Saturday, June 9, 2012

Enfant

Enfant - by Boris Charmatz 20:00 8th June 2012 Zuiveringshal West of Westergasfabriek Amsterdam (Holland Festival)
Every time I go see some performances in the Netherlands I often get so angry with people's bad manners. They cut in line and talk during the performance. They have no concerns for others and are very pushy and always selfish. They appear to be great audiences, though, like they would always stand up, clap so hard and make the artists run 3,4 times for the big goodbye. They do. But once the light is on and the show is over, they start to share the weirdest and silliest opinions with everyone around and far away. I really hope that they could keep their "great" observation for themselves. Really, I would rather to stay with my own impression for a while longer please.
Anyway, the show is interesting, but not something you can't live without. The concept is simple: in the modern society we try to tame and control our children. The desire to suppress their untamed living energy is actually the result of our own separation from the life and our own subservience to the materialism and technical civilization. If we give in to the untamed energy that children's world represents, however, we might fall into an unknown and rather a dangerous situation. Is control really a bad thing after all? We can also see this piece as an essay about the methodology of dance. When the movement is totally freed, can we still call it dance at all?

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