Dancers of Busy Rocks combine rigour with lightness and humour in 'Studium'

It is nothing new that simple movements, close to the everyday, are given a place in dance performances. But the particular way they are constructed and highlighted in 'Studium' by Belgian group Busy Rocks makes you look at them with fresh wonder.
Three of the four dancers, darkly dressed, lie down on the floor against each other in carefully crafted poses. On this construction of bodies, a dancer, dressed bright white, takes her place in a horizontal position. The lighting makes the body lying above seem to float. The underlying figures push up the limbs in such a way that the white figure moves as if she is walking. The manipulation is done with great precision. Looking at it with tilted head, one sees perfectly natural steps.

There follows a long series of such tableaux, each with different movements. They are not literally the same as those of people on the street or in other average situations. The dancer or dancers flounder slowly as if in water or float thinly, as you would in free flight through the air. The tableaux have something of acrobatic group set-ups. You can see the muscles working to ensure the balance required for the movements.

However captivating the scenes are, one caveat is that, in the long run, you get the feeling of watching a kind of slide show. Each time, the lights go out. You notice how they build the next tableau in the dark and then the light goes on again. It is somewhat static, a series of pictures of movements. Within such a mini-scene, development is lacking. It suffers a bit from the curtain-open-curtain-close effect. Gradually you become curious about what the transition from one movement to the next would look like if you worked it out using the same supporting and directing process.

A beautiful moment in 'Studium' comes halfway through, when the backdrop is pushed aside and the view opens up over the park and houses near Utrecht's Stadsschouwburg theatre. Against this backdrop, two dancers make floating gestures to the sounds of Monteverdi's 'Orfeo', slow, even and carefree. The supporting dancers take charge of gravity. To the music and because of the dancers' mildly serene facial features, they are reminiscent of hovering angels, as they might appear in large numbers in Baroque paintings. Their movements resemble a fall that will never end in a crushing blow to the earth's surface.

Busy Rocks combines meticulousness and fidelity to the chosen premise with just the right lightness and humour. At the end, the same freshness and amazement prevails in the room as at the beginning.

Busy Rocks with 'Studium'. Seen Friday 15 April, Stadsschouwburg Utrecht. Still to be seen there: 16 April.