Vincent Macaigne's Voilà ce que jamais je ne te dirai, Théâtre de la Colline, Paris, 6 June 2018
Vincent Macaigne's Je suis un pays, Théâtre de la Colline, Paris, 7 June 2018
Akhram Khan's Xenos, Sadler's Wells Theatre, London, 9 June 2018
Akram Khan in Xenos, Sadler's Well's, London
9 June 2018
Because my life is so glamorous, I managed to see two shows
by two of my favourite artists last week. On Wednesday and Thursday, I saw
(again) Vincent Macaigne’s “Je suis un pays” in Paris [now finished,
apparently, for good; this time I also saw the “performance” act of “Voilà ce
que je jamais je ne te dirai” where you to see the play from, quite literally,
a different vantage point]; and, on Saturday, Akhram Khan’s solo dance piece
“Xenos” in London [still touring the world].
Je suis un pays, Théâtre de la Colline, Paris
7 June 2018
There was, of course, the accident of my own rather
sporadic space-time continuum; but I also felt that the two pieces, ostensibly so
dissimilar, spoke to me in ways surprisingly related, across almost every
possible difference - of subject matter, medium, culture, geography, or even
timeframe. Most strikingly, both shows play with the symbolism of the soil,
dissolved into mud, and its associated connotations of contamination, defilement,
death – and rebirth. On a larger scale, both address the questions of utmost
solitude in the middle of a crowd, a desperate need for connection – and
ageing.
In the UK, World War I has become a go-to metaphor for
a devastating conflict, both distant enough not to be perceived as threatening
a status quo and eternally pertinent, a traumatic experience that defined the
life of every family in 20th-century Europe. The ultimate alienation
of every fighter is exemplified by Akram Khan’s colonial soldier, the “xenos”
(foreigner, alien of the title), brought in to fight for the Empire in a war he
cannot make sense of. This adds poignancy to the presentation of the war as an
apocalyptic event, as the dance piece opens with a voiceover: “Don’t think it
is a war, it is the ending of the world”. When thinking of trenches, however, you may imagine crowds of soldiers cramped together in mud, an impossible stampede,
but here the single dancer is performing on his own, on a slanted stage
illuminated by a stream of red light; the stage appears covered in blood.
Vincent Macaigne’s play which I saw for the second
time, yet on a different, smaller stage of La Colline theatre, is, on the other
hand, ostensibly removed from any such historical context, talking as it does
about the threat of other apocalyptic disasters – terrorism, nuclear attack,
consumer frensy, loss of purpose. Yet, as actors yell at you at different
points in the play, “You do not save a country, you do not save the world – you
entertain it!” This kind of unrestrained entertainment, needless to say, that
lays bare humans’ lust for blood, that is the worst disaster of all.
Paul Nash, We are making a new world, 1918
I was not surprised, somehow, to find that the stage
set in a scene towards the end of the first half of the play reminded me of the
English painter’s Paul Nash’s haunting World War I landscapes with their bare
tree trunks. In Vincent Macaigne’s play, of course, this was one of those
trademark bizarre inflatable structures, which, in time (and to general
merriment), started collapsing like a forest of flaccid penises.
The succinct character of Akram Khan’s dance solo,
lasting just over an hour, may have nothing to do with sprawling excesses of Vincent
Macaigne’s nearly four-hour long play that are testing the limits of the audiences’ (not to speak of
the actors’) endurance. Akhram Khan’s piece is all about maintaining focus,
building tension, sustaining attention, assisted by the rhythm of music, while
leading the viewer to a resolution that had been determined in advance. Adopting
a different yet equally effective strategy, Macaigne, of course, relies on
sudden shifts of rhythm, of pace, of pathos and register, taking the audience
from an intimate monologue to a scene of debauchery in a matter of seconds. In
both cases, the action is taking place in the mud.
Earth, made famous by Pina Bausch as stage covering,
is used in both shows I saw to what seems to be similar effect. It is both a place
of origin, as Akram Khan’s soldier clings to the handful of earth brought to
Europe from his home country, and the destination of the long journey, the
substance of death. Mud brings shapes into relief (with a monstrous baby
climbing on the survivors’ white suits in the French play) and at the same time
dissolves the boundaries of objects and bodies, making them collapse onto
themselves, fuse with each other and blend with the environment, erasing all distinction between organic
and inorganic matter (life and lifelessness). Akram Khan rolls in mud as his
character is divested of his humanity on the battlefield. In one of my
favourite episodes in “Je suis un pays”, in a characteristic move of ironic
deconstruction of a scene, when a character is killed, several bottles of blood
are spilled over her body before shovelfuls of earth are thrown – and, in an
instant, the mood goes from playfully gory to uncannily serious.
Both shows are tales of extreme loneliness in the
crowd and a desire to reach out, to dig into inner resources and to connect to
other human beings (and music and yelling – in Macaigne – are of course figures
of this desire). In “Xenos”, ropes are used to denote both the connection (they
can stand for cables that are still transmitting dead people’s voice) and
restriction; ropes can help one climb to safety but they can, equally, bind - and
kill; even Akram Khan’s strings of ankle bells at one point become fetters).
More uncompromisingly still, in “Je suis un pays” there is a scene of hanging,
possibly the only “irreversible” death in the story.
Ilya Kabakov, How to meet an Angel, 2000
Fear of and desire for contamination, dissolution,
diffraction, elimination and rebirth – all these themes, for me, lead into the
overarching topic of ageing, coming to terms with the loss of youth, illusion - or
an Empire that promises but fails to take care of each and every of its
subjects. Like in Ilya Kabakov’s whimsical angel projects, a careful preparation
for a meeting with one’s angel will almost certainly result in a disappointing
fall, a spectacle. And at the end of “Xenos”, Akram Khan’s struggling hero is
naked, destroyed, covered in mud, bare; Vincent Macaigne’s angel is altogether
sinister.
Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, Fallen Angel, 2002
Throughout the rehearsals of “Xenos” Akram Khan was
saying that this would be his last full-length solo show as, at 43, he is
planning to retire from performing soon. Personally, I am not too worried, I
have seen his “Giselle” (twice) and I know what he can do with other – ever
younger – people’s bodies. Akram Khan has said that age was the “element” he
has to fight daily while creating and performing “Xenos”; in a way, ageing is
his personal war, the struggle against an inconceivable retreat of the powers
once taken for granted. And yet the tragic end of the hero is also his rebirth
in the history of mankind, in the same way as acceptance of ageing, letting go
of promises is a way into a more serene and fulfilled life. “You do not regret
your youth, you regret the promise” is one of the catchphrases of the latter
part of “Je suis un pays”, performed with characteristic vigour, yelled out
several times. Somehow, a refusal of a rite of passage, of ritual slaughter, of
prophecy appears to be the truest initiation; the war will continue, new
generations will come, but this is not the end. Maturity is, hopefully,
something else; art.
