‘Technically intriguing, but also at a visual and artistic level, it is a fascinating game in time and space.’

 

Tuur Devens in Theaterkrant.nl, 3 April 2017

RHYTHMIC JAMMING WITH JUGGLING BALLS AND DRUMS

Years ago, I would often write enthusiastically about the symbiosis between physical circus arts and theatre in ‘cirque nouveau’, circus theatre. However in recent years, this circus theatre has often been reduced to merely showcasing and showing off with acrobatic and other circus arts. However clever these may be, I want more than that alone. I want at least some kind of layering, a theatrically imaginative layer beneath the tricks on the trapeze, on the floor, in the ropes, on balancing devices, and with or without balls. Circus theatre – naturally with the exception of people like Ronaldo and Alexander Vantourhoudt – has become too much about a circus of human tricks in a slick wrapper. For me, this is entertainment that is rather too tasteful and too one-dimensional.

I want imperfection, vulnerability, existence, life, imagination… I want to be touched and moved. But how can I find these things in a circus these days? In Flanders alone, there are now around a hundred circus companies! Just try picking out a few choice saplings from this thicket. I am guided by chance, and from time to time I come across something beautiful. One such moment occurred at the recent international Krokusfestival in Hasselt, a festival which focuses on theatre and dance for children and young people. Post uit Hessdalen were due to put on a short performance there. A few months previously, their film Poolnacht had moved me. So anything was possible.

It proved to be a surprising moment! PAKMAN is one of the few performances in which juggling with balls has enthused me. I’m not interested in whether someone can chuck five or six or seven balls in the air and then catch them again. I want to be moved by the juggler’s vulnerability in his relationship to the balls, to the space, the surroundings, the imagination, the content, the atmosphere… And PAKMAN moved me.

Post uit Hessdalen does full justice to its name. This small, youthful company is named after the village of Hessdalen in Norway, where a mysterious light spectacle has been witnessed. Inexplicable and fascinating, it eludes time and space. The film-maker and circus artist Stijn Grupping and theatre-maker and scriptwriter Ine Van Baelen also seem to want to create this kind of impact with their hybrid performances, in which all kinds of artistic disciplines are mixed. They might achieve this using film and video, or by weaving circus tricks into other artistic disciplines.

Poolnacht (2015) was an intriguing video in which virtual landscapes merged into images of nature. People try to escape the pressure of urbanisation, and in the North seek out a transcendence to point the way to a pure future, but whether or not this can be found in the play of the (northern) light and the dark silhouettes of trees and black water remains to be seen, particularly once they return.

PAKMAN is a symbiotic game of juggling and music. Using bounce balls, Stijn Grupping enters into a rhythmic dialogue with the drums, which are played by Frederik Meulyzer. But there is more. The group of spectators is packed together in the covered back of a lorry. The pakman is not a virtual figure, but a sombre man in brown workers’ clothing behind a glass counter, engaged in stamping large boxes. These then glide across the conveyor belt towards the audience, who can use them as seats. A postal counter where you can collect packages? This is no longer of our time, as now you can order everything online, only for it to be delivered to your door a few hours later.

The man stamps and at fixed times takes short breaks to drink and eat, consuming coffee from a thermos flask and sandwiches from a lunchbox. He gets bored, discovers some balls, starts throwing them around, and the game has begun. His loneliness is given a rhythm, his work tempo increases, and a second person starts drumming on the kitchen equipment. The two jam in a musical game in which it is no longer clear whether the bouncing balls or the hand beats of the drummer are determining the rhythm. You try to follow the balls in their trajectory through the space behind the glass, as they fly from the table to the floor, before bouncing against the wall via a plank and returning to the man.

Technically intriguing, but also visually artistic, this is a fascinating game played out in space and time. The soaring balls create geometric lines and the old-fashioned postal counter is transformed into a space in which sound rhythms create a magical interplay of lines. A world that appears virtual but in fact is not. This short but powerful performance lasts for just 25 minutes: a stunning example of imaginative circus music-theatre. The age guideline for the performance is 5+. This is something that people of all ages can enjoy. As you step out of the lorry, you leave a separate world, and find yourself needing to watch your step as you climb down. Luckily a helping hand offers you the necessary support for your return to the real world.

‘Energetic sweat, cadence and detail: Post uit Hessdalen has it all.’

PAKMAN in De Gentenaar: 17 July 2016 I Magali Degrande

To the rhythm of the juggling ball * * * *

The key discovery of the festival is undoubtedly PAKMAN. At least, if you are still able to get to see it, because the small container on Spaanskasteelplein only has room for around twenty spectators. The fact that the current summery temperatures are making it oppressively hot is something that you simply have to take in your stride.

In the small area that the Belgian duo Post uit Hessdalen had available to them, they have minutely recreated a package processing service. Complete with conveyor belt and an old-fashioned thermos flask at lunchtime. There’s some neat wordplay too, for in fact the piece is primarily based on the computer game Pacman (with a ‘c’) in which an open-mouthed smiley tries to catch as many balls as possible. The two men also catch balls as jugglers in their breaks from work. The rubber hits the walls to a rhythm that must have taken a serious amount of practice. A robust underlying drum solo completes the picture. Energetic sweat, tempo and details: Post uit Hessdalen has it all.

‘A thrilling jam between drummer and juggler. … The power of their imagination causes the sad package system to fall apart at the seams.’

