{"id":583,"date":"2019-12-10T07:49:46","date_gmt":"2019-12-10T07:49:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/20\/?p=583"},"modified":"2022-02-05T13:32:22","modified_gmt":"2022-02-05T13:32:22","slug":"dance-in-the-forest-an-example-of-immersive-theatre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/20\/dance-in-the-forest-an-example-of-immersive-theatre\/","title":{"rendered":"Dance in the Forest, an Example of Immersive Theatre"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Manuel Garcia Martinez<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels, Belgium, May 2019.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Brussels Kunstenfestivaldesarts presented a great variety of shows that is difficult to summarize. Several sought to establish new forms of spectator involvement. Among the dance shows presented, Somnia<\/em>, directed by choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, was undoubtedly one of the most interesting. It was presented in Gaasbeek Castle, a medieval fortress in Flemish Brabant, south west of Brussels. Based on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream <\/em>as adapted by Johannes Kepler, Somnia<\/em> is an extraordinary dance and theatre show, which Anne Teresa and Jolente De Keersmaeker put on with forty-four dancers, third- and final-year students of the Contemporary Dance School P.A.R.T.S (Brussels).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Playing in nature: on the slopes of the deep moat surrounding the castle (I, 2). Somnia<\/em>. Photo: Michel Petillo<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The presentation began in the courtyard of the castle. After four flautists played an extract from Henry Purcell’s The Fairy Queen<\/em>, several dancers stood on the walls of the fortress. They summarized the story of A Midsummer Night’s Dream<\/em> in a casual way, pointing out the dancers who were going to represent the characters. Each character was split between at least four dancers, regardless of the physique or gender of the dancer and the character: during the show, several groups simultaneously performed the same scenes in different places in the park. The following scene took place on the slopes of the deep moat surrounding the castle. There the dancers represented the \u201cmechanicals\u201d (Quince, Snug, Bottom, Flute, Snout, and Starveling) clumsily rehearsing a play in honour of the Duke’s wedding\u2014sliding, hovering, falling, going up and down the steep slope, in a playful, festive, and mocking manner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Immersive theatre: the public walked with the dancers and the musicians (Between I, 2 and I, 3). Somnia<\/em>. Photo: Michel Petillo<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The slope of the moat seemed to be a metaphor for the social situation and the awkwardness of the mechanicals; the natural space became the frame and a fundamental element of the show from the very first moment. The audience became mixed with the actors. Collective engagement is achieved here through the movement in the space. The dynamism of the play is reflected in dance, in the division of the dancers into groups and in their displacement throughout the park.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The public\nwalked behind the dancers who, dressed in\nbrightly coloured sportswear, ran off and\ndivided into different groups. For the next three and a half hours, the public\nfollowed them through the park of Gaasbeek Castle, among the towering\nhundred-year-old beech trees that make up its forest. Sometimes, we walked next to\nthe flautist or the dancers; at other times, we saw them from\nfarther away: the unpredictable distance of the dancers changed\nconstantly. For the next scenes, the dancers stopped in a meadow, a hollow\nsurrounded by wooded slopes, like a natural circus arena. There, running among\nthe audience, they simultaneously performed several\nscenes. Standing on immense treestumps,\nseveral actors simultaneously represented Titania and Oberon, questioning each\nother from one side of the hollow to the\nother, above the audience. Shortly thereafter, the actors\nran away, suddenly stopping among the audience, to perform the sequences that\nfollowed. The groups constantly formed and dissolved, to the surprise of the\naudience. In the silence of the forest, the\nvoices and cries of the dancer-actors and the music of the flautists who\naccompanied the different groups were heard, evoking the magical world of the play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Somnia<\/em>: The movements reflected a joyful and light interpretation of the relationships. Photo: Michel Petillo<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The lines were often accompanied by dance movements or choreographed group arrangements, while preserving the impression of spontaneity. The dancers executed dance steps, agile or clumsy, seeking more the lyricism of the moment than technical perfection. The movements reflected a joyful, light interpretation of the relationships between the supernatural world and the everyday reality of the text. Suddenly, among the trees, a slow, strange and dreamlike scene developed as night fell. Many dancers walked or ran among the trees, looking suspiciously at the audience and fleeing from it as it approached, like the jokingly surprised goblins, the tiny forest elves and the fairies present in Shakespeare’s play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Somnia<\/em>: Among the trees, strange and dreamlike scenes developed in the falling night. Photo: Anne Van Aerschot<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The spectator did not hear everything, often only hearing fragments