Arts Centre Vooruit, Ghent, Belgium

‘I/II/III/IIII’ is a dance performance / theatrical installation by Kris Verdonck who once again draws inspiration from the remarkable progress made by contemporary technology. For centuries, man has been searching for the secret of life. This quest —which in the past had us creating the Golem, Frankenstein and robots— has now led us to cloning human beings. But can man really play god? And where is the line between human and non-human?

In ‘I/II/III/IIII’, four identical female dancers will be performing a choreography suspended in a giant puppet theatre. Like puppets, they will be attached to a machine that controls their movements. They will perform the exact same dance moves in perfect synchronicity until one of them makes a mistake and slows down compared to the others…This “failure” transforms the robots into human beings again.

While Kris Verdonck is chiefly known for his installation works, ‘I/II/III/IIII’ is far more akin to the performing arts. The audience will not be following a track—it will stay seated while being shown such powerful images which will inevitably trigger stories and interpretations that will all be of equal value.

There will be a discovery day for this performance on Saturday the 17th of November.