Few Things is a reworking of a piece that was already previewed in New York in 1999. This was The Miraculous Mandarin, based on the pantomime by the Hungarian composer Bélà Bartók. The New York press greeted it with enthusiasm:
" Barkey’s entire visualisation of this piece was strikingly original. It rocked. In fact, it punk rocked –not by a massive infusion of punk music, but by choreography, characterizations, and performances that highlighted the punk element. A true, one-time only never-to-be-repeated-
in-this-lifetime gift to the audience."
After a long copyright struggle with Bartók’s heirs, an emphatic ban was placed on performances of The Miraculous Mandarin. Barkey did not leave it at that. She reworked the piece, banished Bartók and created a nastier and more extreme work in which the Mandarin is transformed into Mr Poodle and humour ultimately gains the upper hand.
The story of the Mandarin is a parable based on the classical idea that one dies as soon as the longing has been fulfilled. What intrigues me about it is not touching upon ‘the small death’ as Bataille does, but the movement of falling. The movement towards death. The conclusion of death is not reached just like that. It is a move in which desire and death are localised; they are stated precisely in terms of rituals of seduction and murderous deeds.
It was all about creating a good relationship between metaphoric thinking and literalness. I could not do without either in the performance. The whole of the second part deals with the breaking and destruction of the Mandarin. To me what counts is the solitude of the body and the violence it undergoes. The body has to put up resistance against something non-physical. It is precisely in this that I find the beauty of a movement.
I look for it in the body. In the case of Muriel it lies in the whiteness of her neck, in Misha the androgynous sculptural quality, the tenderness and violence that Tijen summons up, Simon’s elegant and fragile solidity, and Kosi's smile and the mysterious gleam of his manhood. But I do not show this beauty, it is the means by which I express myself, otherwise I would be showing vanity. The form should only surprise us in order to let us recognise what is beautiful. In that sense my position with regard to content and form has changed. I now allot a much more important part to form.
Grace Ellen Barkey
Few Things is a reworking of a piece that was already previewed in New York in 1999. This was The Miraculous Mandarin, based on the pantomime by the Hungarian composer Bélà Bartók. The New York press greeted it with enthusiasm:
" Barkey’s entire visualisation of this piece was strikingly original. It rocked. In fact, it punk rocked –not by a massive infusion of punk music, but by choreography, characterizations, and performances that highlighted the punk element. A true, one-time only never-to-be-repeated-
in-this-lifetime gift to the audience."
After a long copyright struggle with Bartók’s heirs, an emphatic ban was placed on performances of The Miraculous Mandarin. Barkey did not leave it at that. She reworked the piece, banished Bartók and created a nastier and more extreme work in which the Mandarin is transformed into Mr Poodle and humour ultimately gains the upper hand.
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