INFAMOUS OFFSPRING

Wim Vandekeybus’s Infamous Infamous Offspring agitated even the avante garde European scene of contemporary dance theater. Landing at NYU Skirball for the US Premiere, a center dedicated to the “unruly, audacious, unexpected, and wild”, undoubtedly infamous Offspring can now be added to the slew of daring characteristics.

Artists incorporate mythology into their work in a variety of ways. Whether through
costume, narrative, lighting, scenic design- there are elements that allow historic entities
to come to life outside of the texts and pop-culture reimaginings we’ve learned them
from.

Vandekeybus took elements of live theater, cinema, concert dance performance,
theatrical production, projection design, audio visual illusion, and mythological histories
of Greek gods and their troublesome demigod children, and dished out a delicious
concoction of it all combined.

The multi-screen projection set-up divided the space into realms, each with lighting possibilities of its own, allowing scenes to change drastically, despite nothing aside from
the dancers actually leaving the stage. A tall plank with sketch paper stayed downstage left, and throughout the performance Iona Kewney, Scottish painter and contortionist, playing a crippled demigod, sketched imaginative drawings in an act of live foreshadowing. As scenes unfolded, the ideas in Kewney’s sketches came to fruition.

The cast of 9 live performers, 1 projected half-bodied entity (Vandekeybus painted silver
and confined to a table top), were joined by 2 film actors embodying ruling gods in the
sky- Zeus and Hera. Each role had dedicated scenes of character development, yet
crafted in a way that did not disrupt the narrative pushing forward: a battle fueled by
familial neglect and power trips. Audience members came to know and adore each
character for their strengths and flaws brought to life by the performance.

Each performer, aside from Vandekeybus, spoke while performing. The entire
performance was sewn together by text generated by Fiona Benson. Demi-gods,
sons and daughters of either Zeus or Hera, were resurrected through language and reactions. Benson structured and timed, the individualized texture of movement Vandekeybus molded over a euphoric soundscore created by Warren Ellis/Dirty Three and ILA.

They began by entering one at a time, until it was a stageful of dynamic demigods. The
movement style, though slightly altered for each performer, was extreme. The jumps weren’t just high, they were levitative; the contortion and hurling of bodies wasn’t a flair
of the obviously talented cast, it was one of the driving forces.

Acrobats, athletes, animals –watching the human body transform into something believably immortal, characteristically defiant to being bound, provoked joy and total awe. Real corruptedness and violence generated by those with higher power reflects
real life, despite historical relations to mythological arcs. This sociopolitical punctuation
was coherent without being suffocating. Vandekeybus was truthfully bringing to life the
roughness and rigor of the lives of these gods, yet allowing it to be grounded enough so
audiences could see the mirror they were looking into.

No wonder this 2023 work has extended its life span, leaving audiences itching for
more, and reaching towards the extreme.

EYE ON THE ARTS, NY–Emma Edy Morris