clinch

Clinch is a performance involving several artistic disciplines - notably dance and theatre. On stage, the wildness of the fight stands in sharp contrast to the delicacy of the women cobatants who must fight and not fall. The boxing ring serves as the stage for the performance.
A performance where surrealism and the absurd meet in bizarre sensuality. Clinch reflects the human condition; combining fun with reflection and comedy with tragedy. A grotesque commemoration of life. A positive celebration of human failure that allows us to laugh at disappointments. The performance lets us reflect on the naivety of the characters, the paradoxes and the absurdity. Clinch challenges the gender constructs of the masculine and feminine.
The performance soundtrack combines Afro-cuban rhythm with European sounds and is produced by musician, Ludovic Constant who appears on stage as both the DJ and the boxing judge. The music uncovers deep, Afro-Cuban roots together with the sounds of Antwerp and urban soundscapes.
Costume and stage design are the creations of artist, Laercio Redondo and the designer, Birger Lipinski. Different sports equipment and objects are used to increase the notions of competiton in the performance. Concepts that investigate our understanding
of gender and their context in sport.
The choreography is by Juliana Neves who has worked for several years with the company, C. de La B. directed by Alan Platel.
Ultimately, Clinch reflects and questions types of audience interaction with diverse forms of expression. The stage with it's
traditions of theatre and performance is exposed to different forms of communication within the play. Clinch addresses multiple audience interests with a contemporary production that simultaneously combines art and culture to achieve a celebration of human values.

Text Adriano Garib
Performed by Fábia Machado, Ludovic Constant, Rosana Pinheiro
Text Translation Kristien De Rijck
Choreography Juliana Neves
Stage Design & Costume Laércio Redondo, Birger Lipinski
Assistant Costume Annick Nobels
Assistant Scenography Joseph De Rijck
Lighting Birger Lipinski
Sound Design Ludovic Constant
Directed by Silmara de Oliveira Fernandes

LES TUPI

Les Tupi is a confluence of international artists' rooted in Europe experimentations, who research the languages that summon the contemporary spectator's sensibility.
The search of forms that are different from the stereotyped languages is present in our work.
We have been working in Belgium
and last year we built up 2 dance solo performances:
Os Bichos - Une Histoire Humaine and
Boekworm - Het Feest van de Vergetelheid.
Os Bichos is performed by Fábia Machado
and Boekworm by Laura Mas Sauri.
The idea of the performances was to create 2 short stories
of 2 differents animals, a cockroach and a termite,
which live in a library and
dance human beings' history through their stories.
We consider that there is not an idealized audience,
but that the work of art,
as eternal staging of the search of meaning
that characterizes the human beings, that liberates them of alienation,
should be accessible to all.

OS BICHOS - Une Histoire Humaine

During nocturnal adventures in search of survival means, a cockroach enters a book and lives her first memorable experience through reading the “History of the World”.
Somehow, she believes she is invited to the eternal human party where meaning through history is produced. Uninterrupted narratives of the small and daily stories that feed the flow of the history of humanity. Suddenly she understands the particullarity of the species, the exclusively human necessity of narrating, of telling, of speaking about the tiniest experiences that culminate in the production of meanings of human life. The fight against the strangeness of the world and its alienation, the solitude and the isolation are staged in “Os Bichos”.
It is a discovery of the written word and of history, depository of the values that facilitate a peaceful and civilizatory insertion of the man in the world. Performance without spoken word, investigating the written word.
A cockroach with out a human language, dances to the discovery of history meaning. Humanized, she dances to her own unknown history until then, breaking the boundaries of what she is supposed to do. The cockroach humanity lasts until the final blow with a shoe.
From which, however, she escapes, finding again refuge inside a book.
Text and Direction: Silmara de Oliveira Fernandes
Performer: Fábia Machado
Scenography and Costume: Laércio Redondo
Graphic Material: Billy Lipinski
Lighting: Josy Galvão
Video: Laércio Redondo
Production: Kristien De Rijck

BOEKWORM - Het Feest van de Vergetelheid

Of a termite you can expect he will never remember himself, as it seems to be possible to some others. And what to say about an insect that achieves, beyond everything, a kind of agreement with the world? Thus, why can't he live according to the rules of world,
dedicating himself to the simple task of spraying books for keeping his life breathing?
But not! He leaves the gap where he lives, a wall of a library, to assume the center of the stage, taking possession of the objects forgotten by others, parading an old dress of a lady, reconstructing in this manner a dark and disdained hole, into a wasteland in microcosms. But, at the end, why we feel so much relief, when the insect finally after party, returns to the invisible gap from where he left?
Performer Laura Mas Sauri
Direction and Conception Silmara de Oliveira Fernandes
Production Kristien De Rijck