of the scenes, from the different interpreters, but it didn’t matter. I have seen more elaborate acting, but I have never felt that a representation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream<\/em> had been more accurate, the natural frame and tone more adequately reflecting the bucolic and parodic spirit of Shakespeare’s play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This walk in the immense\npark of Gaasbeek Castle enlarged the poetic dimension of Shakespeare’s work with\nbeautiful images. At some\npoint, the public watched a scene in front of the chapel of Sainte Gertrude,\nbefore going down to the park’s huge ponds, in the middle of which,\nsurprisingly, burned six bonfires whose light was reflected in the dark water. Like the play that begins\nand ends in Athens, the show began and ended in the castle. At the end of\nthe fourth act, the forty dancers ran with their lights up a narrow staircase\nthat ascended in a straight line to the esplanade in front of the castle. They\nstopped along the staircase, creating a row of lights that allowed the public\nto climb up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the top of\nthe stairs, the music of three flautists, a clarinetist and a trumpeter\nwelcomed the spectators. Formed into small\ngroups as they arrived, three dancers mockingly explained to\nthem that the fifth act was still to be\nperformed, but that it was too late and that they were not\ngoing to present it; instead, two bonfires had been prepared to\nreceive them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Images of violence inspired in daily life in Brazil. F\u00faria<\/em>. Photo: Sammy Landweer<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

As in Shakespeare’s play, in which the fairies arrive in Athens after the rest of the characters, when the whole audience was already in front of the castle the dancers gathered on the esplanade; the headlights of a car illuminated part of the esplanade, and, for half an hour, in a very precise way, now demonstrating their originality and virtuosity, the dancers performed thirty wonderful minutes of dance. After a few minutes of dancing together, small groups followed. Each group executed splendid sequences, with different movements, that surprised by their variety and their originality. The sequences seem adapted to the individual sensitivities of the dancers, before a last collective movement ended the show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Individuality disappears in collective rhythmic dance. Shadows of Tomorrow<\/em>. Photo: Anders Lind\u00e9n<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Kunstenfestivaldesarts also presented other great dance shows, among them Furia<\/em>, the latest show by Brazilian choreographer Lia Rodrigues. With her company, Cia Rodrigues Companhia de Dan\u00e7as, based in the favela of Mar\u00e9 in Rio de Janeiro, she presented a show overflowing with energy and imagination, created from images of daily life in Brazil. Cria<\/em>, a dance production directed by Alice Ripoll for the group Suave, also from Rio de Janeiro, formed by young black dancers, was another striking production, with hip hop elements and mostly with passinho<\/em>; also notable were Shadows of Tomorrow,<\/em> directed by Norwegian artist Ingri Midgard Fiksdal, a collective rhythmic dance in which all the dancers had their bodies completely covered; Dancer of the Year . . . , <\/em>a moving dance production by Trajal Harrell; and Atla,<\/em> directed by the Belgian choreographer Louise Vanneste. <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n\"\"
 \n\n\n\n

*<\/a>Manuel Garc\u00eda Mart\u00ednez<\/strong> is Associate Professor in French Literature at the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain). His research interests are contemporary theatre, time and rhythm in theatre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Copyright \u00a9<\/strong> 2019 Manuel Garcia Martinez
Critical Stages\/Sc\u00e8nes critiques<\/em> e-ISSN: 2409-7411<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Creative<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

This work is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution International License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":588,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-performance-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/20\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/21\/2019\/12\/5.F\u00faria.Lia-Rodrigues.CiaRodriguesCompanhia-de-Dan\u00e7as.2019-\u00a9-Sammy-Landweer.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":277,"url":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/20\/movement-through-language-a-reflection-on-the-use-of-spoken-text-in-dance-performances\/","url_meta":{"origin":583,"position":0},"title":"Movement through Language: A Reflection on the Use of Spoken Text in Dance Performances","author":"Manuel Garcia Martinez","date":"October 19, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Rosa Lambert* Abstract Today, the Belgian dance scene features many international choreographers whose works explore how spoken text can contribute to the creation of dance. As a consequence, their works reveal the interconnections and affiliations between language and movement. 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The article discusses how the triple bill by the company strived to explore the possibilities of creating dance\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Special Topic"","block_context":{"text":"Special Topic","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/20\/category\/special-topic\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/20\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/21\/2019\/12\/image3-1.