IETS OP BACH, which will be performed by the Belgian group Les Ballets C de la B in February as part of the 2000 Hong Kong Arts Festival, is going to be a shock for ballet fans and Bach lovers. This is not ballet, and it isn't straight Bach either, though there are several dancers performing to live Bach played by eight musicians, and three singers. It is not often one gets to see contortionists, crude sexual threats, knife throwing and baroque music in the same theatre, let alone on the same programme, but this one has them all. As much as such a catholic collection of styles, taste and talent can be said to be created by anyone, it is the baby of director Alain Platel. 'It is difficult, there was a discussion in the past about definition: is this theatre or dance? But that debate is over now, and I just call this theatre dance with a live orchestra performing Bach,' he says. It is a typically modest description from a self-taught director who never wanted to make it in show business, who often works with non-professionals, and who still cannot quite believe it when he takes a show on tour and finds there is a hotel room provided. Iets Op Bach manages to be charming, provocative, and absolutely hilarious in roughly equal measure. Ten performers, dressed mainly in travellers' grunge, outsiders to a man, act out dozens of tiny scenarios on a bleak set filled with plastic furniture, TV aerials and a washing line. Usually there are at least two and often three scenes going on at any one time. It is impossible to watch all of them properly, and often a torment working out which is going to be the most rewarding. At one moment, a women allows her lover to remove her leg hair with his teeth, a 10-year-old girl carefully hangs up the washing in the background, another young woman washes her hair and a blond boy with blood streaming from his forehead performs improbable vertical splits. All the time, stage right on a raised platform, the musicians and singers perform beautiful Bach, in as conventional a manner as possible, given that they are all dressed for the beach and that the singers slouch at a table drinking coffee and reading the paper in between solos. At a September performance in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, most of the audience were unsure what to feel for the first half an hour. A few brave souls laughed from the opening scenes; halfway through, everyone was roaring and by the end, the cast got a standing ovation. Platel appreciates that the show is ambiguous. It is meant to be. 'Some people don't know how to react. In Montreal, they laughed so much we had to change it, so the second night was more introvert. This isn't comedy.' This is true, but this is often very funny. Platel chooses his performers because he feels they each have a story to tell, and the piece was created over a period of five months, mainly by improvising in rehearsals, with each performer bringing his own ideas forward. Some of the most shocking solos came directly from this including an unbearably painful piece by Argentinian Gabriela Carrizo. On stage, she appears in a white slip dress, flitting like a lost child from one to another, and each time she turns her back to us, a red patch of blood on her skirt has become bigger, and bigger, and bigger. By the end, she is completely beside herself and held down by the other women dancers, who try to stem the flow of blood. In another, the stud character of the group, a tall, slightly creepy macho type who has spent the first half of the show pawing the women and fighting with the other men, sits front of stage and watches the young girl as she dances along to a group piece. As he watches, his intentions towards the girl become more and more obvious. He cannot resist reaching out to tweak her skirt, or almost grab at her. All the time, he is practically licking his lips with lust. This is a Belgian group, and thanks to Marc Dutroux, the paedophile murderer, such images are even more disturbing than they might be from another group. Platel, who has worked with children on stage for many years, did not explore these ideas lightly. 'This issue is evident every time you see kids on stage.' he says. 'In Belgium, since the Dutroux situation, it is even more important to discuss it. We have had complaints. The police had to interview the children here because of complaints made when we performed in Britain. 'I felt before, there was a certain easiness about the relationship between adults and children. The Dutroux thing has set us back 50 years.' If there is a point he wants to make, it seems to be something about the way society as a whole treats children as adults. The great pleasure about Iets Op Bach is that it avoids making points. This is a non-stop stream of ideas, not answers. There are moments when the performers spontaneously raise political issues. The only time the music stops is when the four women performers get together to scream slogans in English, Spanish, Hebrew and several other languages. 'The four women get on well, and they wanted to do something very strong, so we came up with this. What they shout is an absurd mixture of slogans everyone knows, about extreme situations we all know about but can do nothing about.' He and the women are on the look out for controversial things to yell during the Hong Kong performances: Fan dui lok sei ('Fourth of June') perhaps? Whatever gem they come up with, this is definitely going to upset anyone who likes their culture neatly categorised. Iets Op Bach is at the APA Lyric Theatre on February 23-27 at 8pm. Tickets available through Urbtix from November 4
