Performing Arts

Kassys

2010-02-25T11:12:51+01:00

HORIZON is about the gaping divide between desire and reality. About wanting to leave. About thinking things are always better elsewhere. About looking for more. More space, more content, more adventure, more emotions, more romance, more meaning.

In HORIZON, we follow a group of people that are unsatisfied with the ‘here and now’. They decide to escape in a fantasy by creating alter egos, which they send out of the theatre, into the great wide world.

The alter egos end up in a road movie fuelled by adventure and a sense of freedom. Unexpected events and choices that crop up along the way are adjusted and solved live, so the dream trip stays intact. Unfortunately, mundane obstacles gradually make the trip more difficult and exhausting. The romantic goal of the quest is eventually obliterated by day-to-day reality, while the alter egos start to resemble their creators more and more.

Dutch company Kassys is well on its way to becoming a household name at Vooruit after performing five of its shows here (including Actor’s Cut, Liga and Good Cop Bad Cop). With their multimedia voyeur drama they analyse human interaction with the help of recognizable situations.

“A choreography of boredom that does not ever become tedious. Original, captivating, and most of all, hilarious. Kassys leaves us hungry for more.”
(Urbanmag on Actor’s Cut, one of Kassys’s earlier shows)

Tom Lanoye

2009-05-29T16:02:45+02:00

Before he embarked on his tour of Woest, Lanoye warned the audience: “I don’t dance, comedy is for deadbeats, cabaret is for losers, and I don’t want to subject anybody to my singing. If you don’t like it, then don’t come. If you do, however, decide to come, if will let you look into my soul. My soul is a beautiful, angry, talkative one, full of scars and tattoos.” Those that came saw a driven, natural born performer, a sneering show-off as well as a vulnerable storyteller. Because of the show’s tremendous success, Lanoye will once again perform it at selected venues. If you missed it last time, then take this chance to witness this feat by an artist who has now officially entered “the hall of fame of truly great artists”, according to De Morgen.

NTGent / Toneelgroep Amsterdam

2009-10-25T15:42:19+01:00

NTGent and Toneelgroup Amsterdam join forces to bring you La Grande Bouffe, an ode to consumer society, based on the film of the same name by Marco Ferreri. Four highly educated, successful friends have decided to organize a non-stop food fest, until they have had too much and eventually die. They want to go out at the height of excess, in the orgasmic ecstasy of a long-winded food and sex orgy. Without any further explanation, without discussion, without a philosophical underlying idea. Upon its 1973 release, the film was nothing short of a bombshell. It was the herald of a new generation without ideals that opted for neoliberal, unrestrained capitalism. But that capitalist bubble burst with a loud bang in 2008. So what does La Grande Bouffe signify now?

Jan Decleir & Koen De Sutter - Onder het melkwoud

2010-02-25T11:13:09+01:00

A masterpiece of world literature, brought to the stage by two of Flanders’s most talented actors.

In this production of Dylan Thomas’s classic work, storytellers Jan Decleir (Ten Oorlog, De Zaak Alzheimer, etc.) and Koen de Sutter (Martens) take the audience to the alleyways and squares of the fictional Welsh village Llaregub. They let you look inside the houses and the minds of its inhabitants and voice their deepest desires and most secret thoughts.

Dood Paard / De Koe / Maatschappij Discordia / STAN

2009-09-03T11:40:44+02:00

Two Flemish and two Dutch companies have created what they call a “poly-co-productive collaboration”. In the 0708 season actors Peter Van den Eede (De Koe), Damiaan De Schrijver (STAN), Matthias de Koning (Maatschappij Discordia), Gillis Biesheuvel (Dood Paard) and Willem De Welf joined forces for the performance Onomatopee. This time, STAN actress Sara De Roo will join their ranks to perform a piece based on Thomas Mann’s bildungsroman The Magic Mountain. The six of them manage to unlock the tome with the required bravado. De Morgen wrote, “It is rare that such an impossible task leads to an accessible, yet rich play.” World literature brought to the stage by a mammoth alliance of top actors: in this case the play is sure to be better than the book!

