DE MORGEN – THURSDAY NOVEMBER, 27TH, 2003

Baktruppen pays another visit to Limelight.

MACRAME WITH PEOPLE.

Baktruppen is back in the country. A good year after digging a real army base on Kortrijk ground for Secret Gardens, the Norwegian performance company present two new performances at the demand of Art centre Limelight. It are little shows, of about three quarters of an hours. But sometimes that is sufficient. That is proved by “Do & Undo”, the movement theatre piece that announced “Funny” last week.
The title of the performance stands for what you do with for example your laces: tie and untie. The seven actors do the same thing with each other on stage. They are dressed in tight black and white costumes and enter the stage as a big catterpilar. On their backs, on the floor, with the head between the legs of the one before, they shuffle further. It is a slow and hard move of a snail, but without leaving a trail of slime. It is done over again but in different ways. And each time from one side of the stage to another. That whole curling human macramé is so impossibly simple, but it works very well. On the tones of Mahlers “Adagietto” appear at least a few emotions and the same amount of associations. Not only the animal movements are suggested, like when the seven crow under a mat like a stretched mole, but also the human rituals are shown. What at first appears a domino series of births turns out be a funeral procession, when the actors carry one of them above their heads.
Everything in “Do & Undo” happens in a quiet serenity that at the same time feels very natural. The seven performers act the way they are: people who perform, with all the sweat that comes along. With all the tears too, cause halfway one of the two women starts crying in a very pure way.
It is very relieving, after the boring-intellectual “Homo Egg Egg”- project that Baktruppen showed last season at the Nordic Scene-festival. Then, the stage remained empty because the collective presented its conceptual ideas on the Neanderthaler via video in a separate space. Now at least, it lives, and how. The simple story of mans existence that is shown here, is the one of the theatre itself. We do something, you watch. With a fascinating result.

What: Do & Undo
Who: Baktruppen (from Norway)
When and Where: on the 27th and 28 of November Baktruppen plays “Funny” in a
shop in Zwevegemsestraat, Kortrijk.
Info and reservations: 056/22.10.01 or www.limelight-kortrijk.be