Can ancient Greece spawn modern art? The National Museum seems to think so. And to prove it, it’s curating a performance programme titled ‘Not Just the Classics’, in conjunction with its blockbuster exhibition ‘Greek Masterpieces from the Louvre’. The programme features two works – the avant-garde piece While We Were Holding It Together and aKabi, a dance piece in enormous shoes, which runs in March. 

What do these performances have to do with an art exhibition about life in Greece during the fifth and fourth centuries BC? Much of the foundations of the arts and philosophy had their genesis in this period. For instance, ‘Greek theatre developed the ideas of the Apollonian [categorical thought, conceptualism and objectifi cation] and its twin, the Dionysian [energy, fluidity and chaos],’ explains Tan Boon Hui, acting deputy director of programming for the museum. ‘All great art tries to find a balance between the Apollonian and Dionysian.’ These two productions look for this balance by challenging the performers and requiring the audience to make sense of the images on stage. 

In While…, the audience meets a group of actors ‘frozen’ in different poses. Director Ivana Müller has cleverly incorporated a tableau vivant – a theatrical device that requires the actors to remain still for the duration of the hour-long play. Everything’s still, with the exception of their mouths, of course, which spout out random statements beginning with the phrase ‘I imagine…’. From the vocal inflections and the physical images in this openended narrative,viewers can draw their own conclusions about the connections between the performers and their prose. It’s this juxtaposition of order, created by the five immobile actors, and the chaotic randomness of their dialogue, that reflects the deep roots of theatrical conventions going back to ancient Greece. Next month you can catch the second instalment of ‘Not Just the Classics’; watch this space.

More information on While We Were Holding It Together.
Photo L.Bernaerts & Ivana Müller