Sketches/Notebook

A strange mother figure

Anyone who saw Meg Stuart’s Ateliers in the Kaai Studios or on the beach at Ostend (Dansand!) last year, will know that this American choreographer seeks out experiment, in close collaboration with other artists. Even more than Ateliers, Sketches/Notebook is a performance in which the actions of dancers, actors, musicians, and set, lighting and costume designers enter into a dialogue with one another as equals. Everyone becomes a performer. It is as if the performance were being created as you watch it over and over again, when the lighting designer allows the light to circulate, fade out and reflect, the costume designer tries out clothes on dancing bodies, etc. One powerful image succeeds another. Meg Stuart is like a strange mother figure, wrapped in a large white duvet, pink tape on her lips. A circle of moving hands. A pile of clothes and a lot of people tangled up together. Wooden panels that turn into slides. Revolving movements. Arms rise and fall.

You are repeatedly swept along by image, movement and music, but you also see its construction. At the same time you are watching a group of individuals looking for what unites them, what makes them move. Looking for a shared energy. You watch them from very close by and are inevitably drawn into this bizarre and intimate ritual.

Meg Stuart when being awarded the Konrad Wolf prize:
“Dance for me is rooted in unstable territories, takes on the impossible task of exposing inner worlds and conflicts, and can bravely address questions where language has been exhausted and there aren’t any clear answers.” | “As every choreographer knows trying to create the world with movement is a long and arduous process. My creative work exists in the shared space with other artists and with the collective desire to experiment.”

‘Stuart transforms the theatre into an unprecedented space for play and imagination, where you go from one surprise to the next. You rarely skip so hopefully out a theatre.’ – De Morgen, top 3 performing arts, 2013

 ‘I remember thinking, as I left the theater, how generous this performance was. As an extravagant party set up especially for you. And how, by the way it plays with all these different elements it becomes much more than a dance performance.’ – Utopia Parkway