Bitef

7 for a Secret never to be told The myth around the magpie, and the superstitious beliefs people connect with it, create the frame for the new work by Wim Vandekeybus. The point of departure of this Ultima Vez production is this nearly forgotten rhyme, which superstitious people recited when seeing magpies: One for Sorrow Two for Joy Three for a Girl Four for a Boy Five for Silver Six for Cold Seven for a Secret never to be told

The magpie is considered a messenger of good and evil, truth and charlatanism, reality and nightmare, mysterious rites, fantastic customs and even thundering dances. Her movements in flight, her hopping, her attraction to shining objects, her human chattering, her androgynous appearance and her ironical indifference to the meanings we give to her, are the motifs for the new performance, 7 for a Secret never to be told. „The change from the well-known to the uncertain that's what I am interested in”, says Vandekeybus. Therefore the company's aim is the visualization of human transformation. The magpie and his master travel through and are influenced by emotions, genders and precious metals to arrive at the 'unformulatable'. The rhyme's seven verses determine the structure of

the production. The performers move through seven parts to the music of different composers; existing scores, as well as new compositions by Arno, Charo Calvo, Pascal Comelade, Thiery De Mey, Kimmo Hakola and Pierre Vervloesem. We are confronted with the impossibility of completely understanding the events that surround us, the relation between them, the reason why they happen. Superstitious people try to approach the complexity of life by, for example, giving a meaning to phenomenons in nature. Things that in themselves are indifferent are given the power to become significant in order to explain events and feelings. One for Sorrow, two for Joy, three for a Girl, four for a Boy, five for Silver, six for Cold, seven for a Secret never to be told. The magpie to which this rhyme refers does not think about the world in terms of sorrow, joy, boy, girl, silver, gold or secret. It is people who began connecting these words with a number of magpies they observed. Although I am not really a superstitious person myself, I am fascinated by the way people manage to give a sense to the events in their lives, explain their own way of being. Superstitious people don't have lazy minds, on the contrary. I would say that superstition is a creative way of dealing with reality. We all have the need and the hunger to believe in something. The day I found this rhyme I decided to use it as a script for my new piece. A script of seven words. A theatre-text or a dictionnary containing seven words only: two extreme emotions, the two sexes, two precious metals and secret. The dancers and myself took the freedom to give to these seven words an existence through movement, through people. For each scene we developed a specific scenography and different movement material. I wanted to bring these words on stage in a human way, in a passionate way. One dancer plays a bird, another one is the outsider. The seven other dancers each 'carry' one of the words, one of the scenes. And the secret is everywhere. Or maybe it doesn't exist. Maybe theatre has more to do with hiding then revealing. Wim Vandekeybus