A silent dance based on the writings of Samuel Beckett doesn’t exactly set the heart racing. Cue gloom and despair, without even Beckett’s words to enliven it. And when the 10 dancers of the French Compagnie Maguy Marin are revealed in crepuscular darkness, clothes white, faces plastered in white clay, feet dragging across a chalk-covered floor, I feared the worst.
But May B is a magical piece, both tribute and elaboration. Marin, now 72, made it in 1981, when Beckett was still alive. That early section, all shuffling, grunting and dry humping, sets the absurdist tone as the dancers move in a precisely modulated group, occasionally delivering a line from Endgame (in French): “Finished, it’s finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished.”
