Choreographer Wim Vandekeybus releases first feature film

As a young lad with no specific training, Wim Vandekeybus successfully auditioned for Jan Fabre’s The Power of Theatrical Madness in the mid-1980s. Only a year later, Vandekeybus founded his own dance company, Ultima Vez.

The Belgian’s first production, What the Body Does Not Remember, immediately made waves internationally and paved the way for an ambulant career. In the almost 30 years since founding Ultima Vez (there’s a celebration on hand next year), video and film have been an integral part of Vandekeybus’ constant search to shape and reshape the language of dance.

The 50-minute film Blush (2005), based on the eponymous performance, was heralded as an inventive dance film, and for his 2011 production Monkey Sandwich, Vandekeybus created a feature-length narrative film (selected for the Venice film festival) to go with the live single-actor performance. He has also made stand-alone short films not directly related to his dance productions.

And now there is Galloping Mind, his long-awaited feature film, which premiered at Bozar in Brussels last week and releases in cinemas this week.

To say that it has been a rocky road from idea to finish would be a gross understatement. A full decade ago, Vandekeybus pitched the film as a story about a father who loses sight of his child, born to his mistress. But he gets back in touch with the boy through an accident.

This simple description wasn’t the only idea zinging around in the choreographer’s head. But even after a decade of production woes, travels and a continuous creative output in different artistic disciplines, the core of the story is still there. Though it has germinated, so to speak.

Free rein

Galloping Mind is the story of twins (pictured) – a boy, Panscó, and a girl, Rása – who are separated at birth. They don’t know of each other’s existence and grow up under entirely different circumstances, both fatherless, or so they believe.

In a dramatic event that includes their parents, the twins cross paths again, never, they say, to be separated. “The toughest love stories are the most interesting ones, and without unexpected events, fate becomes really boring,” Vandekeybus says.

In Galloping Mind, some of those unexpected turns of events involve horses. “My father was a veterinarian and we kids rode around on ponies well before we could walk,” he explains. “In the winter, we yoked the horses to a series of sleds, and then of course everything went awry.”

But Vandekeybus, 52, wasn’t only inspired by his childhood in rural Antwerp province. He went to Dublin with one of his first productions in the late 1980s and stumbled onto a surprising scene. “I saw children riding around on ponies, just leaving the animals to graze in front of the school when they went to class,” he says. “Every Sunday, there would be a pony market, with children hanging around on horseback. I went there to photograph them. It was just great. The combination of children and horses really has this sense of wildness.”

In Galloping Mind, filmed in both English and Hungarian, Panscó is taken in by a young street gang. They commit petty crimes and roam the city on horses they retrieved from the sea. “In my films, the characters are mortal rebels, fighting with whatever they can muster,” says Vandekeybus. “This time, I had this Robin Hood gang of children in mind. Scenes such as the one in which the children get the horses out of the sea have something surreal and poetic about them – mythological also. But I really wanted to make a film that reflects me, that bears my stamp.”

Defying the medium

With this first stand-alone feature film, Vandekeybus also sets out to put his photography skills on show and demonstrate his willingness to wander off the beaten track. “I had a director of photography [Hungarian cinematographer Gábor Szabó] who was constantly looking for other possibilities, not limiting himself to what is available at first sight. There are plenty of air shots and landscapes, too.”

With Galloping Mind, the director wanted to work with a clash between setting and subject, such as he did with his film Monkey Sandwich, shown during a dance performance. “There’s nothing interesting about horses running around on grass, but if you place them in a quarry, you immediately have a western,” he explains. “Also, horses and water don’t go well together, but I put them in the sea anyway. Sometimes you have to defy the medium you work in, do something unexpected.

Even though Vandekeybus relied less on improvisation in comparison with his previous work, intuition still played an important role in developing Galloping Mind. This, of course, can be complicated when working with different investors and parties who all want to have their say. Initially, for instance, he planned to shoot in Latin America, but the project later moved to South Africa. And ultimately on to Hungary and Romania.

In 2013, Vandekeybus had been working in Hungary for eight months, scouting locations and doing casting calls, when suddenly, financial problems halted the production right before the shoot was about to kick off. At that point, it seemed like the project, having already gone through the purgatory of development hell, would have to be shelved for good.

“In the meantime,” he adds, “lead actress Natali Broods and producer Bart Van Langendonck each had twins. But my twins seemed to have been postponed indefinitely.”

Glory in chaos

Eventually, the budget was worked out, and Vandekeybus recast his film and went through the motions once more. “In the end, the film benefited from all this,” he says. “I really believe in elongated processes and continue working on smaller projects while pursuing lengthier ones.”

In this hassle to find the financial means to complete a project that had been lingering for years – including a crowdfunding campaign in which Vandekeybus sold photos of people and landscapes that inspired him while writing the film – help sometimes came from unexpected sources.

Alejandro González Iñárritu, the Mexican Oscar-winning director of Babel and Birdman, for instance, sent Vandekeybus a letter praising his work after he saw Blush and The Last Words, a short film based on two stories by Brussels-born Argentine writer Julio Cortazar.

“For Galloping Mind, he wrote a letter to the Hungarian Film Fund, pleading with them to support my film. They stalled for time – twice – and eventually didn’t come through. Luckily, the film got made anyway, and I think Iñárritu will appreciate what it has become.”

Review: Galloping Mind

Although Galloping Mind is being announced as Wim Vandekeybus’ debut feature, the Brussels-based choreographer is far from a newbie when it comes to video and film. A long-time innovator in the use of moving images in his theatrical productions, he has also made dance and short narrative films.

Monkey Sandwich, for instance, was a full-length feature, though – completely opposite of Galloping Mind – it was filmed in 12 days on a €100,000 budget. Galloping Mind, in other words, is Vandekeybus’ first full-fledged film production, with the external interference that comes with it.

Much like Monkey Sandwich, a film filled to the brim, and sometimes bubbling over, with stories and urban myths, Galloping Mind demonstrates the joy of storytelling. As in classical mythology, fate comes knocking at the door, with devastating results.

When Sara (Belgian actor Natali Broods), a nurse who desperately wants children of her own, discovers that her adulterous partner Sam (British actor Jerry Killick) has fathered twins with another woman, she makes a decision that will alter the lives of everyone involved.

From the moment the twins are separated, Galloping Mind sets everything in motion to bring the two back together. Action-packed scenes and intersecting storylines in a brisk montage by Vandekeybus habitué Dieter Diependaele drive Galloping Mind forward, while the camera swirls around interiors and exteriors, dives into the water and is airborne in night-time cityscape explorations.

At its most intriguing, this free-flowing aesthetic is forced into marriage with a fate-oriented narrative of parental neglect, cruelty and inexorable love. Even though the machineries of fate sometimes seem to clutter proceedings, and Galloping Mind leans on a stylistic abundance to spur a heavy-handed story, Vandekeybus’ film is a welcome sight among the lukewarm Flemish-produced fiction of late.

To top it all off, versatile musicians Marc Ribot and Mauro Pawlowski add their prowess to the mix. With his typical knack for edgy pop-rock, Pawlowski concludes Galloping Mind with an acerbic love song that slows down the film’s rapid pace but keeps nagging at the viewer for days: “Why do we keep living the distant life?” ★★★☆

Photo by Danny Willems