Review: Moving Being
Choreography: Ton Simons.
Dance: Dance Works Rotterdam.
Worldpremiere: Rotterdamse Schouwburg, november, 19 2008.



NRC Handelsblad, November, 20 2008 by Francine van der Wiel

Beautiful moments in "Moving Being"

No activist speeches, no requests for support: Dance Works Rotterdam – no money from NFPK, but probably today receiving funding from the city - presented the première of “Moving Being” as if nothing were the matter. Come on, let’s dance. Tomorrow is another day.

Choreographer and artistic director Ton Simons is one of the few who still defend the position that dance consists of energy in time and space – and that this is sufficiently beautiful. Meanwhile he does not limit himself to these basic elements.

The music (Preludes and Fugues XV through XXIV from Bach’s “das Wohltemperierte Klavier”) is emphatically the guiding principle of the new choreography for twelve dancers, for the choreographer as well as for video artist Peter Struycken. In Struycken’s case this is immediately detectable. During the Preludes he makes circles and dots travel across the backdrop in curving trajectories or mutating formations. In the Fugues the shapes are rectangular. They follow the score in a staccato manner, revolving around their own axles and passing through each other.

The Preludes inspire Simons to make solos and intimate duets. They are as gracefully lighthearted or as thoughtful and tender as the music. The most beautiful are the duet combinations where the dancers repeatedly end in a close embrace after having supported each other, inter-acting in accordance with the counterpoint in Bach’s score.
The choreographer repeats and modulates his movement themes in a clear and elegant play of lines which balances Cunningham technique and classical ballet. Legs develop slowly, hips sway subtly, backs arch deeply. The difference between the refinement of the women’s quartet and the much more loose choreography for four men is remarkable. The men seem to be playing with each other like young dogs in a game of complex lifts and sharply timed travelling steps.

Even though the piece is full of moments of great beauty, it does not satisfy. As a whole it gives an impression of being too even and in some parts simplicity leads to boredom. Those of us , for whom movement in time and space to great music is quite something, keep waiting also for the moments when the sum of the parts transcends the whole.