tauberbach: A Review

What can God’s voice be but one’s own?

It’s the conclusion we must eventually come to when watching Alain Platel’s tauberbach. Dutch actress Elsie de Brauw might be conversing with a disembodied voice, but the latter is neither benevolent nor wrathful, the two ways we have come to conceive of God. Rather, it’s inconsistent and petty. It’s most definitely human. It’s de Brauw talking to herself.

She is standing among 3000 kilograms of clothes and surrounded by five dancers. They are mostly mute and de Brauw is more forceful, so she alternately appears as their leader, their mother, their creator. They too might be but one more manifestation of her schizophrenia.

tauberbach, photo by Chris Van der Burght

In this colourful dump, performers can disappear without leaving the stage or fall from considerable heights without hurting themselves. It is a post-apocalyptic world of overconsumption that lies before us and they are doomed to live in it. They may be able to choose from thousands of articles of clothing, but the choice is unappealing; it’s the only one they have. Their movement translates as play that spurs from idleness, which even comes across as the source of their masturbation and dry humping. They don’t even have the internet.

Every once in a while, unexpectedly, the performers cease their dicking around and break into beautiful song. In juxtaposing the music of Bach with a garbage dump, a thematic kinship emerges with Meg Stuart’s Built to Last (FTA, 2014): how is it possible that the species responsible for this post-apocalyptic mess also created such divine music? As the performers live out the last moments of life on earth in slow motion, we think there might be something redeeming about these creatures after all.

May 29-June 1
Monument-National – Salle Ludger-Duvernay
www.fta.qc.ca
514.844.3822
Tickets: 40-60$