Bleak House

Eccle­siasticus, the bleakest book in the Old Testament, is the text Tim Rushton chose as the basis of the first of two dances opening the tiny dance stage at Copen­hagen‘s new Opera (see the magazine section). “Kridt“ (i.e. “chalk“) opens in darkness, to the sound of chalk on a board; the sound of bleak school days, the cane and discipline. A body is being outlined, like a corpse on the tarmac, while one of the dancers from Rushton‘s company, Nyt Dansk Danse­teater, writes out the words from the Bible about the “times:“ “a time to be born, and a time to die“ etc.

The text is also recited in Greek by Anna Sappho Polychronopoulou during the first part of the performance. The dancers are dressed simply in sombrely coloured trousers and little black dresses.
In this respect they match the new, entirely black auditorium and stage, which gives the visitor an uneasy feeling of claustrophobia, both tackling the steep and narrow staircases and when uncomfortably seated. The surroundings were appropriate for a piece like “Kridt,“ one of Rushton‘s most forbidding productions to date.
It is not the first time he has grappled with the Old Testament, having already presented a study of Noah in ...