I/II/III/IIII (preliminary study)

Clones & tarantulas

I/II/III/IIII is a new theatrical installation by the performance artist Kris Verdonck. As always in his work he has again drawn on spectacular contemporary technological developments for his inspiration. Man has throughout the ages been seeking the secret of life: how could he create a perfect identical copy of himself? This quest, taking in the Golem, Frankenstein and a variety of robots, has led to today’s possibility, though as yet only theoretical, of cloning human beings. What happens when you lose your own inalienable identity because you have to share it with other beings? Can man play God with impunity? Where does ‘the human’ end and the mechanical begin? In I/II/III/IIII four identical dancers will perform a choreographic work while suspended in a sort of giant puppet theatre: they will be attached like marionettes to a machine that directs their movements. They perform exactly the same dance in synchronisation until one of them makes a mistake, until one of them starts moving more slowly than the others... until ‘failure’ changes the robots back into humans again.

Subsequently, a new short film by the Danish artist Joachim Koester will be screened as a preview. It is called Tarantism and was shot in the Kaaitheaterstudio’s this March. Seven dancers give a playful interpretation of a ‘dance cure’ for anyone bitten by a tarantula.