Betroffenheit review – trauma and grief shape a

startling, disturbing performance

theguardian.com/stage/2017/feb/28/betroffenheit-review-trauma-and-grief-shape-a-startling-disturbing-
performance

Stephanie Convery 28 February 2017

How does the mind respond to a traumatic event? What do you say to yourself to process
what’s happened? What thought patterns help you manage the unthinkable?

These are the questions at the heart of Betroffenheit, the contemporary dance and theatre
fusion created by the renowned Canadian choreographer Crystal Pite and writer and
performer Jonathan Young.

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Betroffenheit – a word which means a state of shock, trauma, and bewilderment – began
with co-creator Jonathan Young’s own experience of trauma and grief, after his daughter,
niece and nephew died in a cabin fire while the family was on holiday in 2009. Yet while
those very specific circumstances form the basis of the piece, they are not its focus: what
Betroffenheit seeks to explore instead is the internal process that follows after the event
itself – the “coming to terms”.

The show opens on a stage set to resemble a disused warehouse or industrial space, with
an enormous steel pillar bisecting the room. Thick cables attached to fuse boxes lie
tangled beside the pillar. It comes as a shock to realise these cables are moving, slithering
snake-like across the floor and climbing the walls of their own accord. Lights begin to
flash, accompanied by questioning voices, and in the corner a figure appears, curled up on
itself.

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 Betroffenheit explores the psychological struggle of trauma and grief. Photograph: Michael
Slobodian

This genuinely disturbing beginning sets a high bar for the two-act production – one that
it frequently surpasses. The figure in the corner is Young, who performs the protagonist
role directly inspired by his own grief. As the other dancers appear – in clown make-up, in
spangly showgirl outfits, in smoke-coloured tracksuits – they embody the voices of the
protagonist’s consciousness, pushing and pulling him through the trauma, the shut-down,
the failed attempts at coping (addiction, denial) in mesmerising sequences of growing
intensity: tap-dancing, mocking, questioning, at times literally holding him up.

This room of the first act is both a safe haven and trap: a place of disconnection and
isolation, emotional numbness and social alienation. The voices follow a pattern
throughout the show, repeating variations on the same dialogue, which resembles both
the discussion between therapist and patient, but also the internal processes of a grieving
mind, as it grapples with the need for functioning mental architecture while struggling to
confront the emptiness of profound loss.

As the show comes to a crescendo, the room itself begins to crack apart. By the time the
curtain rises on the second act, we have come to the bottom of grief, to the place of
confrontation and reconnection, to the place where it is necessary to ask: is there anything
left here to find?

Pite’s choreography is eclectic and evocative and the performing ensemble is exceptional.
Tiffany Tregarthen in particular stands out as a most versatile and expressive performer,
inhabiting a spidery, almost demonic presence in one moment and delivering an
emotional crisis with pathos and sensitivity in another.

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 Photograph: Toni Wilkinson

Inherent in Betroffenheit’s aesthetic is the idea of working through trauma as labour, as a

mechanical process involving rigid structure and repetition, systematic deconstruction
and reconstruction. It is the practice of therapy but also the performance of survival – a
performance that is necessary if only to convince the performer that survival is itself
possible.

But the piece is ultimately redemptive: an expression of the immensely painful but
necessary act of reaching down into the depths of grief and finding the thing worth saving
– the memory of those lost.

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