Who is that on the other side of you?

The project has come about after an invitation by producer Ernst Reepmaker who knows well the work of both the dancers and the musicians. They all have studied and worked with the art of Eurythmy and have gone their own individual ways to develop a particular style of authentic movement.
The artistic values of all the artists involved are anchored in clear awareness of selfhood, personal vulnerability and the need to be in touch with deep empathy for all living beings.
Another background characteristic of this project is the understanding that art today has gone beyond certain traditional artistic and aesthetic categories breaking into a great variety of practices and ideas in a much-expanded field of exploration and experimentation. Therefore, the group is working on a form which is a fusion of visual art, literature, music and dance.
The goal of the artistic project is also to enable the artists to encounter the nature of their artistic potiontial in terms of uniqueness, autonomy, intentionality, coherence, cohesion and permanence. It is also the artists’ goal to actively involve the audience as an inseparable element in the whole shared experience on stage and to evoke intense dialogue and contemplation. It is about shared space, shared energy field and shared time dimension between artists and audience.

The stage is prepared through a sound sculpture offering an immediate experience for the audience as they come in the theatre. The sound of quiet on one hand, and the sound of unstoppable measuring of Chronos, on the other. A big golden cymbal suspended from the ceiling on a red cord with dripping water in irregular intervals producing an atmosphere of calm causes the attention to expand; that being contrasted with the frantic sound coming from a grouping of seven metronomes arranged on the other side, a disrupting experience of linear mechanical time.
The two dancers enter the stage with apparent serenity and translucency and conjure up the image of fragile bodies standing on a precipice, like islands of consciousness drifting between blooming life and wilting decay; an island of tranquility detached from the bustle of the ticking time and a sphere of concentration in which perceived reality follows a different rhythm of time.
Gradually two disparate personalities emerge in solo dances, loosely based on the poem The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot as the second part of the performance. Echoing the memory of what it was and the absence of what it is not. Dance is based on the elements of appearing – disappearing; density – dispersion; expanding – contracting; receding – approaching; folding – twisting; emptying – arising; suspension – gravity. Transformation of something fluid into something stable and something solid into something fragile, declaring energy to be the main principle of life, an interaction between mind and material. The falling, fluid and ephemeral water drops and the cruel relentless course of time. Where is the regenerative power and fertility for the earth (asks Eliot in his poem ) – the kingdom has dried up and turned into a waste land – the nymphs have departed. The last duo dance of the performance is drawing on the myth of the heavily wounded Fisher King featuring in the poem The Waste Land and the understanding of encountering oneself in him/her and simultaneously giving rise to encountering all other people.

Who is that on the other side of you? As the dance performance at hand is asking the question, it is opening the opportunity to attain a shared collective experience.