Jan Martens / GRIP, Rule of Three

Jan Martens / GRIP, Rule of Three, Lilian Baylis Studio, October 20

Steven Michel, Courtney Robertson, NAH and Julien Josse in Rule of Three (photo: Phile Deprez)

In Rule of Three Jan Martens has written short stories for the body that we then read in performance. Some of the stories are as short as fragments but he glues them all together like a linear collage set to a driving beat by drummer NAH. Written for three performers — Julien Josse, Steven Michel and Courtney Robertson — the fragments are organised according to a hand-written index projected at the beginning of the show with titles like Suddenly Afraid, Gum Dance, Sandwalker, Dog Hair, Throat Dance, Writing and Unwriting. Unlike a book we don’t have the choice of dipping in where we want to; the order of the index is the order we are going to see the stories in performance.

In a program note by Rudi Meulemans, Martens puts Rule of Three within a context we can readily appreciate: the exponential multiplication of stories and observations, comments and images on social media. ‘You could compare it to a Facebook wall or news websites which today feature entertainment and funny videos alongside major news items and even scientific articles. From a cute video of cats to a tragic news item.’ He suggests this assault on the senses has led to ‘concentration disturbances’ that overload our brain with a plethora of impulses while ‘at the same time the value of each distinct element vanishes’. But while the phenomenon he describes is in its nature eclectic, Rule of Three has a unity that originates solely from Martens’ choreographic mind.

For a start he indicates a unity of time by telling us what we are going to see and the order in which we are going to see it, while the unity of place is inherent in the stage setting, modulated by light and colour, that remains constant. But most significant is the use Martens makes of the body as language, expressing nothing other than itself. This is abundantly clear in a remarkable development, two-thirds of the way through Rule of Three, when NAH throws up his sticks and leaves. We are left in a silence that reverberates for a minute or so and then settles like a change from a major to a minor key. Making the modulation visible, the dancers take off their clothes and spend the rest of the performance nonchalantly testing the silence of their bodies, either alone or with each other in the space, and checking their language with that of the audience. As the section continues, the divide between our respective languages grows wider until the silence and the nakedness together become a shout of celebration, not in a utopian sense but simply as unadorned language.

A second influence Meulemans cites for Rule of Three is more telling of Martens’ creative process: the short-story collections of the American writer, Lydia Davis. These stories, some of which are no longer than a couple of lines, are a combination of wry, detailed observation and meticulous construction; we hear a recording of one of them, Dog Hair, in the performance. Both Davis and Martens are concerned about writing, what it can achieve and how to achieve it. Many of Davis’s short stories and her one novel, The End of the Story, are as much an elaborate questioning of language and form as they are vehicles for a story or observation. In Rule of Three Martens develops the idea in ways not dissimilar to Davis with juxtaposed, unrelated episodes that are centred on the musical input. It’s a more abstract approach that sees the three dancers in repetitive, mathematically precise patterns of walking or running interspersed with fractured solos and more emotionally charged images that draw on sensuality, the extravagant selfie or implied violence (where Jan Fedinger’s misty red lighting is particularly effective). This is the first time Martens has used live music as part of the creation. NAH’s drumming and drum programming, which Martens describes as ‘a strange mix of Steve Reich and Einsturzende Neubaten in a hardcore punk sauce’ are the staves on which the choreographic language is threaded; its insistent beat is a strident, sometimes blindingly loud accompaniment that flirts with the line between supporting the rhythmic dance and dominating it.

As a prelude to the final section, Martens correlates writing and the body with a projected statement that ‘life is too serious for me to go on writing…there are other things I should be doing instead.’ Nakedness and silence become deafening metaphors for the life-affirming antidotes of simplicity and calm to sensory overload.