HANDS DO NOT TOUCH YOUR PRECIOUS ME / ALMADA FESTIVAL

Francesco Chiaro in Persinsala 19 Julho 2022 | notícia online

In Hands do not touch your precious Me, a hymn by the Sumerian High Priestess Enheduanna to the goddess Inanna, Wim Vandekeybus creates a mythical tale of confrontation and transformation, light and darkness, death and rebirth -together with composer Charo Calvo and performer and visual artist Olivier de Sagazan-, giving birth to a world in which bodies balance like living, fleshly sculptures between the utopian and the gruesome, the powerful and the fragile.

«The poetic and mysterious title Hands Do Not Touch Your Precious Me was taken from a verse dedicated to the goddess Inanna written by Enheduanna, a Sumerian priestess. The poem, which is over 4,000 years old and written on cuneiform clay tablets, expresses the doubts and uncertainties common to those who have to go through life making decisions. We are facing some of the oldest stories written by humanity». Enheduanna, celebrated as the earliest known named author in world history, was the base for the creation of the play, which is freely inspired by two stories revolving around the Sumerian goddess Inanna (later known as Ishtar by Akkadians, Babylonians and Assyrians), who was believed to have been given the mes, the decrees of the divine that are foundational to those social institutions, religious practices, technologies, behaviours, mores, and human conditions that make civilization, as the Sumerians understood it, possible. Upon her descent to the underworld, however, the goddess had to leave behind all of the powers attained through the mes, thus facing her sister and ruler of the Kur, Ereshkigal, in utter weakness (and nudity). Representing both power and its loss, Inanna is the perfect example of human existence, always thorn between two extremes of creation and destruction, body and soul, life and death.

Drawing upon his life-long investigation on the possibilities of human choreutics, Vandekeybus recreates feral and ritualistic movements through the bodies of his eight performers, throwing them into a telluric clash of muscles, breaths, embraces and repulsions, in a clear evolution from his iconic and seminal Blush. Indeed, the Belgian choreographers seems to have reached a well-honed maturity in his artistic development, pairing visceral movements with a live-camera feed he himself directs among the whirlwind of unearthly limbs that animate the stage.

Born in collaboration with other two artists, however, Hands Do Not Touch Your Precious Me is much more than a “simple”, yet exquisite, dance performance. As a matter of fact, the addition of Charo Calvo’s musical prowess (the Spanish composer who «treats sound as if it were a physical object») and of Olivier de Sagazan’s hybridation and transfiguration of the human persona through the use of clay and other tools turn the play into an evocative exercise of abstract existentialism. Leaning on Erwin Jans’ dramaturgy, the trio constructs a gruesome physical katabasis into the mother of all literary hells, posing before the audience a struggle for life that has remained much the same throughout the millennia. Commendably enough, the choreographic adaptation of Enheduanna’s writings never bores, nor does it slip off into a self-indulgent happening, maintaining a carefully crafted balance between all the parties throughout the duration of the whole performance. And despite a few getaways executed by two members of the audience who found de Sagazan’s work too gory for their appetite, the final, roaring standing ovation showed that Vandekeybus’ latest creation is capable of giving substance to dreams and nightmares alike, thus re-asserting his standing as one of the most brilliant contemporary choreographers around Europe.

The show was played at
Municipal Theatre Joaquim Benite
Av. Prof. Egas Moniz – Almada (Lisbon)
Sunday 17, 2022 at 21:30
Monday 18, 2022 at 19:00

the Almada Festival presents
Your hands do not touch your precious Me
by Ultima Vez

created by Olivier de Sagazan, Wim Vandekeybus and Charo Calvo
performers Olivier de Sagazan, Lieve Meeussen, Wim Vandekeybus, Maria Kolegova, Mufutau Yusuf, Borna Babic, Maureen Bator, Davide Belotti, Pieter Desmet and Anna Karenina Lambrechts
clay creations Olivier de Sagazan
live camera Wim Vandekeybus
music creation and production Charo Calvo
additional original music Norbert Pflanzer
dramaturgy Erwin Jans
costumes Isabelle Lhoas
light design Wim Vandekeybus and Thomas Glorleux
light operation on tour Benjamin Verbrugge
sound design Christian Schröder
co-produced by KVS Brussel and Teatro Comunale di Ferrara