by Jeroen Versteele
The American Meg Stuart is without a doubt one of the most interesting and provocative podium artists of our time. For more than twenty years now, her Brussels-based company Damaged Goods has been a small, flexible structure, a framework for her countless collaborations with performers, musicians, visual artists and dramaturges. While many other successful directors and choreographers of her generation head large houses and ensembles, Meg Stuart has chosen the path of freedom and artistic autonomy. Every project begins with something that moves her – and that can be taken quite literally. How does the world influence the body? How do human beings behave when they are confronted with their memories and needs? What are the potential forms touch can take? What can we share with one another? How does intimacy emerge and how are boundaries crossed? What social rituals have we adopted in order to enter into contact with one another? Though her productions may not provide concrete answers here, those are just some of the questions for which Stuart has managed time and again to find fascinating and physical images.
“The body is a mystery,” commented Meg Stuart during rehearsals for her production Until our hearts stop (2015), for which I worked as a dramaturge. “When you get a treatment or a massage and you get touched in the wrong spot in the process, then sometimes you start to moan or scream. The body collects memories and we don’t always know what exactly is stored in there and how potential reactions are triggered. I am convinced that the body can heal itself. People can recover again from severe experiences. It is possible to find your place again in the world. We are social animals, and we need human contact. We need constructed forms of play. We want to be witnesses of social interaction. That keeps us lively and has an uplifting influence on us. Sometimes we are not willing to do something crazy or to be creative. Often there is not enough trust in the air. Our social behaviour is determined by habits and fear. […] Sometimes I would like to see humans behave differently with one another, towards strangers as well.”
Meg Stuart’s idiosyncratic, intuitive working method gives rise to pieces that are all closely tied to one another, that follow an organic logic and yet at the same time are very different from one another. The rehearsal phases sometimes take many months and allow for profound analyses and numerous detours. Guest speakers, masseurs, yoga instructors and artist friends feed and question the process – at the weekly rehearsal presentations the copious material that has been generated during the lengthy improvisation sessions is recapitulated and arranged. […]
A new world opens before us with each new production. Over the course of the past six or seven years, Meg Stuart has produced among other things a work full of fascinating, collective energy (Violet, 2011), a heart breaking solo in the rain (Blessed, 2007), a theatrical journey back in time through the history of Western music (Built to Last, 2012), an abstract duet in a museum (the fault lines, 2010) as well as a colourful visit to an artist’s studio full of excess and emotions writ large (Sketches/Notebook, 2013). Yet at the midst of all this variety stands a steadfast fascination for the human body with all its efforts to present and conceal itself.