Presumably French, the characters are unmistakably universal in their speech, body language and appeal. There are a middle-aged, red-haired intellectual bitch, a grey-haired, barrel-shaped madam, a young but already unhappy cleaner girl, the chatty, aggressive transvestite and a couple of other equally everyday characters, who could occupy any library in the world with their irritated and suspicious presence. The air is so stiff and stagnant from the sum of the repressed personalities that it craves excitement, begging the shadows to cause the storm.

Like skilful mimics, repeating every move and stirring action, the shadows start to clash, provoke and bring out the true personalities: both ugly and beautiful but equally repressed. As the shadows repeat their movements, mirror-like, the humans suddenly acquire a tail of well-rounded personality, as if evolving to 3D from a flat paper cut out.

Fantasy is born to fight repressed feelings and ridicule conventions. When watching the spinning, chaotic and muttering movement, choreographed by Cherkaoui, one cannot help but feel the enchanted curiosity of Lewis Carroll’s character, Alice who stumbled upon a mirror-like world, true in its shadow resemblance but exaggeratingly twisted.

Quotations accompanying various parts of the performance reinforce the eternal themes which run through the ‘Myth’: Dante’s ‘O empty shadows but in appearance only!’, Miller’s ‘All growth is a leap in the dark’ and Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘The Sun has never seen a shadow’. In fact the performance touches upon every pore of our lives and invites a different approach to its understanding – poetic movement, stoic silence, humour, sexuality and passion. A burning necessity for those new forms is felt the moment the new life is born, pure of knowledge, clean of conventions and ready to breathe in. The sudden realisation that this new life is to become equally cluttered and repressed brings a gasping necessity for those shadow dreamlike movements, feelings and passions.

The action is set in front of the gates. Gates to Heaven? Salvation? Catharsis? Escape. The gates provide a nervous reassurance of a possible escape. Characters bang upon them impatiently, shadows crawl over them, the choir sing their enchanting Italian verses from it, building up to their culmination. When they finally crack open to let in The Saviour, The Man, intuitively we feel relieved as the chaotic ball of nervous characters is pushed into the ‘other side’- a perspective prism into escape for all but a child. ‘Not yet’. He is symbolically left to continue and to choose his paths.

The air is so fresh and clean as if those gates have sucked in all of the tension, the dinginess and small talk of the everyday to give a new poetic beginning. I hold my breath not to interrupt…

This poetic masterpiece by Cherkaoui reflects on our life, our insecurities and our approaches and offers a cathartic experience accompanied by brilliant symbolic choreography, strong dancers and actors alike. One to watch and reflect upon.