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Out of Context for Pina

A seeming tribute to Pina Bausch from Les Ballets C de la B leaves our critic dazed and confused

Daring dance company Les Ballets C de la B (Chris Van der Burght)
Daring dance company Les Ballets C de la B (Chris Van der Burght)

My one certainty at the end of the 85 (oh so many) minutes of Alain Platel’s latest work for his Belgian company, Les Ballets C de la B, was that I hadn’t seen the point. At the start, in a long silence, the eight dancers got up from seats in the audience, walked to the back of the stage, stripped to their underwear and stood motionless, wrapped in pink blankets. At the end, this process was repeated in reverse. In between, to a soundtrack ranging from animal growls, via snatches of Bach, to disco thumps, came sequences of tics, jerks, twitches and spasms copied unnervingly accurately, for dubious purpose, from people with severe afflictions. A jelly-body man staggered and flopped; everybody pulled innocently grotesque faces. Had those (not the majority) in the audience who found this hilarious never known, or seen, anyone so helplessly handicapped? A long, vigorous parody-disco sequence is an enjoyable relief, but how did it fit in? Perhaps only to stress that this is an “entertainment” without a message. I applauded not the work, but the dancers, whose strongly individual performances, in a collaborative structure, made the titular dedication to the late Pina Bausch, in this respect, apt.