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/20\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/21\/2019\/12\/image3-1.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/20\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/21\/2019\/12\/image3-1.jpeg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/20\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/21\/2019\/12\/image3-1.jpeg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":221,"url":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/20\/dance-and-age\/","url_meta":{"origin":583,"position":2},"title":"Dance and Age","author":"Manuel Garcia Martinez","date":"October 21, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Margareta S\u00f6renson* Abstract Dancers \u201cdie\u201d young. This is what most people think, and if the reference is classical ballet, it might be the case. Yet, the examples of Ohno, Manning, Ek, Fonteyn, Bausch show quite the opposite:\u00a0that there is still life for a dancer who is no longer young. This\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Special Topic"","block_context":{"text":"Special Topic","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/20\/category\/special-topic\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/20\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/21\/2019\/10\/featured.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/20\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/21\/2019\/10\/featured.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/20\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/21\/2019\/10\/featured.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/20\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/21\/2019\/10\/featured.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":91,"url":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/20\/age-on-stage\/","url_meta":{"origin":583,"position":3},"title":"Age on Stage","author":"Manuel Garcia Martinez","date":"October 8, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Nancy Westman* Abstract Age on Stage started in Sweden in 2015, in order to allow mature professional dance artists to carry on their careers for as long as they wish. 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She and Age on Stage are now joining forces, in Sweden as\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Special Topic"","block_context":{"text":"Special Topic","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/20\/category\/special-topic\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/20\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/21\/2019\/10\/image1-2.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/20\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/21\/2019\/10\/image1-2.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/20\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/21\/2019\/10\/image1-2.jpeg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/20\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/21\/2019\/10\/image1-2.jpeg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":240,"url":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/20\/seeking-the-other-staging-the-paroxysms-of-orientalism-i\/","url_meta":{"origin":583,"position":4},"title":"Seeking the Other: Staging the Paroxysms of Orientalism","author":"Manuel Garcia Martinez","date":"October 22, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0Yana Meerzon* Abstract In this hybrid (essay\/interview) article, Yana Meerzon analyzes the production Mahmoud & Niny, directed by Henri Jules Julien and presented at the Avignon Festival, July 14-22, 2019. Developed through a series of conversations and workshops with its major participants, Mahmoud El Haddad and\u00a0Virginie Gabriel, this performance provides\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Essays"","block_context":{"text":"Essays","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/20\/category\/essays\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/20\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/21\/2019\/10\/image5-7.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/20\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/21\/2019\/10\/image5-7.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/20\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/21\/2019\/10\/image5-7.jpeg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/20\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/21\/2019\/10\/image5-7.jpeg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":756,"url":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/20\/a-note-from-the-guest-editors\/","url_meta":{"origin":583,"position":5},"title":"A Note from the Guest Editors","author":"Manuel Garcia Martinez","date":"December 4, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Manabu Noda* and Yun Cheol Kim** The world is ageing\u2212and fast. According to the United Nations, already one in eleven of the world population is over 65, and by 2050 the rate will be one in six. The 65+ age band outnumbered children under five years of age for the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Special Topic"","block_context":{"text":"Special Topic","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/20\/category\/special-topic\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/20\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/21\/2019\/10\/Manabu_Noda2-140x150.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=583"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1202,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583\/revisions\/1202"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}