Merzbau - performance at Tromsø Sjøfront Laboratorium
12.09.2020 Tromsø Sjøfront Laboratorium
Tromsø (NO)
Tromsø palms grow along roadsides,abandonned properties and shorelines. Like undesired weeds they thrive along the urban borders. A metaphor for things not planned.
In the same spirit we use them to build a construction without plan. We gather people and start building. No rules only dried palms, tape and gravity. Does it end up in arguments or collaboration, beautiful art or collapse? It surely gets complicated.
For the Sjøfront Laboratorium we gather people on a controversial development lot in the heart of Tromsø to build a different future.
ACT SELECTED FOR HET THEATERFESTIVAL
11.09.2020 - 12.09.2020 Kaaitheater
Brussels (B)
A Two Dogs Company / Kris Verdonck is glad to announce that ACT has been selected for The Theater Festival (Flanders)! The performance will be presented on the 11 & 12 September 2020 at Kaaitheater (Brussels).
From the jury’s report:
“In ACT Johan Leysen shapes one of Beckett's most elusive characters in an inimitable way. For an hour you hang on the lips of a man who gets hopelessly entangled in his attempt to define himself and the world around him. A moving portrait of Western human beings in search of sense and meaning.”
ACT
A Beckett evening
In ACT, Kris Verdonck explores various aspects of human existence on the verge of disappearing in the work of Samuel Beckett. ACT approaches Beckett in three ways: first, a monologue with Beckett texts, Texts for nothing, performed by Johan Leysen. This monologue is accompanied by a new performative installation, MASS #2, a possible landscape for a Beckett text. A video lecture by philosopher and mathematician Jean Paul Van Bendegem is the third part of this Beckett evening, and sketches how throughout the history of Western thinking the unity between body, mind and spirit fell apart.
The triptych of theatre, installation and philosophy shows, as in three acts, each time a different facet of the diamond ‘Beckett’. They deepen each other’s experience: a particular way of performing brings a a way of thinking to life and vice versa, a performative landscape zooms in on the underlying world of or perhaps after the actor and offers a more contemplative experience.
Duration: 75 min.
Language: ENG spoken, NL & FR subtitles
MURMUR
10.09.2020 - 30.09.2020 On tour
Split (HR) & Cosenza (IT)
Murmur was part of the official selection of the 2020 International film festival Rotterdam, in their "Bright Future" program. Murmur is a new collaborative work by film maker Jan Locus and Stijn Demeulenaere. The film is an exploration of the dawn at the swamp of Ganshoren, the last bit of swamp in Brussels. Murmur knew its cinematic world premiere at the 2020 IFFR and was also selected for among others the 2020 Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin and the Festival International du Film sur l'Art in Montréal. The work also won the 2nd prize at The Engine Room International Sound Art Award.
Upcoming screeningsSeptember 2020:
10 - 17 September Split Film Festival / International Festival of New Film, (Split, HR)
28 - 30 September Laterale Film Festival, (Cosenza, IT)
ACT // A PRODUCTION OF A TWO DOGS COMPANY & HET ZUIDELIJK TONEEL
07.09.2020 - 16.09.2020 ON TOUR
Various locations (NL & BE)
In ACT, Kris Verdonck explores various aspects of the relation between the human on the verge of disappearing in the work of Samuel Beckett. ACT approaches Beckett in three ways: with a monologue with Beckett texts (Stories and texts for nothing), performed by Johan Leysen, with a scientist, invited to react to Beckett and with an autonomous scenography, a possible landscape for a Beckett text.
The variety and multidisciplinary approach reflect the complexity of Beckett’s work and are at the same time an attempt to literally take apart this complexity.
A Two Dogs Company / Kris Verdonck
07/09/2020 Het Nationale Theater, Theater aan het Spui, Den Haag (NL)
10/09/2020 Het Nederlands Theaterfestival, ITA, Amsterdam (NL)
11 & 12/09/2020 het TheaterFestival, Kaaitheater, Brussels (BE)
16/09/2020 Grand Theatre, Groningen (NL)
Closing Weekend Metabolic Spaces
05.09.2020 - 06.09.2020 Le Tetris
Le Havre (F)
LAWRENCE MALSTAF / METABOLIC SPACES
Living objects, kinetic architecture and physical interaction are characteristic for the installations by Lawrence Malstaf. His responsive environments generate theatrical situations involving the visitor as an essential presence in their dramaturgy. In a complex play with unstable order, chance and change, his machines display emotion, doubt and other human qualities.
