Dance Among the Water Lilies • Daniel Linehan, Not about Everything

Name: Dance Among the Water Lilies • Daniel Linehan, Not about Everything
Start: 2023-11-20T19:00:00+0100T00:00-00:00
Location: Salle des Nymphéas

7 pm and 8.30 pm, Salle des Nymphéas

November 20th, 2023

In this seminal solo piece, the American choreographer Daniel Linehan spins like a top while monologuing non-stop. With more than a touch of humor, he introduces subtle rhythmic variations – increases in speed and timing – and complex constraints into his gyrations. By doing so, he creates an inverted black hole, a vertiginous, disorienting space that is also a space for reflection, where his ideas can circulate and resonate.

A body makes its way into the space alone and begins to spin. Starting off gently, its rotation transforms into a frenzied gyratory movement. Through the oddity of this obsessional circular movement, Daniel Linehan introduces a series of variations, accelerations, subtle changes, creating a dance that is both complex and funny. Subjecting himself to challenging physical and mental processes, he incorporates multiple tasks simultaneously: speaking, thinking, reacting, addressing the audience, etc., without ever interrupting the spinning of his perpetual top. Linehan speaks to us of what he isn’t saying on the subjects of despair, endurance and government; he isn’t talking about celebrities, virtuosity or metaphysical problems. By the very fact of what his words seem to deny, he directs our attention to questions that evoke a world much larger than the one contained in this little circle. Drawing a changing network of ideas into its center, he creates an inverted black hole, a vertiginous space that might be disorienting but is also a space for thoughtful consideration, where all these ideas can flow and resonate.

Concept & performance : Daniel Linehan
Dramaturgy Juliette Mapp
Lighting: Joe Levasseur
Created in the context of the Bessie Schönberg/First Light
Commissioning Program and Creative Residency Program of Dance
Theater Workshop
Production Hiatus (Brussels, BE)
International representation Damien Valette (Paris, FR)

With the support of the Jerome Foundation (St. Paul, MN, US), the Ford Foundation (New York, US), the National Endowment for the Arts (a US federal agency), the New York State Council of the Arts, and the
Jerome Robbins Foundation (New York, US)

With the help of the Movement Research Artist Residency Project, funded in part by the Leonard and Sophie Davis Fund (Philadelphia, PA, US)

Daniel Linehan/Hiatus is subsidized by the Flemish government. In collaboration with BOS+, Hiatus contributes to our planet’s reforestation.

Biography

Daniel Linehan

Daniel Linehan worked as a dancer and choreographer in New York before moving to Brussels in 2008, where he followed the Research Cycle at P.A.R.T.S. As a performer, Linehan has worked with Miguel Gutierrez and Big Art Group among others.
In 2007-2008, he was Artist in Residence at Movement Research. In New York, he worked with a team of four dancers to create performances based on text and dance. In 2007, he created the solo piece Not About Everything, which has been performed in over 75 theaters across the world since its première.
His more recent projects, developed in Belgium, include Montage for Three (2009), Being Together Without any Voice (2010), Zombie Aporia (2011), Gaze is a Gap is a Ghost (2012), The Karaoke Dialogues (2014), Un Sacre du Printemps (A Rite of Spring)(2015), dbddbb (2015), Flood (2017), Third Space (2018), Body of Work (2019), sspeciess (2020), Listen Here: These Woods & This Cavern (2021) and Kiss The One We Are (2023).
Linehan also works on more specialized projects: Vita Activa, a workshop codirected with Michael Helland, intended for 40 unemployed participants and addressing questions bearing on the functions of time and work. The book A No Can Make Space, (2013) created in collaboration with the graphic artist Gerard Leysen (Afreux), which traces 10 years of choreographic practice. untitled duet (2013), a project broadcast live as part of the Performance Room Series at the Tate Modern in London. From 2012 to 2014, Daniel Linehan was Associate Artist at the deSingel International Arts Campus (Antwerp, BE) and New Wave Associate at Sadler’s Wells (London, UK). From 2013 to 2016, he was Artist in Residence at Lille Opera House (FR). From 2017 to 2021, he was Associate Artist at the deSingel International Arts Campus. Since 2015,

Hiatus

Hiatus is a contemporary dance company based in Brussels and under the artistic directorship of the choreographer Daniel Linehan, assisted by a production team and regular artistic collaborators. The company creates dance performances, and organizes tours, workshops and other public events. Its underlying purpose is to exchange with the public and create ties between participants, partners, collaborators and members of the social fabric.
The word “hiatus” refers to an open space, a field of possibilities; as Daniel Linehan’s choreographic approach consists of creating interstices, which means making room for the unexpected, being receptive to astonishment. In particular, the choreographer works on the body, which he regards as a dynamic process undergoing perpetual change and always filled with a multitude of potentialities. As he sees it, the body comprises voice, emotions, memories, gestures, grace, vulnerability, intelligence, resilience and much more besides. His pieces enable him to make playful, in-depth explorations of all these bodily layers and the way in which our bodies connect us to the rest of the world.
Each Hiatus project seeks to create an opening that fosters interhuman connections in the here and now; in other words, they aim to draw attention to our physical and social environment, whether it be in a theater, a studio, outdoors, or anywhere else.

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