Arts Centre Vooruit, Ghent, Belgium

Dirk Roofthooft is crazy about Russian poet Joseph Brodsky. He had been playing with the idea of using his writings in a show for a while. Pianist Kris Defoort was Roofhooft proved the ideal partner for this project.

Nobel prize winner Brodsky saw a poem as “a conversation with a writer and a reader”, which is “mutually misanthropic”. Roofthooft and Defoort present themselves as intermediaries between the poet and the audience. Roofhooft gives a passionate and emotional reading of the texts, while Defoort exposes the hidden aspects of Brodsky’s aspect in his music. As it happens, Brodsky’s poetry is incredibly melodious, with a great sense of rhythm and rhyme. Roofthooft and Defoort take his language as a guide and are just as eager as the audience to find out where their improvisation will take them. One thing is for sure: when two top-notch artists like Roofthooft and Defoort try their hand at first-class material like Brodsky, the results will be breathtaking.