What We're Seeing: "Deep Time" at Brussels FAME Festival
An inquisitive, directionless exploration of space, time, and the bodies that move through them
What follows below is a Fast Write exercise carried out as part of the International Association of Theatre Critics’ Young Critics workshop, wherein 20 participants from 11 countries were selected to view, analyze, and critique Brussels’ first FAME Festival (festival where arts meet empowerment). Broadway DNA’s Natalie Rine was the selected American ambassador to the 2022 cohort.
Photo Credit: José Figueroa
“Deep Time,” a dance production by Virpi Pahkinen Dance Company now playing as part of Brussels’ FAME Festival, is an inquisitive, but directionless exploration of space, time, and the bodies that move through them. In this one hour piece, four dancers clad in individual earthy tones stretch, contort, and bend together, carrying out the same positions with a slight delay, akin to blades of grass rippling in the wind one after another. The delay at first seems more annoying than discernible, and comes across as if it could be an afterthought in execution rather than intentional precision.
However, choreographer Virpi Pahkinen claims inspiration in the production notes from the sonic wave sounds of bats, a key that unlocks one interpretation of this disjointed visual cornucopia. The frenetic energy of bats’ echo locations can be found in the chaotic, asynchronous disconnection of sound and bodies playing off of each other. A soprano soloist serenades us with ancient tunes from the acclaimed nun Hildegard, sometimes singing over top of pulsing, eerie modern music in a clash of styles and senses. This clash occurs as we watch dancers contort into clean shapes and body angles akin to various nature tableaus, emphasizing hand symbols and gestures to imitate such poses as beetles, water bathing, or growing evolution.
The trick though is that the dancers dart past each other in a mad dash to solo perform in squares of light that illuminate them alone and isolated. When they are featured together they further miss each other in connection with either linked arms that cleanly break away or cold facial expressions that create a distancing effect with the audience. The lighting design strikes isolated, clinically precise angles for the dancers to situate themselves in, including elongated, shadowy spaces that create a narrowing hallway feel the dancer is confined within. Trapped in such liminal spaces, the dancers are disjointed and distant from one another in physical and emotional senses.
A buoy in an otherwise restless sea of chaos, Pahkinen herself takes center stage halfway through in flaming red attire, draped dramatically against uplifted and curved arms morphing her body to appear as a human heart entering the scene. Her presence infuses much-needed liveliness into the production, adding dramatic flair to the dull progression of time previously being highlighted at a snail’s pace. Ultimately the piece falls flat though, leaving no conclusions, only a gumbo of mixed signals and disjointed designs that end abruptly in a collision and cacophony of sound and ensemble disarray. “Deep Time” is a jumbled cornucopia of ideas that needs further refinement to keep the audience afloat and engaged.
Production credits
“Deep Time”
CHOREOGRAPHY Virpi Pahkinen | DANCERS Pontus Sundset Granat, Hui-Han Hu Gustavsson, Victor Persson, Corrado Di Lorenzo, Virpi Pahkinen | COMPOSITION Jonas Sjöblom | COSTUME DESIGN Zita Merényi Provo-CUT™ | ADDITIONAL MUSIC Ave Maria, O eterna Deus by Hildegard Von Bingen (1098-1179), Meretseger by Roger Ludvigsen | SOPRANO Tua Dominique | LIGHT DESIGN Tobias Hallgren – Lumination of Sweden | COSTUME DESIGN Zita Merényi Provo-CUT™ | LIGHT TECHNICIAN Niklas Glahns | MANAGER Gita Mallik
“Deep Time” ran as part of the first FAME (festival where arts meet empowerment) Festival from the 19th to the 24th September 2022 at the Tour à Plomb (Rue de l'Abattoir 24, 1000 Bruxelles, Belgium). The performance runs approximately 1 hour with no intermission. Please visit https://famefestival.be/en/festival/ for more information.