Joy Enjoy Joy is a double-edged ode to the joy of life, with a sharp edge
Eight dancers embody the Eight dancers embody the stress of always wanting to keep the party going, the paradoxical obsession with having fun.
Rainbow-colored costumes: things haven’t been this cheerful in a long time in choreographer Ann Van den Broek’s work. The last few years, she has explored in depth the helplessness and despair people with dementia and Alzheimer’s experience in a penetrating trilogy, a film, and an installation.
Black, as opposed to clinical white, predominated. This time the Flemish choreographer has changed her tune.
In Joy Enjoy Joy, Van den Broek celebrates the flow of life. Although the brightly lit display cases and treatment tables on stage still have an air of a cold, sterile research lab, the disco ball, the shiny heels, and the bright red lips add a glittering cheerful touch. Eight dancers go all out swinging and swaying with the mobile tables, though underneath it all one senses the stress of always wanting to keep the party going. It is no coincidence that at the start we hear a recording of Tom Barman, the lead singer of the Belgian band dEUS, repeatedly saying that you shouldn’t trust people who are cheerful all the time. Joy Enjoy Joy also comes across as a paradoxical obsession with having fun. It’s that duplicity that gives this ode to the joy of life its sharp edge.
Meanwhile the dancers parade around in circles faster and faster, biting their nails, stomping their feet, and slamming their shoulders. Like in a relay race, they pass a handheld camera to each other. They film themselves with pursed lips. ‘Joy’ is the word they mouth in the process. In close-ups seen on a screen we see their gloating faces. By now Van den Broek knows exactly when to switch from the screen to the floor, from a major chord to a rousing march. Step by step she builds a controlled, yet pumping, rhythmic vitality that begs the question: Will this energy keep bubbling forever, or will it hit a minor chord at some point?
Annette Embrechts, de Volkskrant February 23, 2022
Ann Van den Broek’s ode to joy is very composed, making it unbelievably thrilling
After a series of intense and dark productions about loss and dementia, Ann Van den Broek takes aim at a completely different emotion in Joy Enjoy Joy. Her ode to joy bubbles and sparkles. However, the strict Flemish choreographer is careful not to fall into the trap of soppy positivism.
Color and movement. Those are the elements that first catch your eye as you’re watching Joy Enjoy Joy. The eight dancers wear pants, T-shirts, dresses, skirts, and dress shirts in the colors you would find in a candy store. And for the glitter effect there is a disco ball. Everything is constantly moving. Not only the dancers, but the transparent flight cases displaying cheerful outfits and party shoes as well. Equally mobile is the massage table, where a camera mounted underneath shows the ecstatic face of the person getting a massage.
Those closeups are also projected on the backdrop, just like the many other shots of dancers’ faces taken with a camera placed here and there on stage. Van den Broek together with video and lighting designer Bernie van Velzen have perfected this intermingling of live dance and on-the-spot filming since they started using it in The Black Piece (2014).
The pulse of life
Intriguing, for instance, is the long tracking shot created by the dancers during one of the few quieter moments in the production. The flight cases are set up like a train. The performers lie on top of them and pass the camera to each other. The long shot shows how they sing along – lip-synching perfectly – with the constantly repeating title. While the camera nonchalantly glides past the dancers’ bodies, we get furtive glimpses of the content of the display cases. You see it all happening live. And yet time and time again your eye is caught by the projected images.
In Joy Enjoy Joy everything and everyone is wirelessly connected to the pulse of life. So why not let it bubble and sparkle – within reasonable parameters, of course. In the Memory Loss Collection (2018-2020) dedicated to dementia and loss, Van den Broek and her dancers stepped into a black hole with abandonment, unsparingly dragging the audience along with them.
Huffing horse
Unconditionally embrace the joy as well? Not with these creators. We repeatedly hear the tape of Tom Barman – the lead singer of dEUS who contributed to the initial research for the production – admonishing us that you must never trust people who are always happy.
But once in a while the dancers let their hair down anyway, like Frauke Mariën in her exalted version of Donna Summer’s disco classic I Feel Love. However, the most impressive parts are the ones in which this zest for life is confined by Van den Broek’s specific movement vocabulary: a torso leaning backward only to whip around again and stomp forward. Like a huffing horse that must be reined in.
