Unearth is a 4-hour piece transforming excerpts from pop songs into laments with ten chanting dancers, choreographer Jefta van Dinther among them.
They stumble, squat, crawl among us seated on the ground, caress the walls, dig into the floor or into their bodies, search for proximity and touch, gather only to disperse, while chanting repetitively – from ABBA’s When you’re gone, how can I even try to go on? to Lil Wayne’s Dear Lord, you took so many of my people, I’m just wondering why you haven’t taken my life – songs already covered in sad haunting versions by Portishead and JJ.
The body is central in this stripped-down work: everything comes from and because of it, for both performers and audiences – presence, movement, voice, touch, even goosebumps and tears. Focused inwards, the dancers barely make any direct eye contact, yet their presence, proximity and power move us deeply. As the chants wash all over our bodies, it feels like we are lifted from the ground.
Despite being a delicate work, it offers the freedom to arrive and leave whenever you want, change positions, or retreat in your thoughts, creating an intimate space of collective rest, mourning, contemplation and relief. It finishes with a series of mantras: give yourself / hear yourself / cure yourself / I knew your soul / I hear your soul / I’m near your soul.
In that sense it also transcends individuality. The dancers move fluidly together as a group: despite sometime singing alone, there are no solos. They serve something bigger than themselves, and work together to create a sense of belonging, a counterpoint to loneliness, a space for being human, and our grief and empathy also become collective.
These three elements – the fragility of the body, the space for mourning and rest and the coming together – all respond to contemporary times in a simple, profound, and uncompromising way, creating a work of unusual depth.
