2500 Ft / season-ticket holders may receive a 10% discount
Co-organized with the Budapest Autumn Festival
Post-show discussion! After the performance on 9th October Katalin Lőrinc, dancer, journalist will talk to the artists. Everybody is welcome!
Belgian star choreographer Wim Vandekeybus who is/was also actor and photographer has been fascinating his audiences for many years with his rapid and feisty dance style. His pieces are highly vivacious and so incomparable till today that so far no one has managed to copy or imitate him. Vandekeybus stands for action and virtuosity, always combined with powerful contents.
The latest work by this restless artist, “Nieuw Zwart/New Black” opens with the explosive dance which promises breath-taking suspense, this time with a group of seven young dancers. They experiment with various forms of physicality – four men and three women dealing with thematic guidelines such as resistance and change, destruction and evolution. They are joined on stage by one performer Kylie Walters, known from Menske, and three musicians. Dangerous passions, the transformation of the body through its surroundings and the ambivalent handling of existence in these present times produce an existential tension onstage.
Twenty years ago - after founding his company Ultima Vez - with the premiere of What the Body Does Not Remember, Wim Vandekeybus brought into focus a whole new genre of modern dance referred to as "Flemish new wave". He viewed the body as an emotional battlefield, and performance as a kind of extreme sport. He has unlocked the violence of the human spirit and body for European dance and created a choreographic language for extreme emotions, for open and hidden conflict between men and women. Combat rolls, breakneck sprints and savagely wrestled duets became the defining vocabulary of a new generation.
„NieuwZwart. New black. It’s not about fashion. It’s certainly not about goth. It’s a painter trying to invent a new colour: Belgian choreographer Wim Vandekeybus, wanting to invent a new ‘landscape’ for his new performance, after a career spanning 20 years. A rocktrio on a small platform, floating in midair. Underneath them: a girl, dressed in white, walking around, reciting poems by Flemish author Peter Verhelst (from his ‘Nieuwe sterrenbeelden’ or ‘New constellations’), and seven dancers, moving around on a blown up photo of a thistle. And, last but not least: lots of golden first aid blankets, adding colour to a fairly dark scenery. The music is loud and wild (written by Mauro Pawlowski, from Belgium’s acclaimed alternative rockband dEUS). Sometimes you hear the sound of a car-crash. The poem is about climbing that mountain again and again. You see crawling naked bodies, people running around like prehistoric men, dancers crashing into one another.
Don’t try and understand the meaning of all of this. For Vandekeybus this performance is like an abstract painting. You really don’t have to get all the words and all the images. ‘It’s one big ball of energy. A primitive ritual; a state of trance.’ It’s about those familiar keywords in Vandekeybus’ work: the subconscious, the instinct, and intuition.” (Utopia Parkway)
Direction, choreography, scenography by: Wim VANDEKEYBUS
Original music: Mauro PAWLOWSKI
With:
Tanja Marín FRIÐJÓNSDÓTTIR, Dawid LORENC, Bénédicte MOTTART, Olivier MATHIEU, Máté MÉSZÁROS, Ulrike REINBOTT, Imre VASS, Kylie WALTERS
Musicians (live):
Mauro PAWLOWSKI, Elko BLIJWEERT, Jeroen STEVENS
Artistic assistance, dramaturgy: Greet VAN POECK
Movement assistance: Iňaki AZPILLAGA
Co-production:
KVS(Brussels, BE), Théâtre de la Ville-Paris (FR), Mercat de les Flors (Barcelona,ES), PACT Zollverein/Choreographisches Zentrum NRW (Essen, DE), Le manège.mons/Centre Dramatique (Mons, BE)
Ultima Vez is supported by:
the Flemish Authorities, the Flemish Community, Commission of the Brussels Capital Region
