Download EIF music review: En Avant, Marche! Sally Stott 26th Aug 2015

EIF music review: En Avant, Marche!
Sally Stott
26th Aug 2015
Edinburgh International Festival music review: En Avant, Marche!, reviewed by The
Scotsman’s Sally Stott.
★★★★
An older man stands, awkward, on an empty stage, cymbals in hands, trying to find the right
moment to bring them crashing together. Really, he wants to play the trombone – his
instrument of 30 years – but he is ill and so that’s no longer a possibility.
In their first joint production since Gardenia, directors Frank Van Laecke and Alain Platel
(founder of Les Ballets C de la B) break down the familiar images, steps and sounds of a
marching brass band and turn them into something far more profound: a metaphor for life
itself.
The formal arrangements of composer Steven Prengels, the sense of ritual and pageantry, the
progressive beats on drums: while individual participants may come and go, the band,
essentially, plays on.
The tragedy of the man and his baton-wielding majorette partner, both less physically capable
than they once were, is made painfully clear through their attempts to join in with the
movement and music – mostly well-known classics from the 19th and 20th centuries – as it’s
embraced by the next generation (or, perhaps, younger versions of themselves).
But this isn’t a piece that simply shows us a final performance; it’s one that displays the
whole process, from the quiet setting up of the chairs, to the rousing build-up of the music
from, as well as professional musicians, a local group (in this instance, the Dalkeith and
Monktonhall Brass Band). Haunting communal singing further emphasises this is an
ensemble performance.
“What is the meaning of life?” the man asks, perplexed, through a fragmented dialogue that
draws on many languages, leaving us to translate them purely through their tone and emotion
– a bit like the music itself.
A rousing finale denies us a final souring note: there is no meaning, nor is there an end, just a
continuation of everything that has gone before.
Kings Theatre
Published in The Scotsman on 26 August 2015
https://www.wow247.co.uk/2015/08/26/eif-music-review-en-avant-marche/