Collected press

‘The piece is ingeniously constructed and despite the serious approach the performance bears an exceptional and comical lightness.’
(Jury VSCD-Mimeprize 2007)

‘It is an enchanting performance. (…) The texts are witty and ingenious.’
(Marijn van der Jagt, Vrij Nederland)

‘Müller and her performers succeed well in keeping the suspense: the humour is dry, and the timing of words and changes in scenes is precise and musical.’
(Miram van der Linden, de Volkskrant)

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‘While We Were Holding it Together’ -
Theatrical research that pulls no punches

Hans Van Dam, Rotterdamse Dagblad (NL)
26 - 10- 06
Four stars ****

The contrast between expectation and actual performance will seldom be greater than when watching the new project by choreographer and performer Ivana Müller. Whereas the text on the flyer describes continually changing images, onstage there is almost complete standstill, but then to such an extent that one begins to sympathise with the five performers who must hold their poses until almost the point of collapse. The only movements they are permitted are those necessary for the uttering of lines and making facial gesture.

The frozen poses nonetheless fit wonderfully well into a wide variety of imagined stories: about a rock band, about a picnic or about meaning it itself. All the stories are able to come into their own using the same visual mainstays. All this goes to show that ‘the way things are’ need not impose meaning.

But Müller goes far further still. She ultimate stirs the very core of art in this antithesis of the Victorian tableau vivant and the implied imaginary awakening from the collective intoxication of the Dionysian orgies. The content may be densely theoretical, but Müller manages nonetheless to provide a light, humorous touch. It is all done very cleverly, but as an audience member one must also be an enthusiastic fellow researcher in order to let it work. This makes the spectator’s role almost as arduous as that of the motionless performers. But even so it is extraordinary that, travelling so lightly, it is possible to navigate the universe of human significance.

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radio review excerpts
Pieter T’Jonk, pogram Ramblas, radio Klara (BE)

(…) and so now there is a new piece, While We Were Holding It Together, that once again deals with representation. The source that Müller draws from this time is academic painting - the nineteenth century style that is - and its theatrical counterpart, the tableau vivant. A tableau vivant was a party game played by the bourgeoisie of the period. Basically, it consisted of people dressing up and, in a group, taking on a particular pose. It was then up to the others present to guess what scene was being represented. The analogy with David or Géricault’s work is clear: puffed up rhetoric and affected postures are the very essence of this game. If you assess these works from the viewpoint of a search for authenticity, they are hard to swallow. But despite that, and for a decades, people gazed in admiration at these highly formalised and rather ethereal displays that had little relation to ‘real’ events. And this was still in a time renowned for its pursuit of ultimate realism. Müller does not step on the slippery ice of historical study of these representations; they are instead a kind of springboard for a discussion of theatricality and representation in general - and its stubborn endurance.

In an interview with Veto she said the following on this subject: ‘Three things were important to me. Firstly I was interested in investigating the representation of a body, and the body itself, and particularly how a body is represented in the context of theatre. Secondly I am fascinated by the way in which images can be manipulated by the imagination related matter is how we can talk of truth and reality. Thirdly I wondered if I could make a performance in which the audience’s responsibility is almost as great as the performers’. How could I create a performance that only comes into being if the audience participates, while not asking the audience to be anything other than the audience?’

(…) an important attraction of the performance lies not only in the conceptually brilliant demonstration of the power of theatrical folly but also in the métier with which this is achieved. An improbable proposition - five immobile actors almost haphazardly give vent to imagined images - is transformed into a performance that transfixes from start to finish and even more, directs the audience and thus involves it in the spectacle.

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