Trajal Harrell explores a moment in dance history when female artists presented performances on the boundary between entertainment, erotic dancing, and early experiments in modern dance. CAEN AMOUR is structured as a hoochie coochie show. With a seductive performance, scantily dressed ‘hoochies’ lure you around to the backstage area, to reveal the festivities on the ‘coochie’ side.
With In Many Hands, McIntosh dives into a tactile and multi-sensory world. She invites you to test, touch, listen and smell. She turns her back on the stage and opts for a series of sensory ‘situations’ which give you free rein to experiment. Take your time to explore and follow your nose!
Maarten Vanden Eynde and Alioum Moussa are building a two-part mobile structure, of which one side is the other’s opposite. During Performatik17 they set up shop at Place de la Monnaie, where you are invited to visit them – in pairs – for a discussion about dependence and independence.
In this lecture performance, Rabih Mroué and Hito Steyerl examine probability. Steyerl gets caught up in quantum superposition, while Mroué consults his father about mathematical calculations. They come across ‘zero probability’: a space in which everything is possible but nothing can be explained.
The visual artist Fabrice Samyn presents five of his seven Breath Pieces, which take breathing as their starting point. To the rhythm of the breathing, a number of different actions are performed that intensify your awareness of time, while attention is focused on all that is fundamental and uncontrollable about breathing. This show has been cancelled and rescheduled to season 2017-2018.
How do you facilitate a good discussion between opponents? The Agonistic Conversation was developed as a reaction to the philosopher Chantal Mouffe. She speaks about the importance of conflict in the political arena, and the way in which the Maori deal with conflict within their own community.
The American quantum physicist David Bohm takes as his premise the self-regulating way in which a group of people functions. You never think alone, but are always linked to the thinking of others. Thus a discussion is the ideal place in which to research and maintain the patterns of this collective thinking – without a moderator.
Experience what lies at the root of human contact, and how a group can come together in a very direct way. To look at one another without speaking is highly intense. This encounter is based on the annual meeting of Inuit leaders, which is conducted without speaking.
Hear immerses you in a soundscape that explores the physical power of sound. Along with the other viewers, you are blindfolded and scattered around a space, where a visual composition of sounds stimulates your senses. Each show uses a local choir of performers, and consequently evolves into a unique sound performance.
The Indians of Canada’s Great Lakes let go of short-term thinking in order to move amongst the generations that came before them and that will come after them. Are we capable of doing the same thing, rather than taking a decision that solely takes account of its impact on the present?
Inspired by the theory of Bruno Latour and by Aboriginal rituals, you question the relationship between people and things. Is it acceptable for us to speak in the name of things? Or might another relationship conceivably be created, in which we abandon the anthropocentric point of view and see the future from the things’ perspective?
Mette Ingvartsen explores the way in which we deal with our bodies and sexuality today. She leads you through videos, performances, books, films, movements, text and image and thus brings history back to life.
