Just get to grips with Nietzsche's book Also sprach Zarathustra into dance. But Brazilian choreographer Samir Calixto can do it. By focusing on a poem from the complex book: the Song of Midnight. This is immediately the reason for the title M: Midnight. Or Mensch, or Myth. Or Mahler. Or Metaphysical. You can find it all in M.
For in M, the choreographer creates a timeless no man's land in which lust and drive are the primal stimuli of life. Calixto, who studied music at the São Paulo conservatory, distorted Gustav Mahler's music composed with the mind with physical, pumping beats, controlled explosions and squeals. Indeed, intrinsic wisdom is locked up in the body, and less in the mind. That is the emphasis of truth in M.
Mahler
The beginning of the dance performance is strong. For there is no dance. Only Mahler. The no man's land is a kind of recovery room of life. In front of an empty stage with walls of bandaged cloth, you can prepare for the full-length work that is M. A golden orb, gong or moon, lights up occasionally. Then it is dark again. There is peace. There is plenty of time. Slowly, a reclining human figure becomes visible. He is painted or chalked white all over his body. A snake crawls over his shoulder and to Mahler's song, the dancer stands up and walks slowly to the backdrop. There is peace, because there is actually no time.
A second dancer stands with his back to the audience. After minute movements with his back muscles, the first sheen of sweat breaks loose. Now he does something rhythmic with his left hand in the crotch area, but it is just not that. Later, five male dancers will repeat it: at the mercy of instinctive urges or, if you like, repressed emotions. This leads to all sorts of dance outbursts, occasionally combined with snorts and groans. The dancers are at each other's mercy in struggle, death and suffering. Like the trenches in WWI, when Nietzsche's 'Also sprach Zarathustra' was popular among soldiers.
Synchronous
That catharsis in dance is also the best thing about the show. The athletic Samir Calixto himself, Thibault Desaules, Ivan Montis, Quentin Roger and Gino Taytelbaum: all great dancers. Or at least great deployed by Calixto. Because his dance vocabulary, strong from the diaphragm and the deep bend of the knees as in capoeira dance, is well established among the dancers. And precisely at a signal in the music, they move out of the chaos in sync, like a flock of birds.
Then the snake returns and that's a shame. At the beginning still an interesting and somewhat organic part of the performance, now it is soon an act with a surprise overseen by the PretMetRep Foundation. Calixto has a knack of creating an abstract universe in which you lose yourself as a spectator, and this is now broken. Thanks to a rock-solid finale in which the madness or genius of the dancers leads to a crescendo, the evening fortunately does not end with a sizzle.
M is a co-production of Korzo and Nederlands Dans Theater. The Council for Culture, which has just announced its advice released, encourages this kind of collaboration. Although Korzo cannot count on support in the BIS, it nevertheless demonstrates its value as a solid production house with the guidance of talents like Samir Calixto. M can still be seen until December 2016.
English (UK) 
Nederlands 
Français 
