May B (1981)

Handling

May B heralded the international breakthrough of Maguy Marin and has been performed worldwide since 1981. It is based on the writings of Samuel Beckett, who unexpectedly gave the then young and unknown French choreographer his blessing to adapt his work. Echoing the existential forlornness of Becketian characters, Marin's 10 dancers roam the stage like lost vagrants; grunting, sighing, comic, pathetic, awkward and tenderly ridiculous at once, they seem to have stumbled with their strange clay streaked faces out of nowhere into the world. Accompanied by music by Franz Schubert and Gavin Bryars and one single line from Beckett's play Endgame: “Finished, it's finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished”