Superfluities Redux
On culture and theatre, by George Hunka
Jan Fabre: Je Suis Sang
January 2007
Je Suis Sang (I Am Blood). A Troubleyn/Jan Fabre production. Text, scenography and choreography by Jan Fabre. Assistance and dramaturgy: Miet Martens. Assistance choreography: Renée Copraij. Actors, dancers, musicians: Linda Adami, Tawny Andersen, Vicente Arlandis, Dieter Bossu, Dimitri Brusselmans, Katrien Bruyneel, Sylvia Camarda, Cédric Charron, Anny Czupper, Stijn Dickel, Els Deceukelier, Brbara De Coninck, Olivier Dubois, Sung-Im Her, Ivana Jozic, Marina Kaptijn, Guillaume Marie, Apostolia Papadamaki, Maria Stamenkovic-Herranz, Geert Vaes, Helmut Van den Meersschaut. Peak Performances at the Kassel Theater, Montclair State University, 25-28 January 2007.
Blood to let: Je Suis Sang.
The title Je Suis Sang is followed by a coy subtitle: "A medieval fairy tale." The performance may have its roots in the Middle Ages, but it's really more of a carnival, a pageant, or a black mass, with one significant difference: the soul is defined and incarnated in the body, not the Catholic Church. "It is 2007 AD and we are still living in the Middle Ages. And we are still living with the same body that is wet on the inside and dry on the outside. We are still living with a body that is more colorful inside than outside," a mock-priest (one of four) tells us at the beginning of the 90-minute performance. And of one color -- red -- we'll be seeing quite a bit.
Fabre is well-known as a performance provocateur in Europe; along with his work with his own Belgium-based troupe Troubleyn (which he founded in 1986), he's also directed a controversial Tannhauser. Both his performance and his plastic art have centered on the body as the beginning and end of sensation and existence; the bones, flesh and muscles as conscious existence, the blood coursing around, through and between the elements of the body, blood the unconscious pulse propelling life through the world. To release the blood -- to let it from its prison, to bind and mix and become an ocean surrounding the world, unifying humanity in a state of unconscious, life-giving liquid -- is the release, the catharsis, that Je Suis Sang seeks. The tragic irony in this work is that via war, self-inflicted violence and torture, this blood is let in the agonies of pain and suffering, instead of the commonality of the life fed by it: bloodletters and bloodsuckers, life always twinned with death that define experience and existence. Fabre and his company urge the audience of this black passion to dream of themselves as "universal donors" -- life-givers, even in a state of death.
The body here is literally armor at the start of the evening: as soldiers in medieval metal gear tromp onto the stage, skin and bodies are visible between the edges of the armor, the flesh no match for the seeming overkill of the sword. (And this is a rhythmic, percussive evening, that armor does provide metallic pounding thunder in the choreography by Fabre and Coproij.) Scenes of torture and pain in blood-letting, but there's finally joy in it. Several brides, wearing white, begin to menstruate together, and after a moment of fear, joy begins to emerge when the fecundity this represents is recognized. They begin to show pride, they become ecstatic, and (in that old 1960s-era consciousness-training trope) they reach their fingers down between their legs, raise them back to their lips, and taste it.
Men, in all this, tend to be idiots. They're the ones rampaging around the Middle Ages lopping off heads and breasts and limbs, and this bloodthirsty idiocy is repeated in their mating rituals. The men, like bulls, stampede towards the women, drawn by their blood-stained wedding dresses, and like toreadors facing particularly dim bulls, the women easily fend off their approaches (at least, until the men's ire becomes uncontrollable). But Fabre is fair; a few of his knights are women, a few of his brides are men.
In the most troubling tableau of the evening, the concentration camps are evoked: On a series of tables, each lit with an eerie shaded yellow light, bodies are tortured bloodlessly, blood trapped in the painful flesh, terror exacerbated by the torturer's labor. In this, Fabre seems to reach an extreme of tragedy, a denial of life's escape from the suffering flesh.
But this is a pageant, a mass, even if black and Dionysiac; the evening ends in a celebration of the dry body made wet, if not with its blood with wine, and water, and joy; if on some level this seems vaguely trite, then so is shameless ecstasy (and Fabre's troupe is shameless in the best possible sense), at least in an age of unsubtle, adolescent irony. One of the chants of the production's liturgy is that two things are certain: that we will die; and that we must transgress the limits of our existence, break and smash taboos, in the urge to transform suffering into pleasure; body and soul, pain and pleasure homoousian. Je Suis Sang admits both, and in doing so evokes a sensual richness in a production as blatantly celebratory and spectacular as any Broadway musical. In fact, were I a Broadway producer, I'd open this show right across the street from The Lion King. But then, that's why I'm not likely to ever be a Broadway producer.
On the other hand, I'd at least try to get a week's performances out of the production; after three performances, Troubleyn is back to Belgium. Readers interested in Fabre's work can purchase the most-aptly-titled Corpus Jan Fabre, a gorgeously illustrated catalogue of his performance work, edited by Luk Van den Dries and available in English translation through Imschoot.