Interview with Brynjar Åbel Bandlien:

The personage was based on the story of Hammer Without A Master which again was based on the poems written by..(I don’t remember.. Rene Char) and the music that was written inspired by the poems by Pierre Boulez.
I was a character of corrupted youth, naivity, innocence. Starting from the beginning of he piece as a strong person, but is slowly during the piece being degenerated. Losing my form, shape, the naivete, being corrupted. From being in very straight, strong positions
with an innocent facial expression, I became more weak in the positions and soft in the movement, my facial expression became more dark.
The movement was illustrating the music and the poems. I never knew if the music had started or if the orchestra was just warming up?!
The piece started by the characters entering one by one, coming from the sides of the stage in a two dimensional way. Placing themselves on stage:
First came Ion Tugiaru who didn’t change his sturdy movements throughout the piece.
My character was more an illustration of what could have happened to Tugiaru.
The Libretto: The first part was an introduction of the personage.
First came Tugiaru. He was wearing a black hat, a white shirt with a black tie drawn onto the shirt. Second came Adina Cezar, dressed as the flame of desire. Red leotard, pointshoes.
(Shows her movement) Then came Magdalena Popescu and me. We were dressed in white. I wore shorts. I don’t remember if I had a tennis racket. Maybe it was inspired by Nijinsky?
Playing with the 2 dimensionality. When the flame of desire interacted with us, we got more corrupted.
Ion Tugiaru moved like this (shows). Then the light changed coming from behind, creating a silhuette of Tugiaru who remained in the position, pulling his head back.
Then from the right came Adina Cezar, as the flame of desire in silhouette at first, then in the lights, wearing a red leotard, like in the mind of Tugiaru.
She was brilliant, fierce, temperamental, seductive, very female, it was a very strong and much appreciated solo. She had also a few, very quick jumps.
Tugiaru wakes up from this dream, and he danced a duet together with Adina who tries to seduce Ion, putting her legs around him. Adina, as the flame of desire, is the only personage that goes through he whole piece, interconnecting the other characters.
After the duet, me and Magdalena, enter from the left, playing tennis with each other.
Tugiaru is still frozen in his silhouette in front. Adina interfere in the game, and the game is no longer a game, but becomes more violent, Magdalena get’s more and more shy, and in the end she refuse my desire, and I end up strangling her. From playing tennis to becoming more violent with the racket, until I do this movement with the arms (shows) towards Magdalena and she pulls back like this (shows), she ends up on the ground and I strangle her like this in a sort of stylistic/realistic stylized movement. Violent. Criminal. Due to the grown-up longing pf sexual desire, which leads me to kill Magdalena Popescu.
After this my movement change. I try o continue the game alone, but my movement are now corrupted, I also change my look, darker. I dissapear to the right.
After this Adina Cezar comes back in and try to seduce Tugiaru again.
Tugiaru who has stood still, frozen downstage, having somehow Magdalena and my duet in mind, is resisting her for the second time. He pretends that he has a kind of hammer with which her beats her, in a stylised way, killing the flame of desire. The hammering accelerated into a kind of movement (shows masturbating-like arm movement)
NO! it was not about masturbation.
I’ve heard that Bejart did a version of The Hammer, where somebody actually did masturbate on stage, but our version had nothing to do with that. There was no trace of any such gesture.
The set was simple. It was a back drop with a picture of a big hammer ready to beat down.
We were taking class every morning, as was obligatory for all dancers at the opera.
Stere worked with us separately, one by one. He told us where to come from, where to look, what kind of movements to do. It was not until the general-/dress rehearsal that we put it all together. I didn’t know what the overall piece was about. Stere didn’t tell us what was in his mind. I just made out a version from my own understanding.
I don’t know if it was expressionistic, modern or neonclasssic. It was a mixture of all.
It was very contemporary! We executed whatever Stere would tell us to do.
We did he same in Paris as we did here in Bucharest. Nobody was used to this kind of movements, neither here, nor in Paris. Here it was considered degenerated art, where as in Paris the piece provoked a scandal. Maybe they thought that it was a propaganda piece, since there was a big hammer on stage like from the communistic hammer and sicle, but it was not meant like that.
It was the first time we got to travel. A lot of people defected and continued their carrier abroad. I don’t remember the role of Gigi Caciuleanu. Maybe he was a young version of Tugiaru, who also got tempted by the flame of desire in his youth?
There were also other dancers, but they were just in the background to enforce the impact
of the main characters, representing the world.