Review by William Chan
Belgian artistes Tuur Marinus and Flup Marinus, in collaboration with a team of six Macau dancers, presented an innovative re-creation of their two contemporary works, Still Animals and TH LNG GDBY, at Macau’s T Theatre in one show.
The event, organised by the local art collective Four Dimension Spatial, ran on Friday and Saturday night, with a rehearsal performance held last Thursday, which I had the opportunity to attend.
Still Animals
Still Animals, originally created in 2012, is a black box theatre performance inspired by Eadweard Muybridge’s iconic photographic studies of animals and humans in motion.* In this re-creation, the piece was staged as an immersive installation, with performers placed inside a plexiglass box that evoked the display cases commonly seen in natural history museums.
The setup cleverly replicated the museum experience, with the box placed in the centre of the stage. Audience members were invited to walk around the box, observing the performers from multiple angles, as if they were examining an exhibit.
Each scene was carefully choreographed to mimic the behaviour of animals. The room was illuminated for around 20 seconds during each scene, with the performers striking animal-like poses or making mechanical, repetitive movements. Between these bursts of light, the stage would descend into darkness as the dancers reorganised into new positions for the next sequence.
This cyclical rhythm of light and movement created a mesmerising atmosphere, drawing viewers into a world where human and animal bodies became indistinguishable. The performers’ poses felt frozen in time, much like taxidermy displays, but their subtle, mechanical movements introduced an unsettling vitality.
The piece also posed a deeper philosophical question: how do we perceive and represent bodies, both human and animal? By placing human performers in an artificial space designed to showcase animals, the work blurred distinctions between species and hinted at a dystopian future where animals may become so rare that humans must embody their memory.
TH LNG GDBY
TH LNG GDBY, originally created in 2022, marks a stark departure from the meditative stillness of Still Animals. Combining elements of dance performance and a cappella vocalisation, the work drew inspiration from “The Long Goodbye”, a film adaptation of US rock band LCD Soundsystem’s 2012 supposed farewell concert, which likely influenced its title.
The choreography was intricate yet grounded in simplicity, relying heavily on the dancers’ ability to synchronise their movements with their own beatboxing**. The opening segment featured three dancers lying on the ground in a vertical line while three others pushed them counterclockwise across the floor. This movement emphasised friction, as the dancers maximised their contact with the floor, almost as if they were mopping it.
This motif of friction and tension, often avoided in traditional Western contemporary dance, formed the conceptual core of TH LNG GDBY. In contrast to the light, airy movements of ballet, where tension is minimised, this piece embraced heaviness and resistance.
In another sequence, the dancers lay in horizontal rows, interlocking arms and legs, pulling and pushing each other in a motion reminiscent of a train moving along tracks. Their costumes – jackets and trousers with horizontal fluorescent stripes –further reinforced this imagery, evoking janitors or workers mimicking the tools they use. The beatboxing sounds in this scene resembled the rhythmic creaks and clanks of an old train in motion or the repetitive swipes of mops against the floor.
The dancers also formed groups of three, rolling across the stage as a single tangled mass. The movement evoked gymnastics or even judo, as the performers relied on each other for balance and momentum, amplifying the physicality of their interactions.
The final segment invited audience participation, as the dancers encouraged us to beatbox while they sang a song based on our beats. This interactive moment highlighted the difficulty of producing loud, consistent percussive sounds while maintaining rhythm and tempo, deepening my appreciation for the dancers’ ability to sustain flawless vocalisation throughout the 30-minute performance.
The performances showcased the Marinus brothers’ ability to blend humour, aesthetics, and philosophical enquiry with the physicality of dance, and the local dancers brought their own energy and perspective to these re-creations. The result was a riveting and thought-provoking evening that left a lasting impression.
* Muybridge’s iconic photographic studies, created in the late 19th century, are a groundbreaking series of sequential images capturing animals and humans in motion. Using multiple cameras and his innovative zoopraxiscope, Muybridge analysed movement frame by frame, revolutionising scientific understanding of locomotion and laying the foundation for motion pictures. – Poe
** Beatboxing is a vocal percussion art form that involves producing sounds, rhythms, and beats using one’s mouth, lips, tongue, and voice. It often mimics drum machines and other musical instruments and can be combined with singing and rapping. – Poe
Performers mimic the behavior of animals using body movements inside a plexiglass box. – Photos provided by Four Dimension Spatial
Belgian artistes Tuur Marinus (right) and Flup Marinus talk with the local dancers at T Theatre last week.
Dancers lay in horizontal rows, interlocking arms and legs, pulling and pushing each other during Thursday’s performance at T Theatre.
