(BIG GIRLS DO BIG THINGS)

Grandeur and vulnerability

Last season, the young choreographer Eleanor Bauer closed the WoWmen! Festival with this solo. She is literally and figuratively a big girl, a talented dancer, singer and comedian. An old man once told her she was a polar bear who dances like a swan. The polar bear costume and the black swan from Swan Lake form a thread that runs through her performance.

Bauer: ‘This piece is full of big personas and expressions, from Patsy Cline to Ice Cube and Martha Graham to Karen Finley. I work on them in terms of scale, on gradients of size and volume, from fragility and hesitation to absolute extravagance. I question what can all be contained within a single person and confront what people expect from a large personality. I delve into personal history and desires, things that have made their mark on me, but rather than trying to analyze them, I deal with surface as content. After all, that's where the performer's work is: on the surface, where things are made visible.’ A solo where the dancer’s delight in performing is tangible.

• In 2004, while still a student at PARTS, Bauer created the hilarious solo ELEANOR! This was followed by Dig my aura (2007) and At Large (2008). This season, she can also be seen in Rosas’ The Song. The Kaaitheater is coproducing her latest piece, The Newest Age, which opens in February.

‘Bauer crosses the boundaries of race, sex, species, physical limitations and possibilities and in doing so is finally able to escape her own body. … The performance is not only ingenious and a masterpiece, it is also amusing… a dazzling display of the pleasure to be derived from acting. Discover it for yourself. Don’t miss it!’ **** – De Morgen newspaper