Something about roots, and that they are cut off and that this is inconvenient. Or not, because it gives freedom. Something about men and women, but what exactly did not become entirely clear in Mailles, which I got to experience at the Holland Festival on Thursday 10 June, after another curious test-for-access episode.
The main hall of the building I don't want to call ITA because that name is ridiculous, but that will be the age, was less filled than it could have been under the one-half-meter regime, but afterwards, some of the audience was delirious. I've been trying to figure out for a night, why.
Tape recording
I had seen beautiful dance, flamenco with an African beat, beautiful singing, and heard inimitable spoken word in two languages mixed together and brought by someone who did at the end exactly what the whole show had done in that hour: failed to connect. I had missed music performed live, as a tape recording in this case contributed to the distance Mailles (tissue) created.
Could it be an extreme will to engagement that forced some of the audience onto their seats? Or a warm welcome for the apparently shy performers, a call to abandon diffidence? Because I can't explain it otherwise. We were wallflowers at a rehearsal, or worse, unwelcome peeps.
Wall
The stage of the former Stadsschouwburg was separated from the audience area by a 30-centimetre-high light bar. That already never works conveniently in Amsterdam, but in this case the wall between auditorium and stage seemed to be made of metre-high reinforced concrete.
Mailles is a ritual full of highly individual expressions, with dancers more concerned with themselves and each other than with the effect of the performance. Now, of course, as a performer you don't have to be engaged with your audience all the time, but some kind of connection would have been welcome. And a bit more often not having your back to the audience would also be nice.
Zoom experience
The performance was not focused, not intense, which had made the distance suggestible. We were now watching a loose collection of individual acts, interspersed with group interludes in which no line or compelling montage could otherwise be recognised.
Could this be one of the consequences of the almost one-and-a-half year corona-lockdown and accompanying zoom rehearsals? That instead of all of us moving towards each other, we actually secretly find it safe to stay within our own bubble, even if it just happens to be on the stage of the country's first theatre at the most important festival of the year?
Forward search
Afterwards, at half past nine, there was nothing more, but that is part of the corona phase we are in. Some after-dinner chat on the street, while the terrace guests on the Leidseplein are working their last metres of beer down, that's all we can do. It is striking how difficult that little bit of being open is for all of us. You feel so much more strongly what you are missing. You realise that less when you're sitting at home. Still, I keep searching for another performance that blows me off my chair, like l'Étang did.
Good to knowPS: that idiotic test-for-access protocol will be the subject of a separate piece to follow. In curious to hear about your experiences. Let us know in the comments below.
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