Putting a man and a boy on stage together - upper body bared; in today's times, that means asking for trouble. Our gaze, saturated by paedophilia scandals, leaves little in the way of intimacy between what could also be father and son, brothers or friends. But 'Victor' by choreographer Jan Martens and director Peter Seynaeve is no good, politically correct repartee. In their search for a loving look at the relationship between husband and child, they also consistently push the boundaries of what is permissible.
Viktor Caudron is 14 but looks a lot younger. His generous smile and compact lankiness are overwhelming, especially on stage. Counterpart Steven Michel is twelve years older, but his boyishness is also very much in evidence. Only last autumn, Michel could be seen together with Kimmy Ligtvoet in the sublime duet 'sweat baby sweat', earlier work by Jan Martens and highlight of the 2012 Dutch Dance Days. 'sweat baby sweat' is about young love, desire and sex. The auditorium that afternoon in Maastricht was packed with young and old, true family performance audiences. And it sizzled, without a single kiss in sight. Martens is a master at suggesting meaning and doing justice to the gossamer structure of emotional value.
So ingénu and exciting as Steven Michel was as a young lover, his role is now so fraught in 'Victor'. Alongside the young Caudron, he becomes a man. A gay man? A man who falls for children and cannot hold back? Polyphonic male voices (Gospodi) singing accompany the first scene and bespeak the audience with thoughts of seminary and sacredness. As if that were not enough, Caudron and Michel then stripped off their sports clothes each on one side of the stage, so that they moved in bare bark and sports trousers for the rest of the performance.
In silence, the two performers string together simple movements and poses, small gestures and postures. Initially, the duet can be read as a soberly posed, lovely rhyme. Or reminiscent of a series of precisely displayed, but actually very everyday objects. Constantly moving together (contact-impro) glows with mutual trust and produces a friendly kind of, open intimacy, which is also shared with the audience. But the subdued stacking is deceptive. Quietly and attentively focusing on man and boy gives the viewer plenty of room to observe their own thoughts and emotional bonds as well. Nowhere is the relationship between the boy and the man explicitly named. 'Victor' deliberately keeps the ambiguity going and tempts, as my 12-year-old daughter calls it, to 'think things through'.
Just as some people see a Moroccan problem everywhere these days, 'Viktor' gently but urgently prompts speculation on the paedophile problem. How long ago was it that I first heard of a teacher, only to have a troublesome pupil detained with the door open? After the Dutch premiere of 'Victor', a colleague gleefully reports that friends are calling her crazy because she regularly entrusts her children to male babysitters. In admitting that child abuse exists and is everywhere, a new monster has simultaneously been birthed. These days, every man with a child lurks a rapist in every man unless proven otherwise. Trust in relationships and personal judgement give way to behaviour held hostage by hysterical imagery and hypocrisy. It has become impossible to call anyone a child lover without cynical undertones.
We see what we want to see. Is 'Victor' an ode to the child in ourselves? Is it about father and son falling asleep on the sofa on a Saturday night? - just to quote some audience members afterwards. In any case, the performance also very consciously touches on the horrifying struggle that the overwhelming open-mindedness of a child can bring about in someone who is sexually sensitive to it. Far from being about abuse, the duet addresses the tricky subject of forbidden desires. And these do not only apply to the adult male, they can affect the boy too. 'Victor' is an attempt to overcome the troubled gaze that sees abuse everywhere with compassion and careful watching.
As a choreographer, Jan Martens has built up a super consistent body of work in a short time, with performances that take everyday life as their main source. Especially things we would rather not talk about (forbidden desires, abandonment, failure) or what we would like to talk about but don't quite know how (explosive desire, anger, sex). In meticulously composed, minimally staged, physically strenuous scenes, not only the performer is challenged, but also the audience. Martens is able to show not an ideal, but a lived-in body. With little else in his hands but his own body, he unravels complex social scenarios step by step. Ambiguity, contradictions, in short the stratification of feelings and appreciations, baggage and importance, are shown in all their unruliness. The collaboration with the young and also Flemish director Peter Seynaeve, has apparently done him good.
'Victor' is still at Theater Frascati, Amsterdam, on Saturday 18 May and will then go on an international tour. On 24 and 25 May, Martens' Spring Utrecht features solos for Truus Bronkorst and Joke Emmers in the double programme Dialogue (Bis + La Bėte). For information and tour dates, see the website By Jan Martens.
trailer 'sweat baby sweat'
English (UK) 
Nederlands 
Français 
