The Rise
Averno, a crater lake in Italy, was believed to be the entrance gate to the underworld. In Nobel Prize winning poet Louise Glück’s eponymous collection, the worlds of the living and the dead are connected. An interchange takes place, and the lake becomes a permeable membrane. Choreographer Michiel Vandevelde and composer Eva Reiter were inspired by Glück’s poetry to create The Rise, a piece using newly constructed instruments developed by Reiter to set in motion an interchange of their own. Here, it is not the border between living and death that becomes fragile, but that between sound and movement.
The story is narrated by Ruben Grandits, a young Deaf performer, whose hands are outfitted with sensors that transform his movements into sound. Four musicians using self-developed instruments and singer Lore Binon work with the sounds that are created. These are then translated back into signs by four dancers, making the piece accessible to Deaf people. This chain of echoes forms a choir which, through its role as a ‘homogeneous’ group, stages itself as a new community.
This community does not insist on univocality, however. In its inability to understand language signs and gestures, this community embraces polysemy and represents the different points of view from which understanding emerges. It thus renders the border between sound and movement permeable, and topples the fantasy of a pure, unmediated language.
• Michiel Vandevelde began his dance career at an early age with the Leuven-based company fABULEUS. Since graduating from P.A.R.T.S. in 2012 he has been building up his own practice as a choreographer, curator and writer. A political and artistic activism is the common thread running through his work. Just about all his work was presented at Kaaitheater and from 2017 to 2021, Michiel Vandevelde was also one of our artists-in-residence.
• Ictus is a Brussels-based contemporary music ensemble. A multifaceted collective of creative musicians, dedicated to experimental music in the broadest sense, Ictus has shared and amplified current questions about the future of contemporary music since 1994.
direction Eva Reiter, Michiel Vandevelde ⎸ music composition Eva Reiter ⎸ translation into International Sign and original poetry sign Günter Roiss ⎸ narrator Ruben Grandits ⎸ soprano Lore Binon ⎸ dancers Amanda Barrio Charmelo, Nathan Feliot, Antoine Roux-Briffaud, Aure Wachter ⎸ musicians Dirk Descheemaeker, Hanna Kölbel, Eva Reiter, Michael Schmid ⎸ set design Michiel Vandevelde, Eva Reiter ⎸ dramaturgy Kristof van Baarle ⎸ costumes Tutia Schaad ⎸ IRCAM computer music design Augustin Muller ⎸ production Ictus Ensemble and Disagree vzw ⎸ co-production Musica Festival Strasbourg, ElbPhilharmonie Hamburg, Concertgebouw Brugge, Ircam-Centre Pompidou, Perpodium ⎸ with the support of the Flemish Community, the Tax Shelter of the Belgian Federal Government ⎸ Eva Reiter's music commissioned by Ictus is funded by Ernst Von Siemens Musikstiftung
