In Forever, Grace Ellen Barkey has appropriated the last lied by Mahler.

Grace Ellen Barkey, of Needcompany, is not only the partner of Jan Lauwers. An actress and performer, she also creates very personal, peculiar shows, full of poetry, craziness and humour (a rarity in contemporary dance) in installations which are very strange and as fragile as handiwork.

For "FOREVER", she seized, in turn, the sublime final, "The Farewell", from "The Song of the Earth" by Mahler. Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker had already done that in "3Abscheid", in which the choreographer herself sang the lied.

Radically different approach

Grace Ellen Barkey’s approach is radically different. This time, it’s Maarten Seghers, the musician of Needcompany, who plays Mahler, without any orchestra, sitting alone at the very front of the stage, but in a version he has heavily arranged and manhandled. He appears, dressed all in black, with very long hair, as a knight-errant who reflects, at the hour of his death, on his life and the moments of happiness he has experienced. He will say goodbye to this earth.

Sometimes Maarten Seghers sings the lied (which he does well by the way), sometimes he interrupts it and intersperses it with laughs, cries and noise.

The entire stage is white, in stark contrast to the blackness of the knight. An installation similar to a mobile sculpture, from Lemm&Barkey, shows trees with dangling white leaves made of porcelain or bone. Other “trees” have chairs hanging from them. Everything can turn and tinkle.

Nature according to Mahler

Writer Stefan Hertmans, who authored an accompanying text for the show, recalls Mahler’s definition of nature, which is incorporated into this strange set: ”It seems like an artist has strewn jade dust over the delicate flowers".

This completely white set represents the pleasures of the Earth, nature (sometimes images of flowers and of the wind invade the stage). It also represents paradise that awaits the knight after his death. There, three characters live – facetious, voluntarily playful, deliberately alternating between beauty and ridiculous.

A dancer and two women (including the beautiful dancer Mélissa Guérin we had seen with Jan Fabre in "Mount Olympus"). They hop, twitter like birds, play children’s games. They draw the knight towards love and sex, " To learn anew the forgotten joy of sleep and youth ", sings Mahler.

And then death occurs. Porcelain and small bones rain down, the storm rumbles and a blue dawn breaks.