SINGAPORE — It’s Going To Get Worse And Worse And Worse, My Friend. Well now. What a pessimistic way to wrap up da:ns Festival, don’t you think?

But you have to admit, that’s one hell of a title.

Belgian duo Voetvolk (comprising dancer/choreographer Lisbeth Gruwez and musician Maarten Van Cauwenberghe) takes the title from a recorded speech by American televangelist Jimmy Swaggart. And in the programme notes, there’s a short excerpt from said speech: “We must find an answer. We have not made any advancement at all. What are we to do? It’s going to get worse and worse and worse, my friend.”

I’m not sure if that’s in sequence or these are from different parts of the speech. I’m not even sure what to think of these phrases or of Swaggart’s “involvement”. More of this later.

In contrast to Hiroaki Umeda’s “man versus light” shtick in Holistic Strata, Gruwez and Van Cauwenberghe does “woman versus speech/sound”, the relationship between the power of speech and that of the body.

I love the premise — it makes perfect sense. Speeches are physical, public performances, gestures as equally important as words.

It begins with the androgynously-dressed Gruwez taking her time with a slight gesture of the hand, repeatedly, then eventually adding in more. The words, muffled and clipped at the beginning, slowly become clearer.

The syncing becomes evident as the phrases from said speech are thrown into the mix. Or a remix, as it were. Van Cauwenberghe’s live manipulation corresponds to Gruwez’s movements, her body, in effect, assembling and reassembling, looping and truncating Swaggart’s phrases. Literally, two vocabularies (dance and word) feed off each other.

It culminates with Gruwez eventually entering a trance of sorts as, in the background you hear the muffled sound of a speech. The words aren’t clear but, presumably, the effect on the dancer is. All of sudden she’s jumping and convulsing and everything ecstatically peaks as she jumps and jumps even more and you’ve got super loud violins blaring. The body takes over and the speech — whatever it was — is gone.

It’s an interesting project, for sure, but I’m not really sure what it’s trying to tell me. Yes, it’s packed with loads of suggestive elements — the Hitler-ish bits (?) being the one that stood out — but the more I thought about it, the more I found everything all too vague.

What “it” are they talking about here exactly?

Okay, you can’t help but think of Hitler in some of the bits and the piece’s title alludes to a speech by a rightwing preacher. But I’m rather suspicious of bringing that whole baggage in immediately — for one, I’m offered no context regarding the specific phrases used from Swaggart’s speech.

If it’s about the power of speeches in a general sense, why narrow it down to these two signifiers (one of which I’m just hazarding a guess, the other, probably not as well known in Singapore)? I’m suspicious about the cynical perspective in the end as well. Surely, if one is dealing with the *physical* power of speech, Martin Luther King’s I Have A Dream can evoke the same kind of rapturous reaction.

Unclear politics aside, I still appreciate its exercise in fleshing out the relationship between speeches and dance. I think.