Questions, stillness and resistance: choreographer Nicole Beutler's new Echo and earlier work on tour in the Netherlands

5:Echo, choreographer Nicole Beutler's most recent production, is a curious show. All focus is on two famous pioneers of Dutch dance in the 60s and 70s: Ellen Edinoff and Bianca van Dillen. Yet Echo mainly shows how impossible (and perhaps undesirable) it is to want to revive past glories. Dancer Kelly Hirina will never become Ellen Edinoff. The ensemble of dancers who worked with Beutler on the reworking of Vermilion nowhere exudes the artistic and feminist militancy that was so typical of the women's dance collectives of the 1970s. Echo is actually distant and hushed. The artistic, existential and emancipatory drama of the first decades of Dutch dance has given way to a relaxed togetherness and asking open questions. A true echo anno 2014.

Nicole Beutler has previously recycled existing dance repertoire into new performances very convincingly. In Les Sylphides (Fokine) from 2007 and Dialogue with Lucinda (Lucinda Childs) from 2010, modern ballet and American minimalism were scrutinised. The performances excel in simplicity and consistency. Unlike previous generations of choreographers, Beutler does not necessarily have to be original in terms of movement material or method. Instead, she asks herself in these performances what is the importance of heritage and tradition for a contemporary artist. This search for artistic reflection and the reactivation of dance practices that are all too quickly forgotten, critically reinventing rather than faithfully re-enacting, has become a true trend in dance. Resulting in very diverse projects, see, for example Andrea Božić, Fabian Barba, Martin Nachbar or ICKamsterdam. But also in the collaborations Beutler enters into, such as with Ulrique Quade (Antigone, Sophokles) or Tomoko Mukaiyama (Piano sonatas 5 and 6, Galina Ustvolskaya, see discussion), existing repertoire is starting point. Thus, dance is carefully opened up in all directions. Critical reflection and interdisciplinary collaboration shift the focus from the purely aesthetic-technical shaped body to the artistic or social context in which it is performed. Or better still, the attention moves to what individual bodies carry with them anyway, in terms of tradition and formation, from inside or outside dance. 5:Echo is therefore so interesting because it deals specifically with benchmarks within the Dutch dance tradition. Dutch dance, which for decades frenetically asserted its autonomy (Hans van Manen: "dance expresses dance and nothing else") and since its early days cultivated a fierce resistance to reflection, criticism and dramaturgy, is finally ready.

Almost casually, Kelly Hirina opens the performance with a splashy monologue. Her repetitive text is made up of rather cryptic, because taken out of context, quotes from reviews and an interview with Koert Stuyf and Ellen Edinoff by Bibeb at the time. There is something brutal about it. The woman who was already a legend in her lifetime not only because of her amazing performance, but also because of her retraction, of whom not a single decent artist portrait can be found online, is given texts by others in Echo. The words and phrases - indications of materials, thoughts on impermanence and presence, an unforgettable performance moment - cause a poetic explosion. In vain, the spectator tries to connect the words to Edinoff's transmitted image. The fragmentation of the text especially emphasises the impossibility of constructing another coherent image from miniscule fragments. With each repetition of the words, the mythical image crumbles further. Hirina also never attempts to truly embody her famous predecessor. Her movements are gestures copied from photographs. Like the words, they remain loose sand. Postcards sent in the past, received today but without any idea of what moved the sender. From behind the microphone, radiant, naked, high-heeled and wearing an exotic Folies Bergères-like headdress, she remains a costumed mediator, a teller of other people's inimitable story.

The transience of dance is brought out so painfully consistently in the first part of 5:Echo. But the question, "What was so important and essential about Ellen Edinoff's work anyway?" also remains unanswered. When Hirina dances a few more phrases across the stage lit with beautifully cool and untouchable blue and silver-grey, it is impossible to imagine that it has anything to do with the once specific sensibility, the particular impact of certain artistic propositions or a provocative physicality in an era so important to Dutch dance. Hirina ends the solo as an exotic bird, taken offstage by helpers in oriental costume. This is rather reminiscent of the ending of Martha Graham, with whom Edinoff danced before coming to the Netherlands with Koert Stuyf. Any memory of this couple's pioneering work is thus ousted from the stage. There is no question of reinvention. The impossibility of reviving anything is confirmed as a fait accompli.

The second part of the show echoes a very different relationship to the past. No moving pictures of Edinoff have survived and the archives of Stuyf and Edinoff are inaccessible or even lost. Bianca van Dillen, on the other hand, made all her material available and assisted the production of Echo with advice. In artistic terms, Beutler also seems to have a better relationship with van Dillen's work. It is geometric, rhythmic and with a symbolic undertone that nowhere becomes explicit. The second part of Echo again opens loosely, but now a choreographically constructed field of tension does emerge. That walking is not just walking on a stage, that crossing a space has consequences, that moving together causes a certain dynamic and requires a shaky balance, so that not only concentration but also risk-taking plays a decisive role. Minimal changes become exciting events in this way.

Also important in the second part of Echo is the use of video footage of the original work. When the performance has been going on for a while, the old footage, once filmed by a technician from above, appears on the back wall. The choreography on the video is ahead of what the dancers are doing on stage. At the same time, there is no literal reenactment. This triple shift - then and now, here and there in the choreography, and adopting this and not that - playfully opens up all kinds of perspectives on the old and the new work. The drama of reconstruction, of the right way to perform, is overcome. The old work was what it was; the new work approaches the once-proposed subject matter in its own way. Apart from breaking the taboo of appropriating existing work in a new way (in theatre, it is very common for a director or ensemble of actors to decide for themselves how to re-enact repertoire), the second part of Echo is also interesting because of an overall shift in aesthetics. Although Beutler eagerly adopts structures and forms, she gives the ensemble a much lighter tone. There is no trace of the emphatic control and total abandonment that often marked the dance work of Van Dillen's generation, not only in the bright costumes, but especially in the tone of the relationships between them.

In many ways, 5:Echo does what 2:Dialogue with Lucinda and Les Sylphides also do: a relaxed look at an illustrious and obligatory past. By not giving in to the pressure, but breaking it open with clear questions about form and construction, Beutler is able to add her own ideas and meanings. Often this means making fun of obligations, but also staging a certain reparation for those aspects that do capture her imagination. In 5:Echo, that is clearly the relaxed intensity of the ensemble.

Perhaps Beutler might also want to risk burning her fingers on a more speculative interpretation of Edinoff's work in the near future. It is precisely in the work of Dutch choreographers influenced by her, such as Truus Bronkhorst and, no less, Bianca van Dillen, that a wealth of material seems to be available for critically revisiting the Dutch 'Graham line'. The circles in which time makes things return, again and again and always differently, the fact that artistic material precipitates in beds here and there, whether these are bodies, choreography or goddamn an artistic canon, is a wonderful feather, which may also be speculated about, especially in the theatre.

 

For performance dates of 5:Echo and the collected works 1: to 4: at Kikker, Korzo and Frascati, see the website of NBprojects

Who the video page visits NBprojects' website, and plays the clips of its many projects, you will notice the role Garry Sheperd aka DJ Alec Smart plays in Beutler's performances.