Fritz de Jong, Het Parool March 21, 2022
Enjoy, enjoyment, enjoyed: Laugh ‘til it hurts in Joy Enjoy Joy
In Joy Enjoy Joy, choreographer Ann Van den Broek’s latest production, she studies and dissects enjoyment and pleasure like psychoanalysis in movement. For this production dEUS lead singer, rockstar and filmmaker Tom Barman supplied the source material. It concerns the posture, dance steps, and gestures he uses during gigs, as well as statements like ‘Trying to be louder than death.’ Eros, with the cold undercurrent of Thanatos.
For the creative process of Joy Enjoy Joy Ann Van den Broek and her dancers minutely researched the posture, dance steps, and gestures of Tom Barman, the performer. The hands to his ears; how he shakes back the shoulder strap of his guitar; an outstretched, raised arm; jumping with his feet together; his cocked head; counting one-two-three with his fingers – they studied them all. During the research phase of the choreography Van den Broek and Barman also talked about what joy meant to them and what the source of their joy was. Fragments of those conversations are used in numerous ways throughout the performance.
The performers turned this basic vocabulary inside out and used it extensively. Frauke Mariën in particular goes wild in her intense interpretation of Barman’s movements. She uses every fiber in her body. This tremendous precision transforms her completely. Not that she becomes Barman, fortunately, but she clearly becomes a more masculine version of herself. Self-confidence and self-importance take possession of her posture and facial expressions. She immediately delineates the difference between to imitate and to embody.
“Trying to be louder than death,” states the voice of Barman. The urge to die is the urge to live. However, the carnal aspect you would expect from that is not pursued in this production.Instead, there is a kind of rage or beat that forces her to carry on without stopping. An underlying nervous, rational agenda dictates this segment and continuously pushes the dancers toward their next assignment: A microphone here, folding a garment and putting it away there, passing along the camera, roll away the flight case.
This neurotic schedule of assignments, the counts, the cues, and the tasks leave little room for the dancers to lose themselves, but also deprives the viewer of the opportunity to sit back and relax. The instances when the performers do go wild, their enjoyment unrelentingly becomes something else.
In one of the most powerful scenes in the piece, dancer Isaiah Selleslaghs moved me when her raucous laughter convincingly turns into hysterical fear and back again. As if she takes me with her in one of those outrageous attractions or thrill rides in amusement parks with names like ‘Sky Screamer’ or ‘Drop of Doom.’ People pay for the kick the fear gives them. They can scream all they want until the buzzer goes off and the safety harness is raised again. Very realistic, but not quite. Which is a good thing at an amusement park. But in this production, this artificiality leaves me with an empty feeling after a while.
These kicks, moments of artificial excitement or synthetic joy, are the prime formula of this production. Everything feels real but isn’t. Except for a few scenes. Like when Isaiah Selleslaghs is lying on the massage table and lets me feel that there is a real abyss down there that I could fall into without a safety harness. Another powerful scene recites the lyrics of I Feel Love by disco queen Donna Summer: ‘Ooh it’s so good, it’s so good, it’s so good, it’s so good it’s so good.’ Frauke Mariën dances and sings to it as if she inhaled laughing gas from a balloon – ‘till she drops, completely out of breath.
The ending of the piece is much like the ending of a pop concert. While the eight performers walk one by one on the catwalk, the audience is encouraged to clap to their rhythm. The dancers approach the footlights as if they want to make contact with us, the audience. They blow kisses at us, make eye contact, or point at people as if to say, ‘I see you!’ But then the dancers turn around anyway, like artists in front of an adoring audience that is begging for an encore, and they walk away.
I felt caught because I found myself clapping along – and I stopped. Clapping along is a problem for me, I often feel a bit awkward. I did here too, especially when I realized that it was a well-choreographed applause. So well done that it worked. Or rather, the form worked, but it did not catch on.
It did catch on right before the final scene. The performers attempt to keep jumping, higher and higher, while they encourage each other, give each other energy, laughing, a little bit longer, everyone is exhausted, but come on, people, jump! The pure, natural, non-synthetic joy of performing. Despite, or perhaps because one can feel the passion, the power of survival, through the exhaustion. Eros -Thanatos: 1 – 0.
But generally, Joy Enjoy Joy is in no way dancing on a volcano. The undercurrent of the production is too frenetic and cold for that. According to choreographer Ann Van den Broek, the production is ‘not as heavy’ as usual. But that ‘lightness’ turns out to be a mirroring, glittering edge around a dark and heavy core. The dancers’ colorful costumes, initially sober but later exuberant, are enticing sweets in a clinical setting. The stage looks like a cold, white concept store annex club, including a disco ball and silver party shoes. Refitted flight cases become tables on wheels. With their glass lids they resemble Snow White’s coffin. As a massage table with a face hole, the effect of the massages becomes a mix of pleasure and pain.
