VIOLET

Whirl-dance

In VIOLET, Meg Stuart turns to movement as the primary motor of her work, pairing abstraction with the personal in an alchemy of the senses. Five dancers reveal simultaneously and singularly an energetic landscape, a charged terrain of options, partnered live on stage by musician Brendan Dougherty on electronics and percussion. VIOLET is a whirl-dance whose energetic currents stir the wavelengths of both dance and imagination.

• The Brussels-based American choreographer Meg Stuart is a key figure in contemporary dance. Her pieces lean very much towards visual art and theatre. They are ‘physical sculptures’ whose gestures and movement draw an intense image of a frail ‘condition humaine’. Her work has toured extensively to theatres all over the world and was also presented at Documenta X (1997) in Kassel and Manifesta7 (2008) in Bolzano. Recent productions include the painful but hilarious Built to Last (2012), to a rousing score of (classical) music, and the dance performance the fault lines (2010, presented at Performatik 2013). VIOLET premiered in Essen (Germany) in 2011 and in the summer of that year was staged at the Avignon Festival and at Kaaitheater the following season. Meg Stuart has been a resident artist at the Kaaitheater for many a year.

Soul Food: Meg Stuarts sources of inspiration
‘Generally I begin a creation process from a few words, turning them over, looking at them from all sides, making associations and linking them to images. These words denote questions that fascinate me, things I want to explore.’ Meg Stuart wrote this in the book Are we here yet?, in which she reflects on her own practice in conversation with Jeroen Peeters. The journalist Anna Luyten will ask Meg about her sources of inspiration. During the interview you can enjoy a tasty snack, which will put you in a good mood for watching the performance.

‘In her performance, VIOLET, Stuart once again ventures into the unknown. She has banished the social-emotional issues that have coloured her previous pieces in order to concentrate on the kinetic and the abstract. Over and above a theatrical event, Violet is an intense sensorial experience for the audience. (...) The sensation is simultaneously startling, liberating and harrowing for spectators and performers alike. As usual with Stuart’s work, indifference is not an option.’ - The Bulletin

'A triadic ballet à la Stuart.' – Deutschlandfunk