In 1984, despite having a degree in pedagogy, Belgian Alain Platel decided to turn to the world of theater, creating the piece Stabat Mater at home with a few friends. To the considerable surprise of the author himself, the work caught the attention of some programmers who, judging it sufficiently professional, included it in the schedules of a festival circuit. From that sudden success, Les Ballets Contemporains de la Belgique was born in 1986, a group of amateur artists that for several years identified with the figure of the Flemish director, choreographer, and pedagogue Alain Platel. Adhering to the principle that there should be no kind of interpretation on stage, but rather everyday life told freely, the group—whose name itself contains a provocative allusion to classical ballet and an aesthetic no longer suitable for contemporary times—began to stage works centered on easily recognizable everyday situations, apparently devoid of narration and ingenious dance structure. European resonance arrived in the 1990s with the creations Bonjour Madame (1993) and La Tristeza Complice (1995). During that period, other members of the company expressed the need to move on to the creative phase: Hans Van den Broeck, Koen Augustijnen, Christine De Smedt, and Sibi Larbi Cherkaoui became the four choreographers, in addition to Platel, with whom the Belgian company presented itself to the world.
Oriente Occidente 2003 hosts for the first time a work by Koen Augustijnen titled Just Another Landscape for Some Juke-Box Money. Born in Belgium in 1967, Augustijnen reached his fifth work for Les Ballets C. de la B. with Just Another Landscape... (2002) after the collectively created piece Portrait Intérieur (1997), the choreography for four performers and one musician To Crush Time (1997), Plage Tattoo (1999), and Ernesto (2000). His style falls within a creative trend that could be defined as the 'thinking body,' whose choreographic form emerges from group improvisational training based on the broadest range of gestural and expressive freedom. For this latest work as well, Augustijnen chose improvisation as the basis for creation, giving the performers themes to work on: the threat of the group on the individual and isolation.
When and how does the individual abandon and surpass their limits, their depressions, their loneliness? According to Augustijnen, it is when they try to share something with others, when they manage, for a moment, to break away from routine, perhaps by listening to music that consoles them. Hence the festive image of the juke-box that dominates the show. But beyond this unifying element, everything in the piece is deeply ambiguous: the space conceived by Jean Bernard Koeman appears both urban and abstract, closed and open; it could resemble the back of a nightclub at the end of a party, where young people try to meet and grow; but it could also be a more undefined space inhabited by 'people who need to move,' by barely sketched characters. The dance is also ambiguous, living from the blending of styles, avoiding virtuosity and appearing measured and stylized like the emotions of those who perform it. Only the music, an eclectic collage ranging from Kylie Minogue to classical pieces to Shirley Bassey, shows a narrative line: a foundational element, it has the power to unite individuals, it has a catalyzing function, it provides comfort.
The joy for the spectator is to discover all these ambiguities, letting the free associations that Just Another Landscape for Some Juke-Box Money evokes flow through the mind.
