What is it that men really want? This is the question that motivates Belgian choreographer Wim Vandekeybus in his latest show, In Spite Of Wishing And Wanting, during which 11 men are caught off guard, occupying the space between sleep and waking, between madness and reason, between the playground and the adult world.
In these states their dreams and desires blossom, and what is delicious, scary and funny is how far they go beyond routine fantasies of scoring goals for Manchester United or having sex with Pamela Anderson. They penetrate to some atavistic boyish place, defined by aggression, silliness, innocence and extravagant energy.
The piece is a fusion of dance, theatre and film, with a specially commissioned score from David Byrne. It has no narrative except that it takes place in a twilight world where darkness removes inhibitions. The men variously appear to be in a school dorm, a disco or in the street; at times they are deep in their own dreams.
Some of their behaviour dates from when they were nine years old. They play pointless but ingenious tricks and have clearly been programmed from birth to wind each other up. Two men who embark on a ritual trading of insults are helpless to prevent it escalating into a mass fight. What interests Vandekeybus, though, is how these maddening male patterns slide across the surface of more delicate and mysterious emotions.
Often the men try on different behaviour - shyly and passionately dancing with each other, or becoming responsible for each other's welfare. They speak and dance their deepest fantasies, of transforming into animals or becoming the biggest tree in the world. Just at the point where they are most engaging, they turn ridiculously competitive again. When one man enthusiastically identifies with another's list of fantasies, the latter flips into angry possessiveness: "That's my collection... Those are my words."
One of Vandekeybus's themes is in fact the possession of words, the issue of how men define the cloudy or blinding extremes of their emotional life, and two film sequences that slot into the work tell a dream-story of a man who sells such words to other people. Many of his buyers are damaged or inarticulate. Yet though the words give them power, the dream argues that uttering them may antagonise others or even destroy the speaker.
Maybe Vandekeybus thinks that the truth of our wishing and wanting is killed when it is nailed down in language. Certainly the remarkable truth of his own piece is caught in the gaps between words, in the rich and finely tuned mix of movement, music, symbol and silence.
