Spoken word and steaming beats: Motel Mozaïque sets firmly in

Rotterdam and spoken word have something in common. On Thursday 16 April, during the opening night of Motel Mozaique in Theater Rotterdam, this was once again evident. Not that the most impressive performance was necessarily Rotterdam, because Asmae Amaddaou studied Writing for Performance in Utrecht. She has been making impression with her fascinating presence and understated humour. This Thursday too, she effortlessly quieted the usually rather noisy concrete foyer of the Rotterdam theatre.

During this round of People Say Things, which has been a launching pad for literary talent for years, it was then Tyler Koudijzer's turn to invoke a cheering ovation with a powerful call for a place where everyone can feel at home.

Wrong fin

That cheering sounded less loud after the performance by Djuwa Mroivili, who, with her self-written performance ‘Mx. CoelaCunt will live forever’ her fascinatingly fluid looks combines with a musical tale about an extinct primordial fish that stepped out of its cave with the wrong fin after its discovery. The drama, surrounded by musing music, unfortunately remains a little too stuck in ideas, but the singing qualities of her male counterpart make up for a lot.

I saw a try-out, so it could all still work out, especially if The Kitchen, where the play was performed, does not have the drummers echoing through from the Great Hall.

There, the creators of the performance ‘Figures of Speech’, Femke Gyselinck, GRIP and Lander Gyselinck, played hot. The premiere afterwards showed dance work by seven dancers against a backdrop of four drummers. The sensation, so audible in the try-out of Coelacunt, unfortunately did not make it past the front rows in the hall itself.

Stomping arpeggiators

However firmly the rhythms from the back of the stage set all the loose screws and panels of the building in motion, the dancers were stuck in rather neatly moving one step per beat rhythmically. Nor did front and back come together in this way to produce anything more than loud sound and hesitant movement in faint light.

No, then the guys from Weval. In the main hall, Harm Coolen and Marijn Scholte Albers showed how to do just that. With flowing beats and a convincing light show, they revived the times of yesteryear in a modern guise. Electro with analogue synths and digital samplers, as it once could sound as a warm-up in the Energiehal with swaying LFOs, rising filters and pounding arpeggiators: from the first minute, the hall was jumping.

I don't visit Rotterdam enough. Motel Mozaique makes me long for more.

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