The catastrophe must be averted NOW, the adult infant urges.

But perhaps this dialogue is just one of the episodes recounted in the second part, all of which might well be dreams or, more specifically, nightmares, in which a link has ceased to exist between contradictory worlds that could potentially complement each other. A daughter writes a letter to her father, explaining that everything about his life seems wrong to her. But she doesn’t have a postage stamp to hand, so the letter is left lying around, and on the following weekends they continue to have the usual conversations while eating together. In another story, a person dreaming of taming a carousel horse experiences a feeling of elation in anticipation of the accompanying music playing, the shimmering lights and the cheerful babble of voices. The same carousel can also be observed from below in the shape of a rat, through a small opening at the axis of rotation. It’s a dark and narrow space, and it’s easy to imagine that you are in charge of making the gleaming world rotate that trickles down in fragments from above like small bits of candy floss. In another episode, a child dreaming about a monster keeps waking up in alarm, as the monster sinks its teeth into the child. But once the child has learned to assert itself in the nightmares, it turns the tables and now it’s the child that’s snapping at the monster. When the monster wakes up frightened, it tells its mother that it has dreamed of terrifying humans. La Ribot and Mathilde Monnier take turns telling the stories, always in motion, dancing. As their feet, arms and hands are driven by rhythm, the narrators dissociate themselves from their tales, conveying the stories’ atmospheres and attitudes. The dancing accompanies the speaking by stimulating the flow of associations in the minds of the audience, whereby the poetic episodes written by Tiago Rodrigues emerge and vanish like cloud formations. And sometimes you seem to recognize meanings in them, which, however, melt away again at a second glance.

Cockroaches survive disasters, according to a modern fairy tale. After humans have annihilated humankind, when everything seems rigid and still, they will be the first to crawl again through the cracks in the debris. This may be one of the reasons why people have little sympathy for cockroaches. Monnier and La Ribot, the dancing narrators, say that they like them. In any case, wearing their dazzling full-body suits, they make them take shape in the first scene, without imitating them. Bodies wriggle on the floor, legs are twisted and straightened, heads are bent, arms and hands contorted, there is itching and scratching. Most notably, however, a dogged will to survive emerges, as illustrated by James Brown’s body, falling to his knees while singing his hit “Please, Please, Please” before he manages to get up again. Bizarre and mechanistic are the movements that outline a plea in space for the potentiality of a future, despite everything.

Stefan Hulfeld has been a professor of Theatre and Cultural Studies at the University of Vienna’s Institute of Theatre, Film and Media Studies since 2006. Recent publications include “Theatre in the Context of the Yugoslav Wars”, co-edited with Jana Dolecki and Senad Halilbasic (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).