Where is everybody?

A project with dancers from ZOO, the company formed around choreographer Thomas Hauert, and Platform K, a platform for dancers and makers with a disability. What content and aesthetics emerge when dancers with a disability do not have to adapt to the conventions of the dominant dance culture? The desires of the Platform K dancers – as makers, viewers and performers – forms the starting point, while ZOO provides flexible and non-hierarchical methods of improvisation and materials. 

A two-week shared working period made the sparks fly: what if the two companies could create a performance based on that material? That material consists mainly of newly developed improvisational techniques, which lead them to a different, more complex but still spontaneous dance vocabulary. 

They also expressed their ideas, desires, and worries via an eclectic soundtrack. People usually have a strong emotional bond with a specific song or piece of music – Platform K and ZOO collected these most personal experiences into a song by the performers as a tangible, sensory starting point. Like film music, these songs clearly have an influence on the dramaturgical development and the perception of the spectators. 

• Having worked as a dancer with a.o. Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, David Zambrano and Pierre Droulers, Thomas Hauert, originally from Switzerland, founded his company ZOO in Brussels in 1998. Cows in Space, the first piece was immediately awarded at the Rencontres de Seine-Saint-Denis/Bagnolet. The company has since created more than 20 works, which have been performed mostly in Europe. In addition to his work for ZOO, Thomas was also commissioned to create work for other companies including the Zurich Ballet (2010), Toronto Dance Theatre (2012), Candoco Dance Company (2013), Ballet de Lorraine (2018) and will create a piece for Dresden Frankfurt Dance Company in 2025. Complementing his choreographic work, Hauert has developed an internationally recognized teaching method based on the movement research conducted with his company and he regularly teaches workshops worldwide. In 2012 -13, he was a guest professor for dance and performance at the Institute for Theater Studies of the Freie Universität Berlin. Since 2013, Thomas Hauert is the artistic director of the new bachelor degree in contemporary dance at the Manufacture – Haute Ecole des Arts de la Scène in Lausanne.