“Joy comes after something,” we hear Tom Barman say in English with a Flemish accent. I could not detect anything profound in the text fragments that are woven into the entire production. Perhaps that was intentional. To accentuate the synthetic? Or to point at the familiar path, the tension between the temptation of pleasure and the emptiness that inevitably follows? Like the silence after the applause and a metaphor on the verge of being kitsch.
Endure, enjoy, dance ‘til you drop. Just like the performers we literally see laughing ‘til it hurts in a clever – typical for Ann Van den Broek – slow-motion scene. A collective laughing fit that becomes painful. With wide, dilated eyes the dancers gasp for breath, with faces that become macabre masks while they continue to move together, breathe together ‘til the bitter end.
Marina Kaptijn, Pzazz March 8, 2022
Where does happiness spring from?
What a better to start a festival dedicated to dance than with a performance about joy? The 34th annual Tanec Praha Festival opened Wednesday with the latest production by Flemish choreographer Ann Van den Broek entitled Joy Enjoy Joy.
In the production, which will be presented this Thursday at the Ponec Theatre, the three words from the title are constantly heard. They determine the basic rhythm, and thus the structure of the gradually evolving scenes. The rhythmic repetition of movement patterns, which steadily progress and decline again, is typical of the work of 46-year-old Ann Van den Broek.
She belongs to the strong generation of dance creators who have been significantly influenced by musical minimalism. This concept enabled choreography to break free from conventional dance variations, a bodily expression manifested by the experience of performers in established spatial variations. Minimalism offered a completely new way of organizing movement in space, based on mathematical principles, which completely changed aesthetics.
The analytical approach she adopted leads Van den Broek to identify gestures linked to specific emotions. We could already see it in the choreography Phrasing the Pain, which she staged eight years ago with the Czech ensemble 420people. In it she dealt with acute deep pain, feelings of unbearable grief from the loss of a loved one. In these moments, the human body relieved the stress of sadness with a small rocking motion. The whole structure of the work was based on this soothing rhythm.
The new piece Joy Enjoy Joy, which had its world premiere in January in France, works in a similar way. It precisely identifies a set of gestures, step variations, jumps, but also grimaces associated with joy, pleasure, and excitement.
Quite candidly, the choreographer enters the world of show business, commercial entertainment, fashion, parties and even massage parlours. She exploits, for example, the clichéd gestures of pop stars: dramatic curtains, audience encouragement, resolute arm swings, but also the fashion-show catwalk, moans of relief on a massage table, and tireless discos.
The eight-member, gender-balanced group of four female dancers and four male dancers sometimes resembles a robotic organism. Everyone is expressive, everyone can draw attention to themselves. More important, however, is the group orchestration, in which they gradually develop a single rhythmic matrix, as if kneading a common dough. They progress from almost sculptural figurines through several dynamic peaks and silence to the grand finale, which captivated the audience at the Ponec Theatre.
The set consists of movable counters and elegant practical cables made of glass and metal. They function as a stage and as minimalist design furniture; the kind one sees in luxury clothing boutiques. But sometimes these pieces resemble a surgical bed or a metal casket – things no one in their right mind would find joy in.
Combined with a lighting design that often employs neon and white light, and occasionally leaves viewers in the dark for a few seconds, the material composition of the scenography underlines the coolness and distinction principally encoded in the dancers’ schematic but at the same time dynamic and dramatic movements.
But it wouldn’t be like Ann Van den Broek not to find a problem in joy and pleasure. After all, a documentary about her made seven years ago was called The Lady in Black. Foreign critics sometimes talk about her current work as showing a surprising inclination towards the bright side of life, but after the Prague premiere this can be stated only in an ironic or otherwise problematic sense.
The narcissistic motif, the satisfaction built on marvel, success, and happiness is functionally symbolized by the selfie. The dancers take them with a small camera, then transfer them to the screen above the stage. Yes, it is a sign of the times: to report from parties, concerts, and other “events” to let the world know how we are enjoying ourselves. The question is: to what extent is this obligatory exhibition related to the experience of real, deep joy?