 

PAKMAN in De Morgen: 10 August 2016 I EVELYNE COUSSENS

 Juggling and drumming in a lorry

Nobody is jealous of a person who delivers packages: racing around in his van, he braves endless traffic jams and irritated customers, and is never fast enough. The young company Post uit Hessdalen have created the music-theatre performance PAKMAN about this modern Sisyphus. The audience is invited into the back of a lorry, whose interior has been converted into the depressing depot of a parcels business. They witness relentlessly ticking clocks, a conveyor belt, and a single emotionless employee engaged in stamping (circus artist Stijn Grupping), who has been drilled to the rhythm of the production machine. A holiday brochure from the package company Jetair is the wildest dream in which this human robot can indulge. Or is it?

 

Something goes wrong in this pakman’s head when he spies a set of juggling balls and starts rhythmically bouncing them up against the walls of his claustrophobic workspace. To the drum roll that is thus created, a second package man unexpectedly joins in from the front part of the truck (jazz drummer Frederik Meulyzer). From that moment onwards, a thrilling jam session is created between the juggler and the drummer. Are the drums chasing the rhythm of the balls or is it the other way round? At the core of Post uit Hessdalen are the artist Stijn Grupping and the writer Ine Van Baelen. The power of their imagination causes the sad package system to start falling apart at the seams, until the plug is finally pulled. Thus this small, but carefully created and lovingly performed PAKMAN still manages to finish on a hopeful note.

‘PAKMAN puts a whole new spin on the ‘industrial music’ genre.’

 

Liv Laveyne in Circusmagazine#48: 15 September 2016

I want to break free from the wheel of the economy

At first sight, these would seem to be two incompatible worlds: the world of the circus artist and that of the factory worker. And yet the performance PAKMAN unites the two in a small lorry.

It’s over twenty degrees outside when we are called inside the cargo space of a lorry parked in the shadow of the church in Ghent’s Macharius neighbourhood. The daily grind enacted within, where Pakman (Stijn Grupping) stamps and heaps up cardboard boxes to the rhythm of the conveyor belt and the mercilessly ticking clock, is as grey as the idyllic MiramirO festival outside, where people are happily whiling away their summer holidays. Separated from the audience by a plexiglass wall, this tableaux becomes even sadder. Just as you would stare at a chimpanzee in the zoo, here you stare at a person in his (self-imposed?) prison: the treadmill of the economy. But tragedy aside, this is also a human being; one who succeeds in using his imagination to lend colour to the ordinary, and in channelling his resilience into transforming tempo into rhythm. Arbeit macht nicht frei, but our playfulness does set us free. Homo est homo ludens.

Imagination works

Initially Pakman slavishly follows the tempo of the machine, before breaking loose and creating his own rhythm against the steel walls of his ‘cell’ using juggling balls. When a second figure (Frederik Meulyzer) starts drumming from behind the boxes, a rhythmic duet unfolds which at times is more like a duel. Is it a dialogue, a fight between colleagues, or an alter ego? Between a human being and a machine? With time or with himself? And who is leading whom in this merry-go-round?

PAKMAN puts a whole new spin on the ‘industrial music’ genre. As in the famous factory scene in Dancer in the Dark, in which Björk harnesses music to sing herself free from the machines, Tinguely’s iron musical sculptures, or the audio-visual road trip Clangdelum Cinematographica, in which the sound artist Hans Beckers explores the musicality of our surroundings, PAKMAN also couples and uncouples the pulse of the machine to the vibe of bouncing balls and drums.

Post uit Hessdalen

PAKMAN is the latest creation by Post uit Hessdalen, the company headed up by the theatre-maker Ine Van Baelen and film-maker and circus artist Stijn Grupping (co-founder of Ell Circo d’ell Fuego). Alluding to Hessdalen, a valley in Norway in which an inexplicable light phenomenon has been playing out in the sky for years, their style is equally inexplicable. From their debut The Smallest Family Circus in the World, in which they used video projection to transcend the physical boundaries of the circus body in time and space, to the documentary Poolnacht, in which the shimmering grey darkness and a narrator’s voice bring you into a timeless trance, or now this PAKMAN: radically different in form and discipline, in content they share a single concern: as human beings, how do we deal with the phenomenon of time? As a virtual, natural or economic factor. As a seducer, enemy or playmate? Tick, tock.

Address unknown

Does this substantive quest make PAKMAN an incredibly powerful circus performance? No. You sense that the roar of repetition is too loud for this to be the case. Instead, this is the perfect, made-to-measure box with a label designed for every broad festival context. Nevertheless, Post uit Hessdalen is naturally skilled at being that elusive light from which its name is derived. The fact that this duo carries out in-depth research over a longer period of time than a single performance, coupled with their wide range of forms and disciplines, is precisely what makes them so interesting. This is particularly pertinent in the circus genre, where performances tend to suffer from short-term thinking along the lines of ‘we’ve come up with a cool idea’. Above all, let’s hope that Post uit Hessdalen never find their destination and that they keep on searching. Time is on their side.

PAKMAN in De Standaard: 13 August 2016 | WOUTER HILLAERT

Future guaranteed

For the last few years, Theater op de Markt has boosted its artistic appeal with tried-and-tested open-air theatre and young, home-grown talent, some of which has matured in the Dommelhof workshop.

In amongst all this great new stuff, Post uit Hessdalen has proved to be a particular revelation. In PAKMAN, the company puts you into a converted lorry, the cramped biotope of a mail order packer. Juggler Stijn Grupping plays the conveyor belt worker of the modern age. He doesn’t so much showcase his ability as make ingenious music with drummer Frederik Meulyzer. Together they depict the rise and fall of our era’s working patterns: ever faster, ever changing. The audience positively laps it up.