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A man climbs in a huge lamp post to switch on the light. The symbolic figure of the lamplighter used to be a surveiling figure, checking out the streets during the night, but in this context his primary task is to 'unveil'. He shows the truth that is hidden in the shade. The scenery of Menske depicts a dumping ground on the outskirts of a city. It's a forgotten spot, neglected by power and covered by graffiti, a space of possibility and criticism – the space art often pretends to occupy. In Menske Wim Vandekeybus seems to take some distance from the virtuoso feats of physical strength with which he became famous. His most recent piece can be read as a dark political narrative in which the unfinished and the raw comes to the fore.

Different points of view are spread over different characters. The nervously lisping madman in white pyjamas is the first one on stage. He doesn't have any control over his own body and seems to be a mirror of the chaos that surrounds him. All he basically does is stagger from one side to another mumbling words that often make no sense. The contrast couldn't be bigger when a blonde on stiletto heels, utterly selfconfident, walks the stage as if it were hers. She's an urbanist proposing, or rather 'imposing' with a lot of fervor her new plans for the city. No doubt about who's in power. She is the one drawing the lines, setting the borders. Only at night feelings of guilt and doubt visit her and prevent her from sleeping.

In the midst of the chaos, all of a sudden the attention is drawn to a girl dancing on her own. Soon the space on stage is constantly being remodelled by long cables that resemble the ones mountaineers need for climbing. Here they're used horizontally, making up a huge moving cobweb in wich the girl gets stuck. Society sets its own borders, but can transgress these as well. The dancers who join the girl on stage eventually find a way, by jumping or by rolling, to liberate themselves somehow from the restraints, to master space.

Especially one character in Menske makes things go wrong. It's the classical character with which the artist (out of feelings of guilt) likes to mirror himself (and the public): the desillusioned intellectual, paralyzed by doubt. A man is reading aloud in Italian from the letters he's writing to a certain Pablo. The complete lack of humour or healthy irony makes this pretentious personage, who's looking out of his window at the 'crowd', very difficult to listen to. His writing desk reminds of a center where they used to connect phone calls. Apparently he is trying to make connections, to make sense out of the chaos. But in the end he gives up, violently pulling the cables out of the sockets - destroying all connections. Only dance seems to be able to give (non-verbal) answers, to cross borders, to master space. In Menske dance presents itself as a transgressive practice. All the different languages spoken on stage emphasize the mobility and the cosmopolitanism of dance.

There's also something with the rythm of Menske, with this constant draw towards extatic and seemingly liberating moments. In the final scene men are dragging women as if they were machine guns. The loud pumping pop music swells and mingles with the sound of helicopters. There's a lot of white smoke, running and the feel of urgency. I get the impression that all these things are happening just to prevent me from seeing that nothing is there. Behind the smoke screen there's an empty stage. In this transgressive space of dance many perspectives are pulled together and end up meaning nothing. Differences are flattened. In a moment full of pathos a ladder descends from heaven and the dansers fight to get on top of it. Still this deus ex machina doesn't provide any rescue. Menske ends abruptly with a false note. In their last piece Wim Vandekeybus and his dancers are 'performing urgency', but this doesn't turn Menske into an 'urgent performance'.