Faust is a woman

Pisa-based imPerfect Dancers Company led by Walter Matteini is disturbing Tel-Aviv with weird fantasy “InFaust”

Faust is a woman.

She has scissorhands and legprostheses. But since she is an even more incomplete creature than Edward Scissorhands, she has only one scissorhand. And just one legprosthesis, 'cause with other leg she's hobbling in step with the times. And the one that the prosthesis, suspiciously looks like a devil's hoof.

Marguerite here doesn't have her Master, and she doesn't have Faust either; so the fruit of love, which eventually came out of her womb, raises doubts: whose baby is this? Then, however, there is also “inFaust.” He is just a man, moreover, he's Ido Tadmor, an Israeli Danseur Étoile miraculously worming himself into an Italian company.

Tadmor's quirky movement vocabulary is as eloquent as it is introspective, as hysterical as it is silenced, as thin-skinned as it is asexual: try to doubt on the transgender nature of persons.

There's like two of everybody. That is, each character has a pair of his/her opposite gender. Well, truthfully, this truth is not revealed right away. But it's immediately clear that every individual in a bisexual pair (of the same character, please keep in mind) is endowed with the jerkiness of the dummy and the flexibility of the sage. That he / she can walking on air and crawl upon the ground. And anyway it's not him, and it's not her, but actually a centaur. Or here's another: men with jackal heads; some kind of Anubis, something from ancient Egypt.

Or maybe it's just a product of Ido Tadmor's clouded consciousness?

Well, of Walter Matteini's. For that matter.

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“Infaust” means “unhappy.” “Imperfect" means “imperfect.” 

With regard to the latter, the young dancers from Pisa are just being modest. For all of them are simply marvelous. Though everyone has to face his/her true self.

The company was founded by the Italian choreographer Walter Matteini who was dreaming this weird fantasy (or, more precisely, the suggestion) called “InFaust.” He dreamed of it together with his wife, Co-choreographer Ina Broeckx who later turned out to be a Faust-female. She's going to be as captivating as her male character, and as dangerously enchanting as her new character, “evil incarnate” (or whatever she's calling it), who begins weaving its destructive web of temptation.

Another characters are pleased to get bogged down in the spectacle-suggestio which has not just one false bottom. So be prepared throughout the action to catch deep-sea meaning. Also in movements floating on the music ranging from Arvo Pärt's mystical minimalism to the devilishly Carl Orff's Carmina Burana. And, of course, Bazooka Joe's psychedelic art. An Israeli self-taught artist has a dark past includes drug addiction and time in prison which coloured his view of life let alone patterns of mind. The chaotic “neutral character” who draws onstage, in real-time three hallucinogenic paintings (oil on canvas) – green with crosses, red-black and horned – does not try to cling to conventional decorum. The upshot is holy-moly. Devilishly good.

Non-Fausts, Non-Marguerites and Non-Mephistopheles are both fascinating and scary; their crumpled duets often look sumptuous. Their inelegant rotations, bacchically inspiring sauts de basque, true psychedelic pas and other intricate combinations are so sophisticated that you can't even see an Achilles' Heel. An androgynous tribe bloated dance score with prickly rhythms and unresolved dissonances, with sharps and flats. There's not a single natural.

Man-like Faust – an improbable Ido Tadmor – wild in the extremities, looks like a part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good. He kicks up a tremulous leg, he shudders sensuality in his mind throes, and laces sensuality with beauty relishing his own lewdness. When dualities suddenly merge – one by one, male plus female – the neighborhood is filled with devilish laughter.

A little towards the end Faust-female is cradling the dead body of Non-Jesus on her lap, like the pseudo Virgin Mary. She'll freeze up struck by sorrow – Pietà per se. As in Goethe's play, the sinister consorts with the sublime: she will turn into a vampire with bloody fingernails. In the end a curly-haired Mephistopheles (one of the two) suddenly will be a woman and will bare his/her bloody breasts. And will dance a variation, after which Faust-female-vampire will sink one's teeth into him/her jugular vein.

Significantly, “InFaust” is not only simultaneous action: it doesn't stop for a moment. But we already know from Alice: it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that.

Photograph: Sergey Demyanchuk