Intimate Strangers
Where intimacy and the unfamiliar intersect
Can proximity, the reduction of physical distance in the theatre, create intimacy? Or is the psychological distance between performers and audience actually increasing? The smaller the distance the less a performance has to do with information and more with shared energy. It is this paradoxical combination of voyeurism and participation, of intimacy and strangeness/alienation that really interests Meg Stuart. Her work is a constant search for the private in the public and her movements combine what is familiar with what is distorted, the unexpected. Meg Stuart never opts for one or the other but hovers in the space between them. Her characters are always en route, in between, because it is here, in unexpected places and lost moments, that you might experience the unusual.
The mini-festival called Intimate Strangers seeks out this ‘in between’ in work presentations by artists with whom Meg Stuart has previously worked closely and for long periods of time, such as Hahn Rowe and Vania Rovisco. In performances where a natural intimacy is made public such as that between Bo Wiget and his daughter and the choreographer Martin Nachbar and his father.
In Intimate Strangers, dance, music, video, research and installation are presented randomly and without hierarchy. Including a creation by Damaged Goods in the Kaaitheater and a revival of the wonderful sand table in the Beursschouwburg. In the ‘in between’ space that separates these theatres, audiences can experience short performance acts, each with its own approach, in various private homes. Here both the performer and the spectator break into true intimacy. Nearness in distance. Distance in nearness. As you move from dance performance to concert in Brussels, it is up to you to allow yourself to experience new encounters at locations where intimacy and the unfamiliar intersect.
| FREE! Your ticket for Repeater + Massarbeit by Nachbar & Wiget is also valid for Sight is the sense that dying people tend to lose first by Tim Etchells/Jim Fletcher at the Beursschouwburg, on Friday 5 December, at 10.30 p.m. |
A mini-festival curated by Meg Stuart | production Damaged Goods | in association with Kaaitheater, Beursschouwburg, deBuren | support Q-02 & WorkSpace Brussels
