Preview: VSPRS, Sadler's Wells, London
Les Ballets give it the full Monteverdi
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.The new work by the Belgian-born Alain Platel, vsprs, is inspired both by the devotional music of Claudio Monteverdi's Maria Vespers and film footage of mental patients in an asylum in 1904. It is full of choreographed hysteria and spasmodic movement.
Platel has reworked the Monteverdi piece, which he first heard as a 16-year-old in a church in Ghent, for his Les Ballets C de la B, with the Belgian saxophonist and composer Fabrizio Cassol. It will be performed live on stage by a 10-man ensemble of Baroque, Gypsy and jazz musicians, and a singer. They will soundtrack "a collective prayer" by his 10 dancers, Platel says; before a mountain "made of white underwear tied together, [the dancers] go through an experience, trying to reach a form of ecstasy". This is the first time Platel has begun the creative process using "concrete material", usually preferring his dancers to improvise freely from the off.
The film footage was made by the psychiatrist and neurologist Dr Arthur Van Gehuchten, who recorded his patients during intense moments of hysteria. "It is very physical," Platel says. "The way they look and behave is very strange." But he is "not trying to put psychiatric patients on stage. I see these extreme movements as a way of expressing very deep feelings and trying to cope with life. It's as if the dancers are leaving their bodies, fuelled by the intensity of the devotional music."
Platel founded Les Ballets C de la B in 1984 with some friends, performing to small audiences in his loft. He made the transition from being an orthopaedic therapist working with children to a choreographer of international standing with Bonjour Madame in 1993, and Lets op Bach in 1998.
Platel's most recent production at Sadler's Wells was Wolf, in 2004, which was set in an abandoned shopping-mall. The cast included three opera singers, two deaf performers, a contortionist, an aerialist and a pack of dogs.
17 to 20 May (0870 737 7737; www.sadlerswells.com)
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments