Robertson/Fandard/Hannes 3 x Aerowaves 17-18 October 2023

Programme

Two solos and a quartet make up the evening's triple bill - a selection of Aerowaves' chosen artists. Aerowaves is a European dance platform that presents the next generation of dance icons.

"the pleasure of stepping off a horse when it's moving at full speed" by Courtney May Robertson

As a starting point for this short solo, Courtney takes a metaphor for self-control: a rider taming a wild horse. She looks at the struggle between embracing her desires and regulating behaviour in accordance with societal pressures. Visual projections encapsulate Courtney in an octagon spanning 4 metres in diameter. Through a combination of poetry, dance and song, she travels through personal landscapes of desires, memories and conflicts. The space acts as a time capsule; intimate home videos are spliced with samples from YouTube, documentaries and old films. The pleasure of dismounting a horse as it moves at full speed is Courtney's attempt to embrace the, sometimes messy, contradictions that make up a multifaceted human being.

"Comme un Symbole" by Alexandre Fandard

Alexandre Fandard takes on the image of a young man from the outskirts of the city with the positions and fears he evokes. At once barbaric, potential terrorist and eternal stranger, the "youth from the suburbs" is often a masculine figure, despised, celebrated, sacrificed or eroticised. Alexandre Fandard's creations as a visual artist and choreographer never remain fixed in one form and bring to the stage all these rock-solid archetypes. In this new solo research, he rehabilitates suburban youth as a symbol. The dancer wears the French flag on his jacket and uses this symbol as an attempt to redeem this figure, while transforming himself into a national product in his own right.

"WARPING SOUL" by Andreas Hannes

WARPING SOUL is the surprising choreography made by new star and choreographer Andreas Hannes for Conny Janssen Danst's talent development project DANSLOKAAL. A short dance performance 'from outer space' that evolves into a techno-rave that makes you long for more... In 'Warping Soul' the dancers emerge in a space that is constantly on the move. Subject to external forces, they move within movement. Through the disorientation and reorganisation of bodies and space, Andreas Hannes explores the dynamics of bouncing and warping*. By questioning the body's agency, he strives to intensify the magnetism and connection between bodies and space to create an enticing atmosphere for an extraterrestrial dance. 'Warping Soul' was inspired by the practice of continuous skipping (like jumping down the street) that Andreas Hannes has been developing since 2017. Key elements of his practice were road-trips, transit landscapes and aerodynamic forces. *warp: to bend or turn from the (original) direction or course.