Ann Van den Broek expresses her opinion on what she sees and where real happiness springs from. In a constantly evolving stream of scenes, a dancer unexpectedly changes the narration and talks about love, about happiness flowing from the heart, its depth and rhythm. Just for a moment, before the dancer is overwhelmed by the next drift of cold joy.
Joy Enjoy Joy was probably created during or before the pandemic. Today, the Tanec Praha Festival presents it in a completely different social context. At the time of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it is more like a memory of a world that refused to accept the dark sides of life or hardship and demanded abundance, fun and comfort. Today we are in a slightly different place.
Jana Návratová, Aktualne June 2, 2022
Now let’s all clap along!
If you take it in and experience it in small doses, it is an elixir of life. A pleasure. But if you absorb it all in one go, via your ears or any other orifice, it could cause nausea or put you in a bad mood.
The piece Joy Enjoy Joy by Ann Van den Broek, performed by the Dutch-Flemish company WArd/waRD in the Staatstheater – in the Großes Haus no less, and not even during the Maifestspiele – came in small doses. It was all about joy, about pleasure, about enjoyment, a feeling that when viewed up close could become mushy and slowly lead to the opposite feeling. And all that is coated in a shiny layer of bewitching colors.
Metal and glass you would see at a silversmith
The dance performance, lit green one moment, then pink, blue or yellow the next, has an excellent structure constructed from many elements; there are repetitions and at times they are executed at an intense centrifugal force. And yet one would not say ‘how beautiful, how amazing, how uplifting´ about this work of art. No, it chafes. And it has, perhaps because everything is calculated, a peculiarly cool effect.
The atmosphere alone: movable racks and tables of shiny metal and glass you would see at a silversmith, neon tubes that accentuate the scaffolded installation on the white floor. There is a disco mirror ball in one of the racks that is constantly spinning. The eight dancers move them around, place them in rows, circles and crosses; stand on them or dance on the floor in front or in between them. It is almost a kind of frolicking.
At first they move slowly, jerkily; they raise their curved arms in slow motion to the side and front of their face, they gently make fists and bend their knees, up and down, then they raise their arms into the air and move them back and forth. It almost looks like a defensive movement, or like vertical swimming. During the course of the evening, the tempo is steadily increased, steps are added, crosswise, lightly on the balls of their feet, then they stroll, walk, care-free. Little jumps, even. Or they sway from side to side like at party; or left, right, tap, tap, tap. The hands throw something, touch their face, point straight up. Arms sway a bit. And mostly together, dancing in tight unison to the fast, heavy electronic beats of Nicolas Rombouts. A totally unfamiliar dance. Or is it?
Actually, they are largely controlled movements, brought under control by the choreography. Ann Van den Broek derived them from performances of her friend, the musician and singer Tom Barman. She used to dance during gigs of his indie rock band dEUS in Antwerp. And so, in this stream of music, the gestures of the directed movements and the joyful swaying merge into one another. However, she never gives them free rein. That’s what is so clever and so uncomfortable about Joy Enjoy Joy: True dance pleasure always remains a longing. Or it would be impossible to evoke.
To the game of confusion with movement and standing still that Van den Broek choreographed, she added a live video camera – immobile one moment, the next it is guided by a wandering eye. Now and again, one sees the faces of dancers on the large screen looking and smiling through the hole of a mobile massage table. Under the enjoyment of a backrub, the corners of their mouth and their eyes move. Only once is there a look of pleasurable terror as the table is turned faster and faster. The pleasure of a rollercoaster ride.
The spoken word is also used, prerecorded, and spoken by the dancers. Also fragmented. Out of nowhere singer Barman speaks about joy in English. Pleasure can only be had in the presence of something else, something sinister. People who experience joy all the time cannot be trusted. The dancers whisper and shout ‘joy, enjoy, joy,’ or ‘joooooy.’ The word becomes empty when repeated that often, urging you like a commercial or reduced to a metronome: long, short, short, long. You could interpret the piece like a warning against promises of well-being and happiness. That is nothing new.
Nevertheless, it was enriching to see this company and one of the works of choreographer Ann Van den Broek, famous in our neighboring countries for her dark pieces, in the Rhine-Main region.
The Großes Haus was filled to the rafters due to the sudden cancellation of the production in the Kleines Haus. At the last minute, a large group of spectators in their coats started filling the empty rows. Surprises are fun! Aren’t they?
Melanie Suchy, Wiesbadener Kurier March 6, 2023