Closing weekend of EXHIBIT at Le Tetris, Le Havre (F) with works & installations by Lawrence Malstaf, Alex Verhaest, Julie Stephen Chheng & Marco Barotti.
Shrink-performances: 5 & 6 September 2020 at 11:00 - 14:00 - 16:00 - 18:00 & 21:00
MASS #2 at Het Theaterfestival 2020
03.09.2020 - 13.09.2020 Kaaitheater
Brussels (BE)
Kris Verdonck created for the performance ACT the installation MASS #2, four possible poetic landscapes for a Beckett text.
MASS #2 is a poetic, moving landscape. A graphite-grey mass flows slowly as if it was water. The matter appears light and yet heavy at the same time. And, as if tectonic plates are interacting, the spectator sees mountains and valleys created before his eyes, only to dissolve in the next instant. A living landscape, geology in a time-lapse.
On view at the foyer of Kaaitheater during het TheaterFestival 2020 from 3 until 13 September 2020, ongoing from 11:00 on.
Lawrence Malstaf - Metabolic Spaces / Exhibit
27.06.2020 - 06.09.2020 Le Tetris
Le Havre (FR)
Lawrence Malstaf is presenting six installations in the context of EXHIBIT at Le Tetris this summer:
METABOLIC SPACES
Nevel 02004/10
Territorium 02010/19
Spheres 02016/20
Shrink 01995
Conversations 02012
Nemo Observatorium 02002
Shrink- performances: 27 & 28 June and 5 & 6 September 2020
Artists Talk with Lawrence Malstaf & Alex Verhaest on 29 June 2020 at 17:00
Polygon in expocollective#17 supernature
29.05.2020 - 07.06.2020 Saint-Ex / Manège de Reims
Reims (F)
- CANCELLED -
POLYGON 02016 by Lawrence Malstaf is a large kinetic structure composed of lightweight articulating tubes hanging from thin wires. Via a mechanism of motors and counterweights it becomes a geometric landscape that moves organically and adjusts shape and balance in response to the visitors.
USHER in Antwerp, Ghent & Rotterdam
08.05.2020 - 27.05.2020 Various locations
BE & NL
- POSTPONED - New dates will follow
Since her 2015 opera "Private View" based on an Alfred Hitchcock film, if not earlier, the Belgian Annelies Van Parys has established her reputation as one of the most innovative composers of contemporary musical theatre. Her work is distinguished by a keen interest in the facets of the human singing voice as well as an idiosyncratic approach to instrumentation. Starting with the material of the uncompleted opera – Debussy left behind several libretto drafts, a musical fragment of about 20 minutes and some sketches – Van Parys develops in USHER a chamber music theatre that probes the category of the uncanny in a specific musical and theatrical way.
In January 2020 USHER is revived by the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin and will performed at Opera Vlaanderen in Antwerp & Ghent in May and during Operadagen Rotterdam 2020.
Music Annelies Van Parys / Claude Debussy
Text Gaea Schoeters / Claude Debussy based on "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe
Musical Director Marit Strindlund Director, set designer, light Philippe Quesne Dramaturgy Roman Reeger Roderick Usher Ola Eliasson L'ami Vincenzo Neri Le médecin Daniel Arnaldos Lady Madeline Alexandra Büchel & Symfonisch Orkest Opera Ballet Vlaanderen
Commissioned by Staatsoper Unter den Linden Berlin and Folkoperan Stockholm in co-production with Muziektheater Transparant (B), Opera Vlaanderen (B) and Nanterre - Amandiers centre dramatique national (F).
- 8, 9, 10, 15, 16, 17/05/2020 Opera Vlaanderen, Antwerp & Ghent (BE)
- 27/05/2020 Operadagen Rotterdam (NL)
Faith, Hope & Thermodynamics
29.04.2020 - 02.05.2020 Vårscenefest
Tromsø (NO)
- POSTPONED - New dates will follow
A site-specific and ongoing performance project along the seaside, with installation art and activism.
If you surf the web, open a newspaper or turn on the news, you get the impression that the world is in the wild. The media is full of war, death and misery. One may be tempted to long for the past, for an easier, happier time. But this media picture is not right. According to research and statistics, humanity is constantly making great leaps towards a better world. And the second law of thermodynamics says that the future cannot be simpler than the present. Complexity will always increase. Going back is not a possibility - we must move forward. That is our destiny - and the meaning of it all.
So we act.
Between February and June 2020 STATEX is planning a series of workshops and interventions around the challenges and questions of the Waterfront Laboratory. This research will culminate in a larger performance-based project called ‘Faith Hope and Thermodynamics’ premiering in autumn 2020.