The Antoninos

I was surprised with the cross-over nature of the event (I know I shouldn't have, it was written all over it): it turned out to be neither theatre nor dance.
Which is not a problem in itself, of course.
But the music and the dancing were touching only at times, more so towards the end.
Mostly, I was not too fond of the text, and I guess that was the decisive factor because the introduction set the tune for the rest of the performance.

The idea of glimpsing someone in the cinema, falling in love with his silhouette and then proceed not only to follow him but to actually change both lives in accordance can be interesting.

Wait. What a lame word.

It can be more than that. It can be a cry, an appeal, a moving invitation to add life to life, to fill us with more beauty during the limited time we have for that to happen.

But - and I think this is a big but - in order to rightfully be able to do so, the banal, naive clichés, worn-out and full of boast as they are, must be dropped. Those won't do.
Maybe we even need to build, to mentally construct, new understandings and paths for those emotions (and for others closely related, and for those things that are still just hints or potentials for emotions). And, especially, new words, new grammars are needed for them.

But there were pearls, no question about it.
She took a brave step, even if she's an actress with nothing to prove: leaping to glue herself to the wall, exposed under the spotlight, alone and unprotected in that awkward position, with difficult lines to be poured out between tears.

The scene at the mosque made me think of Room 101, from 1984. I've enjoyed that dark note because it speaks so strongly of love and betrayal: pure, strong, redemptive love; and destructive, irreparable, ultimate betrayal.
And when the dance mimicked the fights, when the movement showed their inner goings, back and forth, their struggles and jerks of pain, that was - deeply - moving...

http://www.theatres.lu/Danse/_19+Akram+Khan+_+Juliette+Binoche-p-134188.html