Ontroerend Goed

2010-02-11T16:42:47+01:00

Prominent stage prizes in Australia and the UK and a five-star review in British quality paper The Times! With their piece The Smile Off Your Face, Ghent theatre and performance collective Ontroerend Goed achieved something not many other Belgian companies have. In this performance the senses of each visitor – who is blinded and tied to a wheelchair – are stimulated in every way. Together with Intern, a performance during which each member of the audience was subjected to a personal therapy session, The Smile Off Your Face forms a trilogy, of which A Game Of You is the last part. Ontroerend Goed once again presents a daring piece: become a pawn in their game before they place you on the board, discover the rules and bend them if necessary…

Alain Platel / les ballets C de la B

2010-02-02T16:14:55+01:00

Nothing up their sleeves, and nothing in their pockets. With Out of Context, director Alain Platel aims to return to the fundamentals of dance. Starting from a belief in the human body as emotional tool, as carrier of memories, as raw material for living fine art. While Platel has flirted with the boundaries of opera over the past years, with for example vsprs or pitié!, Out of Context is not a music-driven piece, and also has no set or costumes other than those the dancers can fit in their suitcases. It is however no crisis piece. It is in self-limitation that a master first shows himself. The mastery of the dancers with which Platel embarks on this adventure is indisputable. Each and every one is an impressive figure with whom Platel has travelled far over the years. The show mainly asks questions to them, within the constructive dialogue born out of obsession that takes place between director and dancers. The result may well be quite surprising (intimate, inviting, captivating) and much less ‘out of context’ than the title would suggest.

Mette Edvardsen

2009-09-21T13:08:24+02:00

In her new piece – of which she gave a preview at Korte Metten at Vooruit in February 2009 – Mette Edvardsen does something with books. Every visitor is given a book when entering the venue. The featured pictures blend with what happens on stage. Each page reaches out from the paper, into the theatre. As you browse the book, the story on stage unfolds. Space is a key theme for this Norwegian-Belgian artist, as illustrated by her show Or else nobody will know and her performance during the 2007 edition of the game is up! At this festival her interventions on the staircase and in the elevator made the audience aware of the space they were in and moved around in.

Ontdekkingsdag Mette Edvardsen

2009-09-21T13:08:49+02:00

After the performance Every now and then, Mette Edvardsen will talk about his work.

Click here for an overview.

Philippe Quesne / Vivarium Studio

2010-03-16T14:40:47+01:00

“Probably the best thing I ever saw at Vooruit”, said a visitor on vooruit.be about la Mélancholie des Dragons by French dramatist Philippe Quesne. The VRT (Flemish national television) called it “enchanting and powerful” and “a magnificent piece”, De Morgen gave it a five-star review. The story of six hard rockers who build an amusement park with little more than a few large plastic bags was at once hilarious and moving. In L’Effet de Serge, Quesne and his company Vivarium studio once again work with small means to obtain maximum effect. Each week Serge prepares a show with tricks and special effects that he performs for his friends on Sunday. The result is another funny and touching performance.

Festival van de amateurkunsten

2010-03-08T14:24:48+01:00

On the second of May 2010, a unique event will take place in Ghent, which will be aiming at almost 5000 participating performers! The entire area situated between the Minard Theatre and St. Peter’s Abbey will be overflowing with passionate artists and an enthusiastic audience.

The event comprises a concert by a huge chorus, a tattoo of musicians, and much much more. Get a temporary calligraphy tattoo, saunter around the event with a busker, visit the theatrical youth village, dance along in the silent disco, have fun in the multi media lab and get your three minutes of fame on one of the festival’s stages.

Jan Fabre / Troubleyn

2009-11-03T14:37:21+01:00

“I want to be naked and start.” This verse from Paul Van Ostaijen’s Feasts of fear and agony also applies to the main character in De keizer van het verlies. He’s a clown who carries his heart around in a bag, on his head or between his legs, because it beats too heavily for his body. His tricks fail each time, but he keeps on trying, because practice makes perfect. The clown is the embodiment of the tragic aspect of comedy. He is the symbol of the artist as a jester, who craves recognition, but despises this desire and the audience at the same time. Because most of all, he wants to forget and start over. He is trying to find his wings, which will one day help him rise above everything and everyone, just like an angel.

