Extreme Tension

The portrait of a body

‘Scalp, the forehead, the ears… the base of the skull… the legs, thighs, ankles... the stomach… the throat... the breathing, the palpitations... etc.’ In Extreme Tension, the French-American visual artist Louise Bourgeois describes her body in eleven powerful drawings with text. She was 96 when she completed the work in 2007.
  
The series provides the content, structure and title for a solo created by the Brussels-Canadian choreographer Ula Sickle with and for the dancer Marie De Corte. Sound artist Yann Leguay creates a new sound score that zooms into the body, under the skin, rendering it both seductively close and strangely unfamiliar. This play between distance and proximity is central to the work of Louise Bourgeois, who during her long career never ceased to show, without reservation and with much force, the psychological and physical intimacy of the human body. Extreme Tension is not a portrait of Marie or Louise, but rather the portrait of a body, exposed as an unknown landscape, both powerful and fragile.

• Ula Sickle previously worked with Yann Leguay on Solid Gold and Jolie, which were presented in the Kaaistudio’s in 2011. In these solos we saw two young Congolese performers who brought their own culture and world of movement with them. Similarly, Marie De Corte will draw on her own dance history (in work by Marc Vanrunxt, Ugo Dehaes and many others), but also on her own ‘daily’ postures and movements.