7/27/2019 Booty Looting Review

1/2

Glimpses of stolen reality

-Booty Looting, Wim Wandekeybus-

When writing about this show I have to keep it clear in my mind that it is absolutely necessary

to talk about the references. Because booty Looting!, the latest show of Wim Wandekeybus is aboute"plicit references and it would be a pity not to mention them. I confess that I had probably missed

some and perhaps my lecture of the show will not be complete.

#nyway, I will start by saying that there are $ performers %& actors and ' dancers(, a

photographer and a musician who provides live music on stage. )he storyline is simple* the

reconstruction of Brigit Walter+s life, knowing that Brigit Walter is the name of the actress that is

playing herself and all the performers keep their real name on stage.

)he beginning is an ironical homage to oseph Beuys+s performance I like America and

America likes me where the actor erry illick plays oseph Beuys and the four dancers are the coyotes

attacking him, while anny Willems, the photographer, is taking as much pictures as possible e"posing

himself to the risk of being attacked. )his is a first reference in order to make a very essentialised

passage through performance history and erry aka oseph Beuys is pushing the moment even further

by proposing an even more dangerous game, allowing the four coyotes! to tear up his clothes and eat

him alive.

Well, we+re in a theater, actually there is no coyote on stage and the difference between the real

performance %with all the word+s real! connotations( and this fake remake is strongly related to the

title. Booty Looting! means stealing what has already been stolen and in a first phase/ Wandekeybus

steals oseph Beuys+ art that Beuys himself had stolen from the reality. 0ou steal from me, I steal from

you. #rt is a bit like that!, says Wandekeybus in an interview.

1ow it+s the moment for Brigit Walter to enter the stage being presented as an anthropologist

interested in oseph Beuys+ activity in order to give her opinion about the remake. But everything gets

confusing, she drops dead and all of a sudden she comes back to life as a famous actress.

2or those who know Wandekeybus for his dance perfomances, the right thing to say is that this

show has a bit of everything, as you can see from the cast/ the accent goes on the mi"ture of these

elements %photography, dance, theater, music( and it+s difficult to label it. But, as Wandekeybus

declared in the same interview, his ma3or concern was the photography and its impact on stage. )he

connection between photography and the study that 4oland Barthes wrote about it plays an important

part for a better understanding of Wandekeybus intention. It+s said that people were afraid of being

photographed because they thought their souls were being stolen. 5hotography has a lot to do with

7/27/2019 Booty Looting Review

2/2

death because it immortali6es something that is gone7dead and Barthes talks also about a special

function of photography, confirming that something happened, something real.

In this performance, there are pictures taken every minute and pro3ected immediately on a big

screen, the photographer gives us pieces7photos of Brigit Walter.+s past. # past that is part true, part

fiction. In this case, photography has a double power* of the past and of the present and it works in thesame way as the theater does* showing something that perhaps it doesn+t e"ist but is present on stage.

)he frame of the photos confronts the frame that the spectators have from their seats, so the

photographer is there for giving another vision, another reality or a made-up one %see the photo session

for reconstructing Brigit Walter+s relationship with her sons having some fake views behind them(.

Who is Brigit Walter8 erry illick is a post-dramatic story-teller, he gives fragmented details

intentionally confusing the listener, the pictures could say a different story and the stage becomes a

mess where everybody can be anyone7anything. Brigit Walter is an anthropologist, an actress, a bad

mother, a desired woman. 9he is 4omy 9chneider playing in L'Inferof :enri Georges ;lou6ot, she

becomes