This is the first of three pieces Jan Fabre wrote for actor Dirk Roofthooft. You can also see De koning van het plagiaat and De dienaar van de schoonheid in Vooruit.

The Rage of Life

2010-03-16T17:15:51+01:00

This is The Rage of Life, a tragi-comedy halfway between the youthful yearning for real life and a stunning disregard for death. The librettist is Igor Bauersima. In 2003 and 2004, the work of this Swiss film and stage author, director and designer was the most frequently performed by any German-language playwright. His play Norway Today, which has received several awards, has been translated into twenty languages.

In The Rage of Life, the protagonists’ radical rejection of the status quo in society plays an important role: the main dramatic motif is the attempt by messed-up young people to escape from a world they experience as corrupt. The heroes of The Rage of Life flee from a land of shadows that has long lost all connection with reality, to a life which they know for certain exists – even though they have never been there before.
Elena Kats-Chernin, an Australian with Russian roots, is the perfect composer for Bauersima’s tragi-comic genre. While a student of Helmut Lachenmann in the eighties, she wrote several operas and musicals, always succeeding masterfully in crossing tragedy and comedy in music. ”Her status as one of this country’s most prolific and consistently innovative composers remains unchallenged… [She] appears to achieve the impossible, straddling the two seemingly irreconcilable camps of intellectualism and accessibility.” (Sydney Morning Herald)

The musical director is the young new-music specialist Daniel Inbal. The Belgian soprano Liesbeth Devos and the Swiss baritone Tobias Hächler sing the leading parts together with five soloists from the Flanders Opera Chorus.

Jan Fabre / Troubleyn

2009-11-03T14:36:33+01:00

In De koning van het plagiaat, the protagonist tries to do the opposite: he’s an angel that wants to cut off his wings, to become human, an actor, “a talking monkey”. The angel has had enough of perfection and eternal life. He wants to be fallible and make mistakes. In the on-stage laboratory he plays the surgeon as well as the patient. He fills his new human brain with wisdom stolen from the minds of Albert Einstein, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Gertrude Stein and Victor Frankenstein. The angel turned human crafts a personality with plagiarized genius. But who is he really?

This is the first of three pieces Jan Fabre wrote for actor Dirk Roofthooft. You can also see De keizer van het verlies and De dienaar van de schoonheid in Vooruit.

Jan Fabre / Troubleyn

2009-11-03T14:37:42+01:00

After his magnificent performances in Fabre’s two previous monologues, Dirk Roofthooft now brings the third soliloquy to the stage. In De Dienaar van de Schoonheid the protagonist, a puppeteer, looks back on his life. As a young man he wholly devoted himself to his patron, beauty. He struggles with questions as: What is beauty? What is the ultimate state of being? And how can it be achieved? Because he wants to achieve one more feat before he dies: becoming invisible as a puppeteer. He craves to be absorbed by the background, while his puppets come to life, and only his puppets and his floating eyes remain…

This is the third of three pieces Jan Fabre wrote for actor Dirk Roofthooft. You can also see De keizer van het verlies en De koning van het plagiaat in Vooruit.

LOD / Beursschouwburg

2009-10-25T15:45:02+01:00

Widower Michel Hoofd takes his children on a trip to Berlin. Beautiful autumn weather, a hotel room with a view of the Berlin Wall, you name it. But what was supposed to be a relaxing trip, turns out entirely different. The children build a wall around themselves: they don’t want to go home, don’t want to study, don’t even want to play with their Game Boy. This LOD performance is set 75 years later. The four of them have continued to protect their hiding place with their own laws and rules. Until four new children appear, the changing of the guards. Dramatist Inne Goris and author Pieter De Buysser (Lampe) dived into the creation process together and inspired each other with image and sound. Just as for their joint piece Judaspassie, composer Dominique Pauwels will perform the score.