Performers lovingly gift personal gestures to audience

Joost Goutziers
4 August 2024
Seen on 2 August 2024, Boulevard, Huis73/Pleitzaal, Den Bosch
Original review: https://www.theaterkrant.nl/recensie/motus-mori-corpus/katja-heitmann/

CHOICE OF THE CRITIC (KEUZE VAN DE CRITICUS)

At Katja Heitmann’s Motus Mori CORPUS, you step out afterwards not only with an unforgettably peaceful experience, but also with a gift: the personal gesture of one of the seventeen performers, such as Stijn’s typical movement at the moment of thought or doubt. Whether the spectator wants to cherish that gesture and pass it on, is the friendly request. What an experience, what a special performance.

Choreographer Katja Heitmann has been collecting people’s typical movements with her dancers for about five years. These are movements that characterise someone: a way of walking, the arms folded in front of the chest, nose sniffing, there are thousands of gestures that make an individual unique.

The dancers integrate all these movements into their own bodies and this has since led to three theatrical productions: this started with a museum in which the dancers stand on pedestals and show the movements of people they have spoken to before, then came an installation in which the audience hears people’s voices and then starts performing the described gestures and making them their own. The third shoot on the tree is CORPUS. That one comes in, from the first moment, and doesn’t let go.

The fragile-looking production was developed by Katja Heitmann and her team in Leeds. There, she worked with seventeen people between 22 and 80, some of them thus aged, or with disabilities. They shared and integrated their typical movements and idiosyncrasies. Many of the Brits are now at Theatre Festival Boulevard in Den Bosch, joined by dancers with whom Katja Heitmann often collaborates.

The 17 performers sit in a row, side by side on white cubes, with their backs to a white wall. That image, that arrangement, is remotely reminiscent of Pia Bausch’s Kontakthof. In that 1978 piece, a pearl of dance history, the performers also sit against the bright back wall of a parish hall, also close together.

In CORPUS, too, dancers stand up after a while and walk forward, towards the audience. But where in Kontakthof the evil and awkwardness of human beings is shown, the dancers challenge each other, humiliate each other, insult each other, there is struggle and competition, there CORPUS is a beautiful and moving display of respect, tolerance and affection. Nothing is too much to see and assist the other person. Helping, that is loving and natural. The performers’ movements are small, slow and truthful. The music, composed by Sander van der Schaaf, is repetitive, defining but not overpowering.

A series of voices of performers from Leeds can be heard, previously recorded, the statements are on tape. Each time, a performer tells who they are and what personal gesture they hold dear. How they typically place their feet side by side, lift a knee, cross their legs, fold their hands, stretch their arms, put their finger on their lips. All performers perform those movements at the same time. This leads to an organic, fluid pattern of recognisable actions, with the hands, with the arms, legs and head. All those movements flow into each other in a calm and relaxed rhythm.

It is not entirely in sync, but that is not the point. CORPUS is about showing genuine interest in the other person, showing respect and integrity. And when the performers stand up, nothing is veiled, their way of walking, the patch on the finger, the age spots, everything is visible. In that moment, the performers’ eyes are wide open, earlier they were closed. They share movements and support each other, putting their hand against the other’s head so it can rest on it.

Eddy Becquart, one of the professional dancers, shares Phil’s (83) movements with another dancer.They stretch the fingers, slide them together and twirl the thumbs.Phil’s voice from Leeds was heard earlier.He said the gesture of twiddling thumbs has been popular in his family for more than a hundred years.His grandfather did it, his father did it and now he does it.

Some of the audience at CORPUS now know the impact of that gesture. Towards the end of the performance, Becquart stands close to a spectator and asks to perform Phil’s gesture with him and take it home. The other performers also share their typical movement with the audience.

Stijn van den Broek does so from his wheelchair. He folds his hand into a bowl and places his elbow in it. His arm is upright and he puts his hand against his cheek. Two spectators take it from him.

CORPUS lasts about 50 minutes, and for 50 minutes it is an admirable display of honesty and respect for others. Precisely what humans seem to lack more and more in 2024. What a fascinating and magisterial concept this is. The warm performance is carefully constructed and designed, with all the space for the individuality, possibilities and impossibilities of the performers.