Tanz und Ekstase: Alain Platels VSPRS

Inspired by Monteverdi’s "Maria Vespers", one of the most magnificent examples of seventeenth century religious music, and also influenced by the work of neurologist Oliver Sacks and filmmaker Arthur van Gehuchtens, Platel’s idiosyncratic composition demands an intense engagement from performers and audience alike. To give corporeal form to psychiatric anguish the dancers not only studied the movements and behaviours of people suffering from autism, Tourettes or hysteria but also plundered their deepest personal experiences. Their passionate performance, replete with religious and sexual imagery, is complemented by a furious musical score that fuses baroque, jazz and Balkan sounds. With footage from VSPRS shows, along with interviews with the dancers and Platel himself, Sophie Fiennes masterfully brings to the big screen an uninhibited dance performance that unleashes the most extreme of human emotions. (DOK.fest München)