Denis Bonneville 03.07.2007

Les Hollandais Volants

Au diable la pesanteur! Avec une énergie grisante, la compagnie T.R.A.S.H. s’envoie en l‘ air. L’énergie de T.r.a.s.h. ? Un fort courant alternatif.

S’il n’y avait qu’un mot pour definir la compagnie T.R.A.S.H., ce serait énergie. Energie qui vous embringue face à ses jeunes danseurs, comédiens et acrobates ; énergie qui semble devoir consumer leurs personnages mais ne leur crame jamais les ailes. Car ils volent, ou plûtot s’envoient valdinguer, se laissent retourner par leurs camarades en instabilité, se précipitent contre les murs, bondissent, s’écrasent au sol. Pour mieux se relever, Et passer du sourir éclatant au rictus désemparé, sitôt désamorcé par le rire, sardonique ou hystérique.
Tout est dans le contraste pour ce groupe, fondé sur le terreau de la scène rock alternative par la choréographe Kristel van Issum et le compositeur Arthur van der Kuip. La première fait improviser ses interprètes sur des rythmes radicaux à la PJ Harvey, le second écrit de lancinantes partitions tissées de classique et de contemporain qui prendont à contre-pied, en live, le mouvement des corps. A eux deux, ils nous transbahutent, avec Pork-in-Loop et  To file for chapter 11, dans une zone sans droits ni lois tout en parois blanches (œuvre du scénographe Paul van Weert). Là, des êtres privés de repères provoquent leurs démons. Avec l’énergie que confère l’espoir d’une rédemption? Entre monologues surréalistes et interjections multilingues, ils se cognent, s’empoignent. Et transfigurent le théâtre d’une société violemment déboussolée, faisant d’un purgatoire un espace exutoire.

Cathy Blisson 27.03.2007

T.r.a.s.h. holds audience in strangling grip

Pork-in-Loop by T.r.a.s.h./Productiehuis Brabant.
23 november in De Melkweg in Amsterdam. Tour

It is a miracle that only one dancer (Guilherme Miotto) wears a shoulderbrace reminding of a recent injury. The other six T.r.a.s.h. dancers don't even show traces of bruises. Knee protection? No way. Simply wham, clash, bang: well trained raw human flesh against the walls decorated with some corny wallpaper and a cold floor.
No mercy in Pork-in-Loop, the youngest performance of a surprising little dance club from Brabant, that arose in Tilburg four years ago from a shadowy underground scene in an artist factory in the south of Holland. Men grabbing females by both head and groin, dangerously dangling them in the air. If they don't throw themselves to the floor, someone else will. What begins as an erotic attempt of approach in no time deteriorates into a humiliation or rejection. It is a foaming at the mouth in dance in which the performers hold each other as well as the audience in a strangling grip.
Not in the least because two ladies (Ulrika Kinn-Svenson and Tegest Pecht Guido) and one gentleman (Alexandre Tissot) daftly throw performance lyrics towards each other and the public. about pride, loneliness and decay, about abuse of power and moral perdition and about life slowly disappearing.
It is not a merry message that T.r.a.s.h. proclaims with this hard-hearted performance. The cold they approach both each other and themselves with reminds of the recent Rollende Road Show of the just as young acting club Wunderbaum. The motto of that confrontating theater performance - 'bite or be bitten' - can easily be trasnferred to these seven fantastic performers.

No clue, but a downgoing spiral of decay
Not that one has a clue what T.r.a.s.h. is heading with Pork-in-Loop. The piece lacks a liberating feature. The message could have been a bit less foggy but with this downgoing spiral of decay, the performance does justify its title: it is a loop of carnal pigs, dressed up as humans gone way beyond on the paranoia scale.
This dressing up is a story on its own. The women enter stage regularly in green pumps or red slippers, in purple bathing suits or retro cocktail frocks. Thin and rather ridiculous outfits making the skin clash even harder to the stage walls.
But all this chill receives a warm sheen from the live bass notes from a deep clarinet (Henk Bakker) and the stretched melancholy of a cello (Jacqueline Hamelink). With their notes the two musicians catch the stammering lyrics in a net. And that is necessary for the characters in this performance clearly suffer from amnesia: their memories falter as fast as they come up. T.r.a.s.h. shows Man in Decay. An ominous report from the Province of Brabant.

Annette Embrechts - 25.11.2005