Extraction

In 1998 Marc Vanrunxt created the solo Private Collection for Eva Kamala Rodenburg, who since then has regularly danced in his group choreographic works (including Raum and showtitle #63 BLACK MARK). Now, ten years later, they are once again concentrating on the self-reflective questions and paradoxes behind Private Collection. A great many paintings and sculptures have found their way into the collective memory, even though they may be in private hands. The catalogue illustration, the poster, the postcard and the internet image are common property, but not the materiality of the object. What is the relationship between private, public, original and depiction in a dance performance? How democratic is access to the theatre? How does a dance performance such as Private Collection make its mark on the public imagination? What is the material nature of this transient medium and in whose possession is it?

In Extraction, Marc Vanrunxt is not carrying out a reconstruction of the 1998 solo, but intends to overpaint it, to distil its essence, to represent Eva Kamala Rodenburg even more beautifully and with greater sophistication. Her body becomes the surface on which our desire is projected – we do not desire her as a person, but the attention and care that have moulded her into this figure. This choreographic work is a cast, an exclusive pattern that results from something custom-made, a luxury commodity that is extracted from the dancer with extreme care and precision.

Marc Vanrunxt regularly admits insertions into his work, by artists or musicians. For Extraction he collaborates with the photographer David Bergé and with the artistic assistant Myriam Van Imschoot. They share a fascination for monochrome, the single-colour surface which we, despite its abstraction, experience as so much more real, precisely because it is not an illustration of anything external to itself and cannot become anything other than the materiality that it is.