schrit_tmacher justDANCE! opens in Eupen with „Schrödinger’s Cat“

Between Either and Or

The Belgian-French company Back Pocket presents the experiment „Schrödinger’s Cat“ in a glass cube. The SCENAR!O Festival for theater, dance and circus will take place in the Old Slaughterhouse in Eupen from February 26 to March 24 and at the same time it is Belgian cooperation partner for schrit_tmacher Festival 2023.

by Natalie Broschat

translated by Karoline Strys

Right up front: The title „Schrödinger’s Cat“ refers to a thought experiment from 1935 by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger. It was meant to illustrate quantum mechanical systems in a real world. A cat is in a box with a small amount of radioactive substance, a detector, a hammer, and a poison jar, and you cannot look inside. When the radioactive substance decays, the poison is released and the cat dies. This is not visible which is why the cat is paradoxically dead and alive at the same time until the actual state is determined. In that way the experiment represents an intermediate state as in our understanding there is only either/or: either dead or alive, no simultaneity of these two states.

Compagnie-Back-Pocket-F-Schroedingers-Katze©TANZweb.org

And this is exactly where the interdisciplinary acrobatic collective, the Compagnie Back Pocket from Belgium and France, comes in. In „Le Chat de Schrödinger,“ a four-by-four-meter cube made of endurance glass – which is still opaque at the beginning and only reveals shadows – simultaneously gives both possible states of the cat a dance-acrobatic form. There is also a silver bucket in this square space as well as a wooden table with a book and chair and a mat. The link to quarantine and isolation emerges. The memories of living together in a confined space, of balancing boundaries, of moving and being moved come to mind again.

Aurélien Oudot, co-director of the company, is in this enclosed space from the beginning. Dancer-acrobat Mikaël Bres enters from the outside, thus clearing the view inside the cube. They both wear beige pants, beige shirts (each marked 02020) and a white undershirt. At the beginning they are still moving past one another, yet in a similar manner, away from each other and turned away even synchronously at times. Soon they are flying over each other and glide under one another until they become completely aware of each other and engage in some sort of an acrobatic-circus dance battle. It is amazing what jumps and movements the two present in such a small space. At the same time, the endurance glass cube is accentuated on the struts by differently colored light (Julien Bier). An industrial lamp above the center of the cube, on the other hand, reinforces the laboratory association.

Music is sometimes played in this research room. Mikael Bres celebrates his electric guitar, sings and smokes to it. So, in his fully alive state, he seems to be a rock musician. Or did he refine this art in quarantine? Or is it just a dream of Aurélien Oudot who is lying on the mat? The realities blur as the two dancers, the two agile bodies in the cube, are – perhaps or actually – one and the same. They also represent opposite poles and forces: good and evil, gentle and energetic, alive and dead; as if you are torn apart inside and out. Mikaël Bres sometimes flirts very strongly with the audience, which partially hinders the distance to the experiment and the atmosphere. But exactly this coquetry is good in the end, when one of the two leaves the cube into life and the other finds death again and again.