Engel
A domestic confrontation with metaphysics
Essay / Review
February 2018
Think piece of Engel, performance piece by Martha and Kim.
On a chilly Sunday, the time and place has gathered a few of devotees of Martha and Kim’s work and as well as some new faces, as Kristin de Groot, director of Dansateliers remarks during her welcome words. I think I am both. I am new to the country yet I am eager for every showing of their work. As we are welcomed into the room, Kim is standing patiently facing the wall as we stow the twenty of us into the terraces. Now in a pitch dark room a narrator through the speakers acquaints us to the words: consciousness, mind, body, and science. It is a hint, a guided thought about what we might experience briefly.
A dim warm-tone lightens a hanging body from her hair-do, Martha commences to glide her feet through the air, instantly creating a tension about your associations about a hung body. From the rig the head remains steady as the swinging body is hung from the ceiling. The thighs and hips begin connect to the mobilization of the feet, the back of Martha’s body is small-sized. She is dressed in an austere light pink cotton playsuit leaving her arms and legs free. As soon as the movements become a one whole body motion we are returned to the black room. Truly, I do not know what to expect next.
Martha and Kim’s work is lively, as it awakens in me a notion for gestures that I –actually– can relate to. Yet isn’t this the premise for all artworks? Their coupled work may be a familiar language to anyone who has been through the dynamics of a relationship of love and domesticity, what two people can create about what being together means as they are a couple themselves. It is a new formula of being together. In the body and with it. We are regressed to the room, now lit up brighter and Her face is serene, yet striking a gaze to the public through her wide blue eyes. I once encountered the two of them in public transportation, I can not see them separate now that I’ve seen them traveling together. Martha is not of many words, her gaze speaks for her, bold almost intimidating and femininely dominant. They might not have noticed me. Don’t we all travel in our own microclimates when bundled together in metal tubes? I placed my hand on Kim’s shoulder so they would notice me and Martha was right behind him while exciting the metro’s door. Her head must have been at the height of my neck or shoulders, her eyes looking up to encounter mine briefly to say a quick hello while I quickly kissed Kim on the cheek and continued to our destinations. Her transparent and ever so calm gaze left me in awe. She is now inquiring into us: the audience. I always assume that one as a performer shall look at least once into each and every one of us. As much as they know us, us being such a small and attentive audience mostly familiar faces -and bodies- that attend to their classes almost religiously.
Chapter One: The column
Kim is visible again since we first saw him, dressed in a melange soft wine t-shirt and chinos, he places his hands into this pockets. Martha is standing still on his shoulders, both bodies forming a column and the directions of their gazes are syncing. She looks to the right inquisitive. And harmonically Kim does as well. Now she looks left and Kim walks a couple of steps left. Again right and with more intention Kim steps to the right again. As her chin now directs Kim’s body around the room, the chin acting as the farthermost point of the column, maintaining exquisite balance between body weights. I notice a finger of her feet starting to crawl into his clavicles as the speed of the walking through the room winds up and the upper weight of the column of bodies directs their directions. Gravity always with the upper hand.
The colors of the playsuit now seem to pair with her pale skin and blonde hair, not coincidentally she is a palette of the tones of light. Is she the consciousness guiding the body? Proposing a temporary rhetoric: Is the consciousness part of the body? Do we act from the consciousness? Are we being guided by this enterprise of the metaphysic world?
Chapter Two: Beneath
From the highest of the column, she now appears to be curious of what stands beneath her. Her prying eyes are now examining what is below of the column. Kim manages to kneel while she can be millimetric about leaning forward and down. His body moving to prove its independence from the upper weight. He begins to develop an individual, separate sense apart from the consciousness will and in one swift movement the column suddenly breaks apart. She lands into his arms grabbing Kim by the neck as newly weds, but her gaze wanders towards the below once more, as one would do in absolute marvel when encountering the flora and fauna of a crystal clear reef.
Her motions are inquisitive and transmit the oddity she faces when looking to everything that stands beneath her. What would sustain the column forever? The physical body comes with reassurance of a timeless foundation beneath our feet. Her being held in the arms of Kim and reawakening the sense of the floor as foundation, but when in wonder, we as humans, look upward, as if the invisible second floor of the world is wonder itself, yet the consciousness looks at wonder downwards.
Chapter Three: Separation
He comes upon that moving with her is a possibility, as he drops his arms without supporting her firmly and lovingly as before, a newfound sense of separation initiates and he wrestles to release from Her, she is gripping onto him and Kim is marching through the room making her swing around him but the grip changes its form with every tussle. Uncomfortably, the vigorous tussle continues making Kim agitated and to breathe heavily. Her, is gripping on to his body almost primitively. Her, shakes and tumbles as if he would make Her fall off like a leaf from the tree. Her resilience is as certain as we –the audience– know that the release will not happen. At least not now. One does not simply leave the consciousness at home when not needed, or at will switch it off to sleep soundly away from our uttermost personal nightmares.
As he exhausts the possibilities of shaking off the consciousness, he arrives to a new configuration of bodies. The front of her torso is resting inverted on his back, her head hanging loose, creating an L shape with the legs acting as lever on his shoulders. As Kim faces us, he rotates a couple degrees to the right, not surprising her legs move accordingly. Again, they have managed to astonish me with yet another new formula of being together, at ease, in balance and regreses me to their past piece. “As much as it is worth” piece explored the notions of balance and counterbalance through the shift of their body weights –regardless of their height differences–. A continuity and addition to their movement glossary expands, as he aids her feet to the ground by placing his hands onto the below of the room, acting as a layer between the above and the below. Walking confidently on his body, he creates a magic rug out of him for Her to travel through the room. As Her force generates different directions, he has a newly found trust and serves Her as she kindly commands.
Chapter Four: Confrontation
Their acts and bodies bear enough separation yet remain together. After the initial curiosity wanes, he has come to accept there is no separation from Her, the consciousness.
Martha’s background and training in circus art gathers a new meaning as they are now facing each other, after 35 minutes, their eyes meet uninterrupted by motions. The final configuration is Her looking at him. He has created a stand out of his steady arms and her body is inverted but firm as the column.
A simple configuration of bodies yet a true balancing act, emerges as the culmination of such performance. A well justified still motion to exemplify the domestication of the body and mind through consciousness. Makes me ponder: Is the body a physical manifestation of the consciousness' will?
Engel, the Dutch word for angel and the topic of Toon Tellegen’s “Stof dat als een meisje” poetry book, in which the writer describes the struggle of a man who is being teased by an angel. The makers ask themselves: "Who or what leads us today through the chaos of daily life?"