Tu montes ? I hear voices

Nadia Lauro transforms the Kaaitheater bar into a ‘mental garden’

The French artist and stage designer Nadia Lauro conceives ‘living sets’, such as the ‘breathing walls’ in the marvellous k’su’porta by Vera Mantero or the thirty people in Mhmmm (Lacey & Lauro), both staged in the Kaaitheater. Lauro’s installations form an integral part of the performance. She herself describes them as ‘des espaces scénarisés’, spaces which have become a scenario and influence the way we perceive things and our time together.

She works in the dance world – she has worked with Vera Mantero, Benoît Lachambre, Frans Poelstra, Jennifer Lacey and Barbara Kraus, all artists who have appeared in the Kaaitheater in recent years – as well as in disciplines such as landscape architecture and fashion. Together with the landscape architect Laurence Crémel she founded the Squash Cake Bureau, for which she designs landscape installations and urban furniture.

In the Kaaitheater bar she plans to build a new version of Tu montes?, a series of environment performances in which she examines how context puts our perception to the test. Tu montes? aims to create contexts that change the nature of the space. Earlier versions were created in a restaurant in Lisbon (in association with Frans Poelstra), in the foyer of the Ménagerie de Verre in Paris, in the bar of the Kanagawa Art Centre in Yokohama and on the premises of a tennis club in Porto. The Kaaitheater bar will be transformed into a ‘submersion space’, a cross between a ‘mental garden’ and a ‘warming-up area for the audience’.