KUNSTENFESTIVALDESARTS 010 - The starting point of ZERO is the body as tabula rasa: a body with no memory, no past, no future, which performs each movement as if for the first time; a tool with neither purpose nor function. ZERO explores the relation between memory and the body, its bearings and reflexes, with remarkable physical intelligence.

East African VJs translate foreign films into local languages, taking the liberty of entertaining their audience with their own interpretation of the films. Esther Mugambi acts as this sort of VJ, mediating the visual imagery and the subtext as it shifts about and adding her own commentary to splice reality and fiction.

With Marzipan or Plexi Marijs Boulogne has created a production that combines the narrative character of a fairy tale with a musical (text, music, dance) and the intractability of a performance. A fairy tale about ‘hunger’: desire, (female) ecstasy, symbiosis and sexuality.

Robert Steijn plays a woman who believes devoutly in everything she does. He becomes a Martha Graham and thereby reaps great success, until he goes out of fashion and takes to drink. He dies, but is reincarnated as a Trisha Brown, who takes a postmodern approach to seeking contact with a new audience. An absurdly comical musical on suffering, working hard and living as a diva.

In Springville we witness the constant metamorphosis of a small world. Characters, half human, half object, attempt to function with and in the proximity of one another. They play a moving game of chaos, expectation and surprise. Scenography, costumes, props and characters are closely interwoven and merge together. The image prevails. A performance with references to slapstick.

Kris Verdonck quite often combines his fascination with machines with images and concepts that owe a lot to science fiction. This certainly applies to the three-part Actor #1, a performance about evolving: about what has come into being, what is, and what may come into being. Three variations on the metamorphosis from chaos to order. The three parts of the performance are shown in separate rooms at the Kaaistudios, and a guide takes you from one to the other.

When you go to see every now and then, you are given a book of photos at the start. For the whole duration of the piece the audience can read through the pages and the ‘spaces’ of the book at the same time as they follow what is taking place on stage. The individual reading combined with a collective experience results in a performance in several layers. The piece unfolds through the turning of pages, and the fantasy and imagination of the experience of a space, of a time, of a performance.

The glamour of the musical, the directness of stand-up comedy, the concreteness and sharpness of her wit, which we already saw in Kate McIntosh’s previous work, are back in Dark Matter. The performance is an attempt to stage philosophical issues in a style full of showbiz glamour, and popular scientific experiments.

Using text and sound, the Croatian Barbara Matijević and the Italian Giuseppe Chico offer an associative, personal view of their 1989. Their material consists of authentic and fictional audio documents either made in 1989 or related to it by content: pop songs, the Eurovision Song Contest – in 1989 won by Yugoslavia! – excerpts from radio and TV shows, private recordings and so on.

Two dancers from Russia have a mission: to become the new sensation in Western theatres. They tell their life stories with pop songs, dance and pantomime. Made in Russia is a spectacle about spectacle: a heated post-communist struggle between cultural clichés from East and West.

Barbara Matijevic takes you on a journey through the year 1984, approaching reality and fiction from various angles – events in the history of the former Yugoslavia, bits of world history, science fiction, film, the virtual world of the internet, video games, Mona Lisa’s and and Mickey Mouse’s smiles, Macintosh’s bitten apple etc.