Character Building

In “Under Construction”, I had to perform as myself, and by every next performance I started to question the idea of the authentic body on stage, the body that doesn’t play but “act”. After a while, I stopped believing that there was such a thing. Even if one tries not to play and to “act as oneself” on stage, one is still playing a role. Just like in life, one always plays a role… not only one, but several (J. Butler). Also the question of presence was something that I became sceptical of, and wanted to liberate myself of the obsessions with presence, that was very much a current issue at the time. It is important to note that conceptual dance, that brought these issues in contemporary dance, had been present for already  two decades, and it was a natural process for many dance artists to broaden those views and look for different, new approaches in contemporary choreography. I therefore consciously decided to work with representation in my work, through constructing roles and characters for my performers and myself. The solo piece Lady Justice is based entirely on the idea of representation and takes up the context of the courtroom, where representation is an important modus operandi. In the other solo pieces Modal Verbs, Staying alive and the group pieces Ansambl, Healers and The River 2, the performers slip into characters that transform over the course of the piece. This transformation happens gradually, through changes in costume, movement or language, and has the function of keeping the characters fluid and the audience questioning. At the same time, working with characters allows me to distance myself from my own medium, dance, and to look at it from a different perspective.