With Australia Day around the corner, it’s almost time to call time on Sydney festival for another year. From Zhang Huan’s giant Sydney Buddha and Kate Champion’s Nothing to Lose at Carriageworks to the more intimate joys of Wot? Not Fish!! at the Seymour Centre and Xylouris White in the Spiegeltent, artistic director Lieven Bertels’ programme has delivered on various levels.
But just under the wire comes surely the festival’s stand-out show for 2015, and from Bertels’ home patch of Belgium no less: Kiss and Cry.
Billed in the brochure as dance and film, this remarkable piece is also theatre in the truest sense: a love story for the ages told live and afresh for each new audience. That story just happens to be danced by a duet of hands across a series of miniature sets while a steady-cam relays the action to a big screen above.
For me at least, it’s the model festival show, both dizzyingly epic and heart-stoppingly intimate. Having toured their creation to more than 30 countries in eight languages, the Charleroi Danses collective, led by the husband-and-wife team of film-maker Jaco Van Dormael and choreographer Michèle Anne De Mey, are already working on a sequel, Cold Blood, set to premiere in Mons, Belgium, as part of its European Capital of Culture celebrations.
I chatted to Van Dormael and De Mey before they travelled to Sydney. Here is a flavour of the conversation. For the full meal, see their show while you still can.
Where did Kiss and Cry begin for you?
Jaco Van Dormael: Right here on our kitchen table. First of all, we are a couple. And we never usually work together because I find I’m unable to film dance. So we were looking for something where the dance was not serving the cinema, the cinema was not serving the dance – where everyone had to start from scratch.
I was just finishing Mr Nobody [with Jared Leto], a film that took 10 years of my life. I thought: is it possible to make a feature film here on the table in our kitchen? And for Michèle Anne, it is possible to dance only with the hands? We started with a bunch of friends, a little tiny camera and a few toy animals our grown-up kids had left, and realised it was possible to make tiny things. Et voila.
How early on did you decide on the live film format?
Michèle Anne De Mey: What we always knew was the performance was going to be in front of an audience so that they could see the “making-of” while also watching the film above on the big screen. The camera sees what the audience’s eyes can’t see and the audience’s eyes see what the camera does not see. It’s very much the idea of a story within a story within a story.
Did it feel like you were taking a big risk?
JVD: The first time we did it, in Mons, we thought it would be impossible. The cameraman is there for one hour, 20 mins – to focus, that is too long. Everybody was busy with tiny wires and accessories; the hands were dancing for such a long time. And the stage looked like a kid’s playroom. A total mess!
But Kiss and Cry is not really a children’s show, is it?
JVD: When we started improvising, it was with one female hand, one male hand, so a love story emerged. The contrast between something that looks a bit childish – made with toys and hands – and love stories, that can be so cruel and hard, is an interesting one.
AMdM: Our hands become the bodies of our characters – a woman, a man – and then, all of a sudden, animals. Change is the only constant. And as you listen to the voiceover, it becomes a lot more personal ...
JVD: And with some very emotive music, something strange too: I believe but I don’t believe; the less I believe in the facts the more I believe in the feelings.
Where did the title come from?
AMdM: It was Grégory Grosjean, my dance partner, who found it. It’s the bench on which ice-skaters await their score in a skating competition – the Kiss and Cry bench. We have a skating scene in the show, but at the same time, it’s about more than that. We found that it fit just right for the story we were telling..
How has making Kiss and Cry influenced your day jobs?
JVD: When I’m filming features, I’m filming at a real-world scale. Here, when the hand is on the pillow, it’s smaller than the pillow, but when it stands up, it’s bigger than the bed and when it’s in the garden, it’s bigger even than the house. These different scales are very interesting to play with. There’s also been a lesson in stopping just to dance. To have a part that’s narrated simply by skin. The story stops for a while and it’s just about feeling. That’s very new for me.
AMdM: For me, Kiss and Cry has changed a lot. It’s so rich and wonderful to work in a collective. And it’s helped me learn how to tell stories in different ways than I’m used to in contemporary dance.
Why can dance in general be so hard to film?
JVD: I miss the face when I’m filming the body and I miss the body when I’m filming the face. The camera sees things less well than my eyes. But I know people who can do it very well. Michèle Anne’s brother Thierre De Mey, for example. He’s a great dance film-maker. It’s one of the reasons I’ve never tried!
AMdM: Maybe it’s difficult, ironically, because the two go so well together. Dance and movies are both stories of movement and space. There’s a conflict when you bring them together because they are too much the same thing
How has it been working as a married couple?
JVD: If you’ve ever worked with the person you love, you’ll know it’s not always easy. We needed rules. The first rule: we stop talking about it when we are in the bed. And after a while: let’s not speak about work during breakfast either ...
It’s great that Sydney festival has put such a tiny, intricate show into one of its biggest venues.
JVD: This sort of show is always a beginning in each new place we perform it. What is fascinating for us is that nothing is recorded in advance, everything has to be redone every time. But just wait and see: it’s a massive, enormous piece.
Kiss and Cry is at Carriageworks, Sydney until 25 January.
- Sydney festival 2015 runs from 8 to 26 January at venues citywide. Find all Guardian Australia’s coverage here
