Free Among the Dead

“On eight video screens a naked figure, alternately male and female, moves like a pas de deux in slow motion with ‘the shadow of death’. The dancers are in the spotlight. They lead and follow the dark shadow that appears and disappears. The images are not scary or macabre, but peaceful and serene: And Death Shall Have No Dominion. / Dead men naked They Shall Be One (Dylan Thomas).

The monitors are arranged in a circle. The viewer is in the centre. The monotonous low sound resonates, implodes, and the climax turns into a second of solemn silence. The silhouette of death simultaneously overcomes the eight bodies. Weevers makes his audience share his story: we ourselves are the vulnerable centre, we ourselves are ‘free among the dead’.

Free among the dead, like the slain That lie in the grave, Whom thou rememberest no more: and They are cut off from thy hand is taken from Psalm 88: 5 in the King James Version. No other translation, also not in Dutch, is so rich in associations concerning the boundaries between faith and secularism, church and world, bible and art, word and image.

Weevers breaks conventions and opens new perspectives. In his distinctive minimalist way he constantly searches for the essence. In contrast with the despairing song of the psalmist he presents his hopeful choreography of freedom and life. In Free Among the Dead video, theatre and dance – the worlds of Viola, Beckett and Bausch – come together in an existential, totally own language of the media arts.”