End of Studies A

Twenty-two students from 14 countries are coming to the end of their four-year course at PARTS, the Brussels dance school headed by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. They round off their studies with different programmes.

A group of eleven students has opted for its own artistic project. In the course of three months they have been working on 2 trios, 1 duet and 3 solos. The students themselves are responsible for both the form and content of their creation.

Get out of the blue
choreography and performance: Jeanne Colin | coaching: Femke Gyselinck, Danae Theodoridou

This solo unfolds a quest for one’s self- empowerment through the staging of 12 rounds, based on the conventions of a boxing match. The spectator is drawn to that incongruous match, and follows the soloist’s repeated attempts to increase her own potential in an enclosed world. When do we surrender in order to keep fighting? Can one change the rules by playing the game? Those are the questions explored while the performer wrestles with her thoughts on stage: "How do I get to finish the show? And I’m not talking about outdoing one self, like the legendary Rocky Balboa. I mean going for the end of it. Simple, you think? Let’s gamble. In the ring I’ll fight Nothing. Or more precisely what nothingness hides: the missing part, the gap. How do I defeat the absence?"

Slogan for Modern Times [Slugania]
choreography, performance and music: Inga Huld Hákonardóttir and Kathryn Vickers | costumes: Ada Rajszys | coaching: Eleanor Bauer, Vlad Ionescu | a special thanks to Eleanor and Ada, thanks for all the support! 

Is this really happening? How do we experience a space that is constantly dismantling itself? How does it happen? How long does it last? 

Slogan for Modern Times questions the terrifying spaces in between the horrific and the appealing. A space consisting of bodies, objects, language and communication. A space where nothing is taken for granted, a space of reconsideration, a space that asks what is not there in order to understand what it is. In that way the concept of inversion appears, we look for the paradoxical unseen seen, unknown known, the un-communicated, the pleasurable perversion and the right amount of wrong. What is lost in a filter of a dance and what is there to reconsider? Questioning the filter of its own medium, Slogan for Modern Times attempts to recast the outcast.

Which lens do we use when looking, hearing and processing information? What gets lost in the obstacle, the binoculars, the sunglasses, the social network, the radio, tv programs, the trash bin, the percolate? What do we see and what do we choose to see? What is chosen for us to see? The dance questions the gap between reality and the reconstructions of “realities" which we experience through mass media and various mediums. 

“If familiar with the modern history of the body, one can quickly notice that the field of the in-between is more or less reserved for special creatures which can generally be defined as monsters. Composed, fluid, transgressive and elusive, these creatures follow the modern subject like a shadow and symbolize the horrible precisely because of their obsessive demand for (dangerous) connections.” - Bojana Kunst

The Eternity Ship Question
choreography and performance: Alma Toaspern, Bryana Fritz, Ben Van Buren | music: Queen, Johnny Cash | coaching: Jan Ritsema, Christophe Wavelet

A. (Stage lights turn on, a crack of thunder can be heard over the speakers. A is lying on stage and announces with the deep tremulous voice of a circus ringmaster) "Henry! Merce is coming!"

B. (B appears onstage with a champagne glass and an oversize strut. B speaks with an undetectable accent nearing what could appear as sophisticated) : "Hello dear, I came from the center of… yes, you guessed it right. The center of the belly button where we cultivate the most precious wines and cheeses"

C. (C runs onstage and throws a head of lettuce. C begins to comment on the lettuce toss.): "Nenfsoè shofbs dfgzsvf svs uudgfuoisasssss.....HUSTLE." (said with effortless cocktail of a smile mixing love, trust, fear, and gusto)

Things do or do not wrap themselves up...

A potentially infinite practice of writing 5-minute-plays culminates in a multidimensional space culled between the group's collective conscious and unconscious. Everything was made full-organed in desperation and quick, slick fervor. At many points, a question raised it's head: what is it to be part of one's time? Nonetheless, why not attempting to be fearless in the face of the anxiety of the unknown?