Miet Warlop has exciting ideas, and carries them out. Now she is not unique in that. More artists do that. What makes Miet Warlop special is that it invariably leads to really special work. Take her latest creation, to be seen at Theatre Festival Boulevard, 'Ghost Writer and the Broken Hand Brake': she puts three people on stage and has them turn fast circles, like dervishes. Only: she also makes them play music to it. And not a little fluttery drumming on a tambourine, but something more solid.
So dancers are handed a cymbal, a tom and a Stratocaster as they continue to spin around at high speed. Then, after a beginning that resembles a somewhat floaty version of Pink Floyd's early work, you find yourself watching and listening to a grunge concert, with the musicians hurling rock-solid beats and riffs into the room, while thus constantly spinning very hard on their axis. For a good half-hour. Fancy.
Tanghe
Two of the musicians are actually musicians. Descendants of the famed theatre virtuoso Dirk Tanghe, with angelic looks and therefore enormous talent as well. Miet Warlop herself is musician number three and she is a bit less tight on the beat, but that only adds to the excitement. Nicer still would have been if the sound had also moved with the players, but I imagine it's hard to spin around with a Marshall Tower around your neck without breaking in two. Anyway: great innovative art is sometimes very simple.
Highlight so far of the Bossche Theatre Festival Boulevard is Minaret, a performance by Lebanese artist Omar Rajeh. What he lets you experience in just under an hour is perhaps best described as a recreation of civil war in dance and music. Six dancers, three musicians, a tank of technology, including most likely a Kinect that can convert movement into sound, and then also a hefty drone. With camera.
Paranoia
Rajeh deploys all these means to overwhelm and seduce. This is more effective than an hour of watching YouTube videos: the paranoia caused by civil war by modern means is fully palpable.
Maybe it's all a bit much of a good thing, but it's okay with me, especially at a time when artists in our parts tend to toil with the eloquence and meaning of their work. On top of which, I have actually seen great and relevant art coming out of Beirut for years. That city itself was known as the Paris of East before a horrific civil war there seemed to put an end to everything.
That now, forty-five years after the first buildings in that city exploded, there is once again a vibrant art climate, offers hope. Also for the totally destroyed Aleppo in Syria, to which this performance is dedicated. One day, art will be made there again, too. Though now that is hardly imaginable.
Good to know
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