More than 100 years after the publication of the magical if brutally realistic children?s book ?Peter Pan? and over 30 years after the naming of the ?Peter-Pan-Syndrome? by the psychologist Dan Kiley, there have been not only a contained number of patients diagnosed with the ?Pan-Syndrome?, but there also appears to be a bigger section of contemporary society that is affected by it. According to current prediction, the 21st Century will be a century that belongs in Neverland: it will be a century where we refuse to grow up. In order, perhaps too hastily, to prove this prediction and maybe even to disprove it, the dancer and choreographer Juliette Rahon in her ?1001 Lifes?, a dance production with musical accompaniment, brings the fantasy world of Peter Pan to life before the eyes of the audience, allowing it to collide with the immediate present day. Transcribing the fantasy world of Neverland for the 21st Century not only hones our observation of the dark side of the initially deceptive paradise of Peter Pan?s world, but also makes us realise how much fantasy and utopia there is in a present day that is often assumed to be solely rational.
Through fading the boundary between fantasy and reality, a utopian space emerges in ?1001 Lifes? that enables a fresh physicality, new quality of movement and of momentum, as well as an inventive musicality to emerge and challenge us.
