We live in destructive times. Nature, art and culture, the inner life: they are breaking down under the tyranny of money, commerce and efficiency. Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten take a stand against this. Addio alla fine is an all-in experience in the form of a boat trip to an unknown place, where the audience is immersed in dance, music and images. The source of inspiration is Fellini's E la nave va, which shows a boat on which a select company takes the ashes of an opera singer out to sea and encounters death and vulnerability in an unexpected way.
Addio alla fine is a journey to the end, which is at the same time a beginning. Such a journey is reminiscent of the nightly boat trip of the Egyptian sun god through the underworld. Once that journey is accomplished, life can begin again the next morning. Thanks to the sense of end and destruction that Addio alla fine wants to impart to the audience, one experiences at its purest a longing for a new beginning.
That Greco and Scholten place their performance in the middle of current events is evident even before the boat leaves. Campaigners for rhino conservation welcome the audience. The choice of the rhino as a symbol of the vulnerable, defenceless and humble is ironclad. The only thing such an animal has is its existence and even that is what humans are busy taking away from it. It can. Something as fundamental and naked as 'existence' can be taken away.
The performance starts on the gangplank to the boat. Actually, the whole performance is one long gangplank, over which the audience moves to the 'zero-point experience'. This is explained by a ringmaster. Earlier, on the wharf, this one cried out in a flaming argument that in his quest, man yearns for reliable guidance but does not have it, especially when it comes to something as fundamental as this journey, which one must make with the feeling of being the last man standing. A kind of Noah's Ark is this boat.
The boat is blinded. People are dancing to various kinds of music. Like a constant, string tones sound from there each time The Unanswered Question by Charles Ives through. Not only does this music have a title that fits beautifully with a performance in which all the obvious is stripped away, it also ties in nicely with a rarefied, mysterious atmosphere, which slowly grows and floats between people like thin wisps of smoke.
A remote shed is the destination of the journey. On an elongated stage, a dance begins that cannot last long enough. What amazing energy and fabulous abandon these beautiful dancers exude! The powerful arm gestures, with alternating small fluttering movements, come from the depths of these dancing bodies. The sudden appearance of an ordinary boy through a hatch has a wonderful effect, as if life has been purified.
After the dance, the journey returns. The windows of the boat are no longer blinded. Anyone looking out sees a boat with a rhinoceros on it. Wonderful is the way that ponderous animal goes over the waves and after a while disappears into the distance.
As brilliant as the dance is, the perception of end and beginning still doesn't quite get off the ground. The mood on the boat is not concentrated enough for that. The audience is often distracted or talking about topics they bring from home. Perhaps there are too many people. Especially the return trip is little more than a pleasant boat ride. Nothing wrong with that, but the experience of what Greco and Scholten want to express could be much more intense. And that's a shame, because their statement is important.
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