May words become flesh!

We are tired of classic ballets telling nice and superficial stories; let’s move to quite another world, the very emotional world of a Belgian choreographer and director: Alain Platel. Alain Platel’s universe unveils in a very deep and sincere way the interiority of human beings (along the lines of the Latin expression: “intus et in cute”, i.e. “from within and under your skin”).

In Pitié !, one of Alain Platel’s latest creations, the dancers’ bodies express very strongly the suffering of the human soul. It is choreography close to madness which upsets the small universe of contemporary dance and shocked more than one spectator when the show came out. Every movement in this ballet is intended to remind us of the gestures of psychiatric patients. The effect is rather disturbing all along the show. Platel’s aim was to play with the physical expression of feelings and to convey the purity of an expression devoid of any social or aesthetic convention. In fact, the artist is no longer looking for the beauty of dance, but a sincerity emerging from deep inside the dancer’s flesh and soul.

Why “Pitié !” ?

The title has a religious connotation. The music for vespers heard throughout the ballet brings out this dimension. At the very beginning, one of dancers proclaims, like a prophet: “May words become flesh!” This expression suggests Platel’s questioning about the link between body and soul, between the material and spiritual worlds.

In this choreography, bodies jump violently with pain; they are distorted, twisted and ugly. There is no trace in this show of the usual beauty of dancers’ bodies; we only see broken and inflexible bodies. Platel considers bodies as objects; they don’t lie, they are mere material useful to express an idea. All these suffering bodies seem to be in a state of ecstasy, but at the same time they seem to be lost within themselves. The dancers abandon themselves to their bodies and to their souls. Everything seems to be out of control and the spectator feels it very tragically: he would like to help these characters to become human beings again, able to control their bodies with their minds. Attending this show can be real torture for the spectator...

Pitié ! is a really fascinating and disturbing play which leads to many interrogations. We feel like we are in front of real psychiatric patients and we can’t help looking at them as beings that are different from ordinary human beings. Their bodies and their minds appear as totally independent from each other. Body and mind are desperately trying to be united but this seems to be impossible.

After seeing this dance, the spectator feels very uneasy. Many questions oppress him. Personally, I was totally upset after seeing Pitié! It took me a few hours to recover.

I have got one more thing to say: congratulations to the dancers who were able to reject normality, using their bodies to explore the expression of extreme pain and distress. Thanks to their incomparable talent as performers, they allowed me to understand better the sufferings and perpetual oppression psychiatric patients have to undergo.

If you want to understand better what I have been trying to say about Pitié! click on the title above!

Article by Julie B.