Letters 2 Dance

How do you do that, literally dance a dance language? Can a stage be like a page? Those are the seemingly naive questions choreographer Femke Gyselinck ask with her characteristic self-willed, alienating and witty dance language. Letters 2 Dance is an organised misunderstanding of a worn-out metaphor: choreography as dance writing starting with the smallest element, the alphabet.

Gyselinck has already 'written' The Gymnastics of the Mind - a dance alphabet - where she investigated the relationship between typography, typeface and movement. In Letters 2 Dance, she and dancers Sue-Yeon Youn and Luka Švajda translate the book into the stage: solidified letters regain their movement and search for meaning. These dancers interact with each other's bodily 'handwriting’ in a continuous dialogue with eclectic composer and musician Liesa Van der Aa. Gradually, they create a moving field of tension that is as cryptic as it is nuanced, as concrete as it is enigmatic.

• Dancer and choreographer Femke Gyselinck (ex-PARTS) has already appeared in the Kaaitheater programme with Flamer (with her brother, drummer Lander Gyselinck) and Moving Ballads - both pieces in which music plays a central role. Liesa Van der Aa stond al op onze planken met FC Bergman in Van den Vos, waarvoor ze de muziek componeerde, en haar eigen creaties American Lament (samen met Ictus-gitarist Tom Pauwels) en de muziek-performance (Weighing of the Heart).