The British theatre/dance group ‘Bock & Vincenzi’ boast of producing works which are unique and uncompromising. Having seen them at the International Live Media Festival ‘Netmage’ in Bologna I wouldn’t argue with this description.
They were performing ‘The Infinite Pleasures of the Great Unknown’ billed in the programme as “a theatrical celebration of the death of reality”. As you may imagine, this is not conceived as a lightweight entertainment package but rather, as a skewed Gothic melodrama of chaos and confusion which sets out to disturb and disorientate.
Bock & Vincenzi was formed in 1995 by performer/choreographer Frank Bock and Simon Vincenzi. They have apparently also done pieces for children but kids would be terrorised by this particular show which was conceived, directed and designed by Vincenzi.
This show consists principally of five figures dressed in unflattering underwear huddling together in a continual state of fear, agitation and confusion in response to some invisible threat. There are very brief clips from the 1922 silent movie ‘Dr Mabuse’ directed by Fritz (Metropolis) Lang but no coherent narrative to latch onto. The figures look like lunatics escaped from an asylum, something from the world of Hogarth’s Bedlam. The unseen horror is presumably meant to conjure up a Blair Witch sense of impending menace for something which may or not be an imaginary evil (is it the diabolical Dr Mabuse?)
Despite the show’s title, their response to this great unknown induces more panic than pleasure – there are more reaction shots than you get in the average Jurassic Park movie. The performers (it’s hard to think of them as dancers) act out their mute terror behind a screen which projects their movements in black and white. This means that it is as if we are viewing a live silent movie. The creepy industrial drone of the soundtrack by Luke Stoneham is effective in adding to the general mood of dread and claustrophobia.
An unmoving male figure sitting in the audience wearing just an executioners hood and black leggings adds to a sense of menace. Even the lighter moments don’t break this atmosphere. At one point the group grope about with underpants around their ankles – a black circle is painted on the under-underwear so theirs is an absurdist dance to show off gaping arseholes. Not a pretty sight!
Midway through a spotlight picks out a man at the back of auditorium wearing a curious black garment which resembles an off the peg strait jacket a glam rocker might choose. This, I learn after, is Frederick And The Fields who lip syncs to a tuneless rendering of Lou Reed’s ‘Beginning To See the light’ while moving woodenly through us bemused spectators.
If this all sounds like pretentious twaddle then, that would certainly be one of the charges I would level at the show.
I like my Brechtian devices as much as the next culture vulture but the repetitive loops of the choreography by the Troupe Mabuse become quite tiresome over a two hour running time. When security guards motion us to leave the room I thought there was a bomb alert but the performers continue regardless so this was presumably how the show was meant to conclude. Very strange indeed!
Here’s the advert for the show:
