There is at least one reason to go see Porca Miseria, Trajal Harrell's latest work. This weekend, the Holland Festival is hosting the American choreographer best known for his Vogueing work, and the soundtrack to his trilogy is downright gorgeous.
Starting with Willie Nelson and ending with the Lamento della Nimfa with which Claudio Monteverdi laid a groundwork for countless pop songs in the 20th century in the early 17th century, that work. And that's just the first part of the trilogy, Deathbed. In part three, you suddenly hear Bruce Springsteen accompanying a furnished fashion show. In Harrell's postmodern dance universe, it's the most ordinary thing in the world.
King of Vogue
Harrell is the king of the Voguen, the dance style that originated in the US in the 1960s, but which we got to know here mainly thanks to Madonna. Vogueing is posing, pretending that all of life is a fashion show and thus parading in high heels, or, failing that, like Harrell's dancers: barefoot and on your toes.
Those dancers from Harrell's company are another reason to go and see Porca Miseria. They have been picked together for charisma and individuality, rather than the sinewy, sometimes rather starved-looking uniformity seen in many dance groups. Here, a fragile performer with an iron body stands fraternally next to someone 2 metres tall with the body of a weightlifter or a construction worker. And then it turns out that the weightlifter can move feather light, almost flying, while that steel body can thump so angularly that the floor vibrates. Or was that the construction worker?
Postmodern deconstructed
The three forms of misery Harrell deals with do otherwise suffer from what I will define as artistic difficulty. For instance, in the first part, which ends with a death march for one of the dancers, in addition to the fashion show, there is a lot of fuss with incomprehensible meanings demonstrated by papers, texts and actions. The dancers, who apparently in the original concept were supposed to move among the wandering audience, find themselves on a white stage in front of boxes that turn out to be the tops of small gymnastic elements.
In part two, a rather idiosyncratic Pendulum of Foucault moves across a landscape of trinkets. Possibly that says something about the first part, but the freedom to interpret disturbs rather than provides guidance.
Loose preparations
In that second part, dedicated to the Greek tragedy heroine Medea, blinding light further probably represents the solar car with which she polishes the record after the end, and the gruesome murder of her children and rival. The world is left in tears. And that weeping, in turn, cuts through marrow, which is in stark contrast to the tragedy itself, in which a chorus of women applaud the heroine for her steadfast performance.
The - otherwise beautifully filmed - performance is typical postmodern deconstructed art. Like eating a meal that only contains 'preparations' of the individual ingredients, and you get to invent the composite primal version of it yourself. Or not, as long as you don't taste too much, or just do.
Fashionpunk
This also happens in the final part, which is based on the American film and theatre classic Cat on a hot tin roof by Tennessee Williams. Here, for insiders like me, who visit more often, we see a nice parallel with the Ring des Nibelungen by the Schauspielhaus Zürich which can be seen at the Holland Festival later this week. In that Ring adaptation, the speechless characters from Wagner's magnum opus get to speak for once.
In Harrell's Cat adaptation, it is the staff of the disastrous household that is already voguend fashion show may walk with elements from the set of film and play as clothes. How to turn oversized sofa cushions and duvets into a fun Parisian catwalk thingy after all: very funny to see and an absolute tip for carnival.
The result of this Cat is a thick three-quarter-hour fashion punk commentary on American culture that I had difficulty discovering any real palpable depth in. In the end, this made Porca Miseria overshoot its mark a bit, leaving an image that doesn't get beyond: we're amusing ourselves to death.
But we already knew that.
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