Jérôme Bel / tg Stan, Danses pour une actrice / Dances for an Actress (Jolente De Keersmaeker)

Name: Jérôme Bel / tg Stan, Danses pour une actrice / Dances for an Actress (Jolente De Keersmaeker)
Start: 2023-10-30T19:00:00+0100T00:00-00:00
Location: Salle des Nymphéas

7 pm and 8.30 pm, Water Lilies rooms

October 30th, 2023

*Jérôme Bel, Danses pour une actrice*
© Herman Sorgeloos

Jérôme Bel asked Jolente De Keersmaeker to perform dance solos, combining choreographic and dramatic operations in order to redefine the terms of their representation. In this dance for an actress, personal interpretation supersedes formal execution of movement.

Version for the Water Lilies rooms

On the model of his collaboration with Valérie Dréville, Jérôme Bel asked the actress Jolente De Keersmaeker to perform solo pieces from the modern choreographic repertoire with a view to introducing a measure of discursiveness. The sharing of practices and exchange of techniques bring about a shift in the conditions required for dramatic and dance production, initiating a new relationship between movement and language. Here; the power of dramatic interpretation, the way in which imagination is incorporated, takes precedence over the technician body’s formalism, while the choreography is shown to be just as capable of expressing meaning and narration as the greatest dramaturgical texts. Without seeking to follow the choreography slavishly, Jolente De Keersmaeker lets her own vulnerabilities influence her performance, largely due to the lack of language, which is reduced to a purely descriptive function. What is expressed on stage as a result is the actress’s own uniqueness, through which she totally renews the protocol

*Jérôme Bel, Danses pour une actrice*
© Herman Sorgeloos

Audience warning: presence of scenes of total nudity

Concept : Jérôme Bel
Avec Jolente De Keersmaeker

<p>Production exécutive : tg Stan
Coproduction : R.B. Jérôme Bel, tg Stan, CAMPO (Gand
Co-réalisation : Théâtre de la Bastille (Paris), Festival d’Automne à Paris

Biographies

Jérôme Bel
Jérôme Bel lives in Paris and works internationally. His first piece, Nom donné par l’auteur (Name Given by the Author) (1994) is a choreography of objects. The second, Jérôme Bel(1995), is based on its performers’ total nudity. The Show Must Go On(2001) brings together twenty performers, nineteen pop songs and a DJ. <em>Véronique Doisneau(2004) is a solo piece on the work by the Paris Opera dancer Véronique Doisneau. Pichet Klunchun and Myself (2005) was developed in Bangkok with the Thai traditional dancer Pichet Klunchun. It was followed by Cédric Andrieux (2009), performed by the dancer of the same name from the Merce Cunningham company, and then by 3Abschied (2010), the result of a collaboration with Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker based on Gustav Mahler’sSong of the Earth,and Disabled Theater(2012), with mentally disabled professional actors from the Theater Hora. With Gala (2015), the choreographer gets professional and amateur dancers from various backgrounds dancing together. In 2019, he created Isadora Duncan, presented at the Paris Autumn Festival, followed by Danses pour une actrice (Dances for an Actress) – (Valérie Dreville), performed at the MC93 in 2020. His most recent creation is an eponymous piece, Jérôme Bel, staged at the Ménagerie de Verre.&

Jolente De Keersmaeker
Jolente De Keersmaeker (1967) is a founder member of tg STAN. Over the last few years she has created and directed herself in such plays as Eind Goed al Goed, Het Wijde Land, Trahisons, Nora, La Cerisaie , Quoi/Maintenant, Poquelin II and Infidèles. Outside tg STAN, Jolente De Keersmaeker has been a regular participant in the shows staged by her sister, the choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, and her Rosas company. Jolente De Keersmaeker teaches at the Ghent Conservatory and regularly facilitates workshops in Belgium and abroad.

tg STAN
The tg STAN theatre company – its name is an acronym for Stop Thinking About Names– is a theater collective led by Jolente De Keersmaeker, Damiaan De Schrijver and Frank Vercruyssen, who first met at the Antwerp Conservatory in the late 1980s. It was also there that the collective worked regularly with Matthias de Koning from Maatschappij Discordia, who introduced them to another, less dogmatic conception of theater. The collective operates on democratic principles, with everyone take part in all decisions, in choices of texts, sets, lighting and even costumes and posters. tg STAN makes the actor its central focus, and firmly believes in the concept of the sovereign actor, who is both interpreter and creator.