Arts Centre Vooruit, Ghent, Belgium

Attention: on Friday the performance will start at 10 p.m., on Saturday it will start half an hour earlier, at 9.30 p.m.

On stage we see a circle of light marked off with books on the ground and paper ribbons hanging from the ceiling, coming together on the stage. The set-up can at once be seen as the centre of the world and as an oppressive cage in which a prisoner is slowly driven to insanity. Dancer Daniel Linehan steps into the circle and starts spinning around his axle like a dervish, as he screams in a repetitive stream of words what his performance is not about: it is not about stamina, politics, celebrities, metaphysical issues, and not about himself. Despite the continuous denial, he touches on various big and small themes that get you thinking. This way, he does not only break through the small circle in which he dances, he also reaches past the performance space, out into reality. This feeling is amplified by the compelling cadence and the ever-changing rhythm of Linehan’s screams, footsteps, and movements.

As he dances and recites, Linehan not only reflects on his own performance and dance, but also performs a few actions simultaneously. During each performance, he writes a cheque for a different charity, for example. He then proceeds to hand this cheque to a member of the audience, who will have to send it to the said charity. With this action, Linehan questions the social responsibility of the artist. Not About Everything is a simple, yet powerful performance, with a lead role for the lighting design by visual artist Joe Levasseur. The lights shine brightly, dim, and flash to emphasize Linehan’s dance and monologue.

Daniel Linehan is a young dancer from Brooklyn (NY), who recently relocated to Brussels to study at PARTS, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s renowned dance academy. Linehan has previously performed his work at various New York venues, including The Kitchen, Chez Bushwick and Dance Theater Workshop, where Not About Everything premiered in November 2007.

Tom Bonte: “Linehan lets the audience share in his quest for meaning. Why does he want to make this performance and what is it about? I feel that Daniel Linehan is sincerely struggling with these questions as a young dancer. He sums up what the performance is NOT about for him, while he spins around and around, as if he were caught in his own head. What more can you say as an artist, how can you contribute to this world gone crazy, what else is there? Maybe the point of this performance is that it does not want to be about everything that it sincerely wonders what its impact is, on a social and artistic level. It certainly made